May 22, 2008 Tornado near Monument Rocks?

[Michael O'Keeffe]

I was reviewing some video from May 22 and have always thought there was a large tornado back in the rain over in the occluded meso about 10-15 miles north of Healy, KS on the first supercell of the day. The tornado was likely on the ground sometime near/after 3:30 but before 4pm.

Below is a video still with enhanced contrast and a circle where the tornado is. As you can see it is way back there on the occluded meso and the new meso developing in front of it that did produced a weak dusty tornado shortly after this shot was taken.

So what does everyone think? A large stovepipe or just a wierd shaped rain shaft?

 

[Jonathan Behle]

Hey Michael,

Do you have a time on which that was taken? We can pull up the radar data from that exact time.. My hunch is this is a rain shaft, but May 22nd was very weird so nothing would suprise me. Alot of storms that day were moving Northwesterly, adding to the uniqueness of this event and making me wonder as well.

 

[Skip Talbot]

Michael, I believe that is a stovepipe. I pulled what looks like the same tornado out of my stills, see the below attached images. We were somewhere between Dighton and Healy, I'm not sure of our location, but I can pull the timestamp off the image and match it with my GPS log when I get home.

Looking North:

Extreme contrast enhance of the suspect area:

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

That looks like it Skip. I'm not positive of the time and I don't know if the video camera had the settings right even if I could find the timestamp. I know it was early in the day. The first storm of day somewhere near Healy and it was after 3:30, but before 4pm. The overall rotation in that region was also very intense and the inflow was very strong, enough to make the powerlines wobble a bit.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Michael, I personally see nothing but a rain shaft in yours (without seeing a better picture) but Skips definitely appears to be a tube.

 

[Brandon Ivey]

I think it could very well be a tornado. I have seen tornadoes obscured in rain plenty of times. Even at times when you think that the meso has totally occluded and inflow has been cut-off, all as your watching a new wall cloud develop. You would think that a tornado would almost be impossible in that region, but yet they occur. A couple of personal examples from 2008 would be May 13th in southeast Kansas or better yet, June 12th in Chase County, KS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KylW9q7KqQM

The first clip in that May 13th video shows what appears to be a tornado, briefly touching down, about a couple miles northwest of our location. Matt and I are even questioning it in the clip, but I have said before, I think tornadoes form in this type of scenario more than we think. How do we know, most of the time when the meso becomes occluded, we loose visual (unless we are up there close and personal).

Another good example in June 12th, 2008 when a tornado developed completely back in the rain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfGJF78Y-8s

The meso was completely wrapped and just by luck, I noticed this tornado off to the northwest as we were driving south on highway 177. Matt and I traveled back north on 177 to try and intercept it crossing the highway. We were within a few hundred yards of this thing, and it is still poor contrast due to the amount of rain it was enshrouded in.

I know in the future I won't turn my back on occluded meso's as quickly as I have in the past. There may be treasure waiting back in that crappy area of low contrast and visibility! The down side is you have to get in there with the beast to see it.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

Maybe you could post a short bit of the video for us to look at?

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Maybe you could post a short bit of the video for us to look at?

Well I could, but it wouldn't really help any because I wasn't focused on the tornado because I had no idea it was there. I was looking at the new area of rotation to the east of the area of interest.

 

[Shane Adams]

Michael, I believe that is a stovepipe. I pulled what looks like the same tornado out of my stills, see the below attached images. We were somewhere between Dighton and Healy, I'm not sure of our location, but I can pull the timestamp off the image and match it with my GPS log when I get home.

Looking North:

Extreme contrast enhance of the suspect area:

This tornado was closer to Collyer, and was the 2nd of three we saw. It only lasted about a minute that we saw, but it was well underway before we noticed it (we were due east looking west). This tornado was followed by a larger one about 2-3 minutes later to the north. That top image looks almost identical to mine.....looks like you were about a mile north of us driving west...we were further south driving north:

I'm not sure of our exact location, but we weren't far from I-70...in fact we came upon it only a few miles later....so I've referred to all three of our tornadoes from this day as the "Collyer" tornadoes.

 

[Skip Talbot]

Yeah Shane you are right. The timestamp on my image is 5:32 pm, and here is my GPS location plotted on the radar at that time:

http://skip.cc/chase/080522/radar/080522kddc55.png

Sorry Michael, looks like that wasn't the same feature.

 

[Jim Saueressig]

That top image looks almost identical to mine.....looks like you were about a mile north of us driving west...we were further south driving north:

They are awful identical. Wasn't much contrast on that tube.

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Yeah Shane you are right. The timestamp on my image is 5:32 pm, and here is my GPS location plotted on the radar at that time:

http://skip.cc/chase/080522/radar/080522kddc55.png

Sorry Michael, looks like that wasn't the same feature.

It's cool. We were on the Collyer, KS tornadoes later that day as well.

 

[Shane Adams]

Yeah Shane you are right. The timestamp on my image is 5:32 pm, and here is my GPS location plotted on the radar at that time:

http://skip.cc/chase/080522/radar/080522kddc55.png

Sorry Michael, looks like that wasn't the same feature.

Skip, I wonder if you used Standard time when you created that GPS plot? I know for a fact we were nowhere near Dighton as that tornado was happening, in fact we were well north of KS4, closer to I-70. Our tornado timestamp was appx 6:32pm CDT (an hour later than your posted image).....I think maybe your radar image is an hour ahead of when the actual tornado pictured occurred. We had been off paved roads for over half an hour when we saw our tornadoes that day, and in both our pics it's obvious we're both off-roading it. Since your GPS marker on that map shows your position as being right along K96 just east of Dighton, I have to wonder if that image isn't for 5:32pm CDT of May 22...try plotting it for 6:32pm CDT and see what comes up, should be a mean-looking storm just south of I-70 and north of K4.