May 22 Collyer KS dusty meso/tornado

[Kevin Myatt]

I've examined many of your accounts, photos and videos of May 22 regarding the supercell south of Collyer KS early that evening. They have been a great help to us in analyzing that storm, and have corroborated well with what we observed. My thanks to all!

We -- the Virginia Tech storm chase team, led by Dave Carroll and me -- spotted both the "needle tornado," possibly anticyclonic, on the eastern edge of the storm due west of our location, and the darker cone that formed to the west of it, though the latter was poor contrast, a black funnel on a dark gray background. Then came the large wall cloud that turned into the now-famous "dusty meso"/multivortex tornado that would cross I-70 east of Collyer.

We were positioned SE of the meso (south on the gravel road leading to the huge chaser convergence on the I-70 overpass) with a poor contrast view of it, though we could see the extremely large rotation and caught glimpses of apparent lowerings reaching near the ground. Dave has gone back over the video we shot and found multiple lightning-backlit frames that appear to show a large wedgish-tornado on the ground, such as the one above.

Just interested if anyone else who was there saw anything similar to this or got similar photographs/video frames.

 

[scott r currens]

I still need to write a good chase report. This is what I observed SW of Collyer on 5/22. For what it is worth the "needle tornado" was cyclonic. I'll put a Youtube video on that page tomorrow.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

I was north of I70, east of it watching it move up from the sw then w then nw there and never saw any substantial tornadoes in the mess.

Rich Thompson had a really good video of this, also never showing anything under it.

It would not take much of a hill(like in your photo) to make that look like a large tornado. I don't think there was ever any large tornado in it there.

 

[Bill Hark]

I was following the storm from the south and saw the massive meso with wild rotation. At one point, I thought I was watching a dusty wedge tornado. Charles Edwards was to the east and closer. He saw one or two brief tornadoes just outside of the collar cloud, check out his report to be sure.

Although I didn't actually see a tornado, the meso was one of the most amazing things I've seen chasing. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some brief spinups imbedded in all that dust. I haven't done a report but here is the brief YouTube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BKEzd1iiEg

Bill Hark

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

I can confirm a tornado under the wall cloud however it wasn't a wedge it was a multi-vortex cone. The view from the west shows it better and a few other chasers have closer views you can clearly see it.

http://www.tornadoeskick.com/images/2008/20080522vid_03.jpg
Here is a still taken by Tony Laubach of the white cone I am talking about as it crossed I70.

 

[Shane Adams]

Damn, now I have to go back and re-analyze my own video for the 5th time. We were southeast of the action as the storm neared I-70. We saw three tornadoes fairly close together, within a span of about 6-7 minutes, all from different areas of the storm. The first was a snakey white funnel with a debris column underneath, then west of that by about 1-2 miles we saw a brief needle/tube that was fully-condensed to the ground, and conveniently disappeared just as I got my vidcam mounted on the tripod. The third was a large funnel/cone, about 1-2 miles north of the second tornado. This tornado lasted about 2-3 minutes, and was about 3/4 down for its lifespan.....during this tornado a large lowering persisted to its north. We never saw anything touching from it as we moved north towards 70, but then again, we were negotiating crap roads and the contrast wasn't so good. We came upon a big convergence as we crossed over 70, but local LEOs had the road north of the interstate blocked, so we backtracked south a mile, went east a mile or so, then crossed 70. I couldn't tell you exactly where we were because I never know where we are when we're using GPS because Mick is the computer guy.

Saw a lot of suspicious lowerings but nothing that jumped at me as a tornado, despite hearing reports of a "large rain-wrapped tornado" via scanner as we were looking at it. Like a lot of tornadoes that weekend, our view was probably blocked by precip. A time stamp to go along with this tornado would help.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

I was about a mile east of the thing when had passed north of Interstate 70. Not sure that there was a large tornado after looking at others' images, but it sure looked like it from our vantage as you can tell from our language. Here's my video... (about half way through)

That little funnel did appear to touch down near the end of the video and in that second shot, so that's about all that can be confirmed as it did just turn into a big dusty mess.

 

[Dave Carroll]

dusty meso

...super shots Andrew! FWIW, I was a bit further north than Kevin on the north-south dirt road south of the Interstate near Collyer, and have attached a still frame from the video as it is backlit from lightning. Between both video cams we have a few minutes of video where it does appear to have some sort of a gray low-contrast cone extending below the wall cloud. This feature was accompanied by a dust-laden inflow jet accelerating into the mess from the east. From my vantage point, quite a bit of dust obscured what was going on under the wall cloud, but lightning would give us a brief view underneath from time to time. Whatever is shown in this video grab persisted for perhaps 3-4 minutes, and varied in shape from Kevin's wedge-looking shot to a squatty stove-pipe, to a narrow cone.

 

[Derek Weston]

http://img357.imageshack.us/my.php?image=betweenlightningzq8.png

Was SE of the storm a bit on a dirt road as it neared I70. (a N/S road) Too dark to pick-out any details really, but had that vid grab between lightning shots.

If you folks were seeing much in a position just SE of the area of rotation, you must have either been much closer or have caught it earlier in its life cycle than me... That was a big, dark, and menacing storm.

 

[Kevin Myatt]

Mike, I've thought about that too, that a slight rise may give it the appearance of touching the ground. All of what we got are lightning-backlit frames (another similar one is posted below)... visually, all we could see was a dark, rapidly rotating mass with enormous amounts of dust being pulled into it. Dave and I can both be heard over the radios saying that we think there might be a tornado to our northwest, but there was no solid visual confirmation at the time.

Certainly a powerful low-level meso that possibly had some circulation on the ground during its life ...

 

[Verne Carlson]

From our perspective south of Collyer, KS the needle tornado in this view looking south (thanks to Eric for these pics!) was the new meso forming to the east of the large cone to the west.

As the needle was absorbed into the new meso the large low wall cloud had many scud fingers almost touching the ground but nothing that condensed all the way to the ground. This is our view of the wall cloud looking east from I-70 as it crossed.