Your Top 3 Chases/ Tornadoes/ Structures/Photos

[Chris Hayes]

Here are links to the youtube videos of my top 3 chases

1: May 23, 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Nz4-8o0T8

2: June 12, 2004 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcKr6MwhRDY

3: May 22, 2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hecMkany9i0

 

[Doug Raflik]

#1 5-22-08 Grainfield, Gove chase...

Mire pictures here...
http://www.wxnut.net/5-22-08.htm

#2 5-12-04 Harper county Kansas

#3 5-23-08 Quinter 1 and 2

Doug Raflik

 

[Ben Prusia]

#1 - May 8, 2003 - Lawrence, Kansas. Still getting my feet wet in storm chasing ended up intercepting a quickly dying supercell that spawned a tornado that hit the city of Lawrence and then quickly died northest of town.

#2 - July 7, 2004 - Russell, Kansas. A chase where I saw no other chasers...drove out to Russell from KC on a whim and intercepted a monster supercell with impressive structure and the storm dropped multiple tornadoes on its 15 MPH turtle pace to the southeast.

#3 - May 4, 2003 - Kansas City. Local chase through a big city...only 2nd time chasing ever.

Pictures are coming soon. They are on my USB hard drive that doesn't want to work with my desktop.

 

[Scott Weberpal]

I have about 5 chases I could consider for my top 3 so I'll choose 3 of them in no particular order...


May 10, 2003 - Lima to Good Hope, IL

I waited patiently on the IL side of the Mississippi River for a cyclic supercell to cross and hope it would still continue to produce tornadoes - boy did it! I was a little worried about navigation with storm motion at 40+ mph, but I was able to keep up with the storm for over 2 hours documenting 3 fairly large tornadoes with a beautiful ropeout near Good Hope at dusk.

July 14, 2003 - New Ulm/Lake Crystal, MN tornadoes

This day got me hooked on getting close. A tornado developed 100 yards in front of myself and chase partner Chris Gullikson near New Ulm, MN. The tornado grew into a beautiful white cone as it threw trees into the air a short distance away. Eventually, another storm would produce a few more tornadoes near Lake Crystal which we viewed from a distance.

May 10, 2004 - Elbert County, CO tornadofest

This was one of those days you may have missed unless you were paying close attention to the mesoanalysis. SPC had a 5% tor in SE WY with a 2% stretching south to I-70. It became clear to me that the southern end toward the Palmer Divide yielded the best tornado potential and thus blew off SE WY. A few storms moved off the front range and choked, but eventually 3 seemingly benign updrafts developed over the Palmer Divide and merged into a beautiful cyclic supercell that went on to produce over a half dozen tornadoes in two hours.

Honorable mention chases (in no particular order):

April 11, 2001 - E. IA cold-core tornadofest.
June 25, 1998 - S. WI - my first tornado.
June 17, 2009 - Grand Island area tornadoes.

 

[Terry Tyler]

Nice work yall. Mine arent as impressive compared to some of the work displayed on this thread, but heres my top three from the south so far. Its difficult for me to choose the best days, but in the overall scope of things these three are probably the most signifigant.

(3) * 5/2/08 - Wall cloud with intense visibility and structure for southern standards. Northern most of a pair of tornadic supercells across Northern, Mississippi. This particular one was spotted outside of Holly Springs, MS.

(2) * 5-8-08 - Tornado, approaching the Lee-Itawamba, MS county lines. The tornado produced EF-3 damage 20 minutes before photo and produced EF-2 damage 3 minutes after photo.

(3) * 5-2-09 - Tornado in Northeast, MS. This tornado had no warning and had several reports of damage from Auburn, MS in Central, Lee county to Fairview, MS in Itawamba county.

 

[Bill Doms]

#3 July 13 2003 Rapidan, MN. This is the other storm which Weberpal referenced in his post.

#2 June 4 2005 Hiawatha, KS

#1 May 5 2007 Yankton, SD.

 

[Dustin Wilcox]

Tough to narrow it down to just three; each and every tornado/chase is rememberable for a variety of reason. Two things I really enjoy that help get a chase day to the top of my list 1) Close intercepts, I enjoy nothing more than getting a close intercept when it can be done safely; I love to hear the roar of the tornado, it's what I remember and replay more than any other aspect of a tornado. The second and substantially less important thing is, nailing tornadoes with no one else around, I love nothing more than filming a spectacular storm with no one else around. All that being said, it's no surprise the top 3 days on my list are days when I was able to get close intercepts, seems if I am able to hear the tornado all else aside, that chase will quickly leap many others on my list...

As of Today: 1) May 22 2008 Filmed several tornadoes, including a (true) wedge as well as a large and quickly morphing tornado from a VERY close distance. What pushed this day to #1 is the fact that from the time I saw the first tornado all the way to the last one (7 if I recall correctly) I didn't come across even one other chaser, unheard of this day and age...

2) May 29 2008 Glen Elder crazy storm that produced some extremely exciting structure and tornadoes, the treat this day was how the storm track and road network provided for multiple close intercepts, including watching the tornado cross over the Glen Elder dam just from less than 1/4 mile. I know there were a lot of chasers out this day, though up close it wasn't a problem, only negative this day was the fact that the tornadoes were close to dark, hurting photo and video ops...

3) June 17 2009 Grand Island Storm not just in my top 3 because it was recent and is fresh in my mind. This truly was a special chase, was able to watch the storm from birth and follow it through many cycles and document a hand full of tornadoes.
http://www.severechase.com/6.17.09.html

Tons of "honorable Mention's" but the ones that hurt the most to exclude are:
4-15-06 Beatrice Tornado Close Intercept
3-28-07 Bird City area and Multiple Tornadoes
4-21-07 Tulia TX Tornado
5-23-08 Several Tornadoes including couple large ones

 

[Brandon Lawson]

I don't really have a lot of good chase days to choose from, so here are my top 3:
1. June 17, 2009 Grand Island, Nebraska
2. March 28, 2007 Texas Panhandle
3. June 12, 2004 Mulvane, Kansas

Honorable mentions:
-(January 7, 2008 Monett, MO) it was my first chase with my mom and I almost got hit by a tornado
-(May 4, 2003 Girard, KS) managed to miss almost everything because I was very new to chasing and got stuck behind debris in Girard, KS. Missed a tornado that was probably only a couple miles from where I lived at the time on the far western side of Joplin, the same tornado that went through Carl Junction. My uncle has footage of that tornado and it was a massively obese cone.
-(March 23, 2007) Hobbs, NM or close enough. Drove 7-8 hours by myself on the spur of the moment and met up with Reed, Joel, Curtis, Matt, and Daniel for some close enounters.

 

[Shane Adams]

It's virtually impossible to narrow this down, but for the sake of the thread here's my top three all-time:

1. June 12, 2004 (Mulvane)
2. May 29, 2004 (the Tornado Machine in south KS)
3. May 3, 1999 (no need for description, this was one of the most significant outbreaks of all-time)

24 tornadoes between that trio including an F5.