Surviving an EF5, Video from inside the Greensberg tornado

Randy Denzer

Randy Denzer

EF2
Joined
Feb 19, 2007
Messages
181
Location
Austin, Texas
After great thought I have decided to pull this thread.

MESO does not condone night time chasing and we made a mistake. We are not ashamened nor are we proud of this.

We are proud that MESO was the first to enter Greenberg and assist in the aftermath.

MESO members helped Chief Cain set up a command post and help in communications and rescue operations. MESO members established and operated the triage center. 2 MESO members put their lives on the line by entering a haz mat area with airpacks to search areas were a possible chlorine and amonia leaks were present.

The chase video will not be made public. If you are a friend of meso send me an email and I will see to it you get to see it.

Thank you,

Randy Denzer
 
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This might come off as me being critical, but I'm not, I'm legitimately curious. Did you guys have any data with you? GR3, or WXworx or something? You could see the location of the tornado really well on the radars. If you were dataless and had to rely on a nowcaster (who was struggling to find the tornado? [okay, that was kind of critical]) I could kind of see it. I would just think that with a tornado that was so obvious on radar it would be hard to lose it's location.

Again, not trying to be critical, I'm just curious how one drives into a tornado like that one.

On a more "hint hint" note... this kind of reminds me of that thread about chasing at night... and punching the cores of supercells producing violent tornadoes when you don't have good data or awareness of what might be occuring in front of you.
 
I'm glad you guys are alright Randy. I'm sure the towns folk and other emergency officials appreciated your help. I mean, it's amazing to have all you trained people immediately on site to start putting things in orders - no doubt IMO a bit of a godsend.

That appears to be a tough route you folks took if I understand it correctly. As I understand you were coming in from hwy 183 from the north toward the hwy 54 intersection where you wanted to turn right toward Dodge? Check the radar submitted in the following thread - the last one subbed by Mike Gibson (red) showing the rotating vertical tube which arcs across Greensburg and then to the west where it briefly crosses hwy 183 (possibly behind you?). http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showthread.php?t=12333 That is a tough position because often if in peril a chaser can turn back (north) into the core for safety. In this case however, if it is laid out as I see you might have reversed directly into it's path.

I wonder....did Mobile Threatnet mislead you folks? We often discuss on here how the update time delay can really misrepresent what is currently going on and what you can actually expect to see. At night this can really be confusing especially if cells are moving quickly.

Please give my regards to the team.
 
We had both wx-worx and GR3 or whatever the hell it is. We used that GR3 stuff religiously, as the TVS displays on that thing were amazingly sharp........you could see the actual tornadoes, because they were so large and strong....the radar sigs were off the charts. We were able to keep track in the dark of when the meso would cycle down and then spark back up....which is why we believe we saw two separate tornadoes as opposed to one long-track wedge between 11:04-11:40pm....we watched the mesocyclone occlud a few times in between tornado sightings. I really don't care much whether we have the toys or not for normal chasing, but at night - GODSENT.
 
Who would have ever thought this cell would do what it did.
Click to expand...

I remember thinking the exact same thing about a little ol storm in Nebraska on May 22, 2004. Shared my experience with the world and got publicly tarred and feathered by a number of members of the storm chasing community. A couple of which have found themselves in similar situations since then.

I said it then, and I say it now....sometimes sh*t happens out there and if your go out and play with it, sometimes you get caught up in it.

I look forward to your video guys, thanks for sharing it. Sounds like a butt clinching experience to say the least. I hope things have changed and you guys don't get the public flogging that I did.
 
Dave,
You are so right......

Send me an email and I will give you the link when we get it put together...
 
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Randy Denzer said:
Ok,
Can you give me a percentage? How many tornadic cells out of 100 come to a stop and turn left?


I am very curious if there are any stats on this... Especially if it is common...

One theory I have heard is that the friction of the buildings in Greenberg slowed the forward speed and turned the tornado left?
Click to expand...

No, (edit: although perhaps a huge amount of debris might have some effect - not sure); however I was talking about this elsewhere...I think the DISC thread about the amazing storm dynamics this thing had and bizarre motion. It had additional flanks and pseudo component cells to the west of the main storm cell which were flowing and merging into the primary updraft. Some of these almost appear to be small hook echoes on reflectivity though not sure if they had any rotation, but if they did they seem to replace and enhance the main updraft. As they do it strengthened and pulled west / northwest across town and toward 183 (likely near behind you guys). It kind of seems to be ingesting these flanks but they also kind of rotated into the main updraft. You can see what I mean if you look at an animation of the radar. Some people posted some good ones. I'll post from here if I find one. Oh PS: that same area flowing in was also likely including some RFD. I think you guys were likely in strong RFD, and the peripheral tornadic circulation and also under what ever other areas of rotation were merging from the flanks described above.

Find the radar animation and just watch it over and over again in a loop maybe 20 times or so. Note the flanks feeding into the updraft from northwest to southeast. Now look at the whole storm...you will see that it appears to propagate / build new development from the northwest to the southeast also almost like a backbuilding storm on a boundary, but that is not what this is I don't believe. Perhaps some type of forward propagation.

Anyway this needs to be studied. I think there is some type of grander scale processes at work here than in a typical tornadic supercell. Hallam kind of operated differently too.
 
Randy Denzer said:
Ok,
Can you give me a percentage? How many tornadic cells out of 100 come to a stop and turn left?


I am very curious if there are any stats on this... Especially if it is common...

One theory I have heard is that the friction of the buildings in Greenberg slowed the forward speed and turned the tornado left?
Click to expand...

I don't have stats, but it's a pretty common occurrence for tornadoes (and meso) to curve to the left as they weaken. My first guess would be that the weakening of the rotation decreases the anomolous propagation associated with the vertical perturbation pressure gradient (which mostly explains why supercell turn to the right when they develop rotation / when the storm becomes a supercell, since supercells, by definition, contain a rotating updraft).

I can't imagine the buildings would have a significant impact on a tornado that size. IIRC, DDC 88D data indicated that the meso curved to the left as it neared the area south of Greensburg, before a new meso developed east of the Greensburg meso and tornado. Again, this isn't an uncommon occurrence when low-level mesocyclones occlude. Of course, it's not easy to anticipate the meso or tornado weakening, so, likewise, it isn't easy to anticipate the leftward curve.
 
This as reply to the DISC thread related to my description of storm motion. (Hope it's ok to post like this. I can't just post a link to the individual post I don't think):


jladue said:
I reviewed the radar data with Les Lemon and we both watched the Greensburg tornado signature move just north of town, then move to the west where it touched Rt 183 before it moved back to the southeast. Now I understand why I saw damage on Rt 183 a couple miles WNW of town. At the same time, the next mesocyclone quickly grew in size and it appears that it ingested the roping vortex of the Greensburg tornado. Therefore, parts of Greensburg may have been subjected to this tornado twice.

The next mesocyclone east of Greensburg appeared to be even larger in size and it did, as you say, appear to ingest outflow from the next storm to the northwest. The damage width of this tornado appeared to be 2 miles or a little more.

BTW, here is a suite of video stills of the Greensburg tornado.
http://towerofstorms.net/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=899

We probably wound up seeing Dick McGowan by the downed power poles. We were the ones in the Prius.
Click to expand...
 
We knew better than to rely only on the Mobile Threat Net. We stopped about 10 miles north of 54 on 183 to shoot lightning shots. We saw a break in the cells on 183 to our south. We then recieved a call from the south side of the cell that indicated the tornado had crossed 183 about 5-8 miles south of 54. We looked hard at the threat net radar and knew the data was at least 5 minutes old. We saw a break to get down to 54 and go west. We started into it and thought the RFD would weaken. We were unable to backtrack once we got into trouble. We did NOT loose any glass except a single headlight for all three vehicles. We got to 54 and turned right.
 
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