Comments Closed (For Now)
Because of the enormous volume of SPAM comments that our chase BLOG has been receiving (on the order of 50-100 per day), the hassle of deleting them, and the lack of any real person’s comments recently, I’m closing down the comment function for the time being. We’re using an old license of MT and don’t feel like going through the time and learning curve of upgrading to a more SPAM resistant version right now.
In the meantime, we’ll keep posting chase logs as we get the chance for the rest of the season. If you do have comments about any given Storms Observed entry, you still can air them, and here’s how: Simply e-mail them to me and I will append them to the end of the BLOG entry.
Visual Splendor by Day and Night
Storm Structure, Tornado and Lightning
Graham, Rooks and Ellis Counties KS
22 May 7
SHORT: Intercepted St. Peter storm along with throngs of others after long but pleasant solo drive. Excellent structure seen, tornado documented S of HLC, intense in-cloud lightning display after dark at HYS. Drove home.
LONG:
This was my favorite kind of storm intercept: an old-fashioned, almost data-free endeavour: forecast, drive toward a classical triple-point target area, watch the storm go up from the first towers and produce great structure and a tornado, followed by a delightful lightning show after dark.
I say “almost data-free” because I forgot the laptop, but Matt Biddle and Elke each did call a few times to offer the latest obs and satellite info along the way (thanks!).
E of Dodge City, I could see robust towers building to the NE, which eventually formed a maturing Cb and moved into Gove County. It wasn’t even 4:30 when I saw the first towers, so I was mildly surprised — not complaining! — that the cap broke so soon. I charted an intercept course bearing north by northwest off port bow, in the direction of Wakeeney – snapping a few photos of the building storm along the way (upright wall, then nice backshear as seen from the Jetmore and Ness City area).
I pulled off a couple of times S of Wakeeney to watch the storm to my WNW, the longest being at the airstrip located barely S of town. There was nobody else around there at all, and I was able to sit there for over half an hour observing, immersing in the grandeur of that sky as storm structure improved, and occasionally snapping photos as the right and left movers shoved farther apart. The left mover sported a wall cloud (enhanced image), and even generated a few funnel reports, but I had no intention of following it as it raced off to the NNE (another actual and enhanced image). The right mover’s base was getting bigger and I was confident this would be the best show. Meanwhile, thinking of Neal Rasmussen’s penchant for having interesting objects whipping about in his time lapses (moving tractor, pumpjack, etc.) I got the wind sock in the view of the tripodded camcorder for about 20 minutes as the right mover spun along just to its left (image from still camera).
After topping off the tank in Wakeeney, I found a well maintained dirt road 6 N of town on which to pull off and observe for about half an hour. Imagine, a storm moving slowly enough to permit such a sublime luxury! The dirt road was sprinkled with quite a few other chasers, but their vehicles were fairly well spaced and leaving enough room for any and all to pass. The storm continued to put on a beautiful structural exhibit, even as it moved NNE and an increasingly dense precip load appeared in its midst.
The main meso area started to look more and more interesting with time, despite the precip-hampered contrast; and the storm began turning more rightward with tighter low level rotation visible in the murk. “Hailstone Jim” Leonard pulled up and offered brief greetings, saying he was going to relocate north because it was about to “plant one.” Given what I was seeing (enhanced version) — which was starting to remind me a lot of the Patricia TX storm morphology from 5 May 6 — I couldn’t argue either with the prediction or the rationale for moving, so I did likewise.
While cruising up US 183, the circulation was tightening noticeably and angular motion of scud started to accelerate, as if to say, “Get thine big ol’ butt into viewing position because thou art in for a treat.” So to keep the wires lining US 183 out of a projected NW-NNE view, I whipped leftward half a mile onto a little bitty dirt road 13 N of Wakeeney (and 12 E of St. Peter) which — quite conveniently, had its own little gravel pull-off atop a hill. Across beautiful fields of green and gold, I watched as a condensation funnel developed, quite tilted at first then more erect, intermittent wisps of dust and vapor faintly and ephemerally dancing beneath as the fields rippled in the inflow breezes.
