8/20/07 REPORTS: KS / NE

[edward oneal]

Chased severe storm in Finney and Haskell county, although never tornado warned observed strong rotation along the southern leading edge of the storm. As the storm moved through the Garden City, Holcomb area heard several reports of damage with at this time an unconfirmed fatality in a mobile home park, reports of overturned mobile homes, roofs off buildings, power poles and trees down also reports of cars overturned. I tried to stay ahead of the storm, so I did not actually see this damage. Followed the storm south to Sublette until fading light and low gas gauge caused me to call off the chase. Here are some pictures. Update one fatality confirmed. A elderly woman was killed when a trailer was rolled by the storm.http://spotted.dodgeglobe.com/pages/gallery.php?gallery=317978

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Was on the southward moving supercell in Nebraska most of its life. It was never that great. Knew it was in trouble the second I saw the convective wall in northern KS. Had nice surface winds on the way out till that happened. It was rather high based for the majority of its life as well.

The mammatus on the way home stole the show. Best show I've seen in a lot of years now. I should have found a more interesting foreground, but was just happy to finally clear the rain, and did not think I had as much time to view them as I did.

More later.

The supercell from earlier in the day near Primrose NE.

 

[Kyle Loftis]

Some photo's from Papillion, NE and Columbus, NE (small tornado)


http://www.1320video.com/gallery/Storm8-20

They're pretty grainy, the thumbnails are more impressive than the full/medium sized pictures

 

[Daniel Christianson]

Was also on the NE supercell, to evryone else it might of looked so so, to me it had some great structure for a little bit. i was up in Boone Co, and Wheeler Co NE, for a little while jacking around on some backgroads as usual, the flies sucked!!!!, i ended up close to Central City where baseball sized hail was being reported i didnt witness any of it, but i agree with
Mike H. the mammatus display was simply beautiful, it really made the chase, its not all the time you get to see a sky full of mammatus.... EDIT: ( pics coming soon im out of a digital camera since it quit working on me, so i have to develop the 35mm film and then ill scan the pics )

 

[Derrick Herndon]

I also chased yesterday. We headed out of OMA to the west for the towers going up north of York. I was tempted to get on the southern cell and we watched it for a while but I could see the base of the cell just east of Columbus and it showed some rotation so we headed for that. It continued to wrap up with an ok meso. We saw a weak RFD cut develop and thought maybe a funnel was forming on the east side of this but another funnel quickly developed on the south side instead. Cloud to ground lightning was very bad so could only get 2 pics. As we moved to get a more un-obstructed view the funnel touched down briefly and then quickly dissipated as the cells from Columbus to David City merged. The pics were taken from the intersection of hwy 15 and 64 north of David City looking N-NW.

http://www.directwx.com/index.php?q=node/594

 

[Mike Umscheid]

Southwest Kansas Supercells

Man, what an HP washing machine! HP supercell(s) rolled south from Scott City to Garden City to Liberal last night on the 20th, and I followed them from between Garden and Scott... having a photographic field day in the process staying ahead of these vicious storms pretty much the entire evening. Not bad by August standards! Upper tropospheric storm relative flow was quite good... very good, in fact, for sustained supercell organization. Supercells just after 103 degree afternoon heat, gotta love it. Here's what I posted on my blog, just a brief synopsis of the chase:

After I got off work at 4pm yesterday, I decided to chase…and intercepted a fairly impressive high-based supercell between Scott City and Garden City, arriving around 5:30. This storm evolved into a larger HP supercell as it neared Garden City as other smaller storms west of Garden City were forming and congealing with the main storm. Some of the storm structure was fantastic, especially south of Garden City along Hwy 83 near the Finney-Haskell county line. I would estimate winds just to my north around the south side of the large circulation to have been 70-80 mph when I was a few miles north of Sublette. Another storm formed farther south…to the northwest of Liberal which attained nice structure. This storm was stationary right at sunset and also morphed into a big HP supercell as the northern activity was approaching. Quite a fascinating chase with excellent storm structure!

The Holcomb power plant southwest of Garden City sustained around a million dollars in damages from the wind. The power plant apparently has an environmental monitoring group and they have some weather instrumentation near the power plant grounds. The WCM just told me that they had measured a 50.5 m/s gust at 50m AGL from this HP supercell. Unfortunately, we did not get the best velocity data from this storm as much of the severe wind came from the north or northwest...largely perpendicular to the beam at KDDC WSR-88D.

Below is one photo -- I have 5 more prelim images on my blog at http://www.underthemeso.com ...with plenty more images to process coming in the next week or so. A side note regarding photography, I finally found a sunflower field that was not shy to the camera! Usually with my luck, the sunflowers are either drooped or facing the wrong direction.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Not the worlds most exciting chase, but it was fun to be able to Chase in NE

I think this is what some thought was a funnel, just South of Fullerton

A couple other pictures here -->http://www.severechase.com/8-20-07.htm

 

[Kory Hartman]

Video of the supercell and the UFLO's:

http://www.severestudios.com/

Long chase with not much reward... other than some great structure and a chance to meet and chat with some other chasers.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

http://www.extremeinstability.com/07-8-20.htm