Best of all, as the tornado matured, precip in the hook thinned considerably, allowing more western light to bathe the scene. Contrast improved quite a bit from this southerly angle, allowing me to take a series of near-normal view, zoomed and wide-angle shots from a distance of roughly 4-5 miles to its S. After all the darkness, rain-wrapping, and other contrast-destroying conditions around the other tornadoes I’ve seen in 2007, what a treat it was to finally behold a photogenic one this year! Best of all, I could sit in one spot and watch the whole life cycle – a rare luxury, snapping the shutter at will as video (another rarity for me lately) recorded the whole process from atop a tripod. And no other chasers could be seen within half a mile — the approximate distance I had pulled W from the highway. For seven blissful minutes, this was the good life.
The tornado roped out quickly, its condensation tube snapping into sinuous little segments before vanishing altogether. In the last shot, look closely at lower left: For just a few seconds, the parting kiss of the tornado vortex planted a detached condensation column right on the ground!
Wanting to keep the action end of this storm in view, if at all possible, I tried the unmarked gravel/dirt road that runs from the southern highway bend S of Hill City eastward toward Palco, the idea being to stop and turn around if it got too slippery. The road actually was in excellent condition — even in light to moderate rain of the rear flank downdraft. A thin veneer of dust and gravel coated a very hard packed surface, and much of the substrate seemed to be old pavement. I could drive 50 mph on this with ease, even in a 2WD sedan. Still, I was relieved the road became paved again near Palco, just W of which I took this goodbye shot of the (by now) diffuse, weaker looking and plainly HP storm.
After wandering around Graham and Rooks Counties for awhile, it was getting dark. I had to get back east then down to I-40 to stay ahead of the building line, in order not to deal with punching through a likely firehose of flooding rains on the way home. Around Plainville I barely beat a nasty looking, toothy and slowly rotating shelf cloud arc that was heaving eastward across 183. Once that surge was cleared with success and the glow of the lights of Hays appeared in the southern horizon, the adventure again grew unexpectedly interesting.
As the complex steadily approached, a tornado warning blared across weather radio, valid for Ellis County (Ellis and Hays), with the triggering circulation south of Ellis and purportedly moving east — toward Hays. This I had to see. There hadn’t been any TOR warnings for a good while, and two somewhat separated shelf clouds clearly were visible in the silhouettes of the in-cloud lightning. I wheeled around the NW side of Hays to a favorite viewing spot about a mile W of 183, just N of I-70, and set up shop with phone in one hand (in the unlikely event anything important would reveal itself to the eyeballs) and camera on tripod in the other.
Lightning filaments strobed with astonishing frequency through the region above and behind the shelf, giving off a glow of pulsating continuity that allowed me to see with almost diurnal clarity every camera setting, blade of grass and buzzing mosquito. What fun! Despite the lack of CGs, this eruption of convective pyrotechnics rivaled anything I’ve seen yet this year, not so much for the brilliance of any given flash as for the sheer number of them per unit time. Delicate latticeworks of indescribably powerful amperage shot hither and yon through the western sky, making me glad to be witness to such a splendid spectacle, and also, glad to not be in a high flying paraglider. A setting like this, with several bright artificial lights also in the view, forced me to crank up the F stop, short (3-10 second at F9-F11, ASA=400) exposures by the dozens rattling the night away. Here are just two of many more like them (1 and 2).
The mesocyclonic circulation was reported to be near Yocemento — just W of Hays and somewhere behind the north part of the southern shelf cloud. While I was at that viewing location, local law enforcement could be heard driving down nearby roads, tooting their car sirens and yelling “Tornado warning, take cover immediately!”) from their grille speakers. Meanwhile the Civil Defense sirens blared, and the whole experience became somewhat surreal. When the line got too close, I ratcheted eastward incrementally and could see a high based area curving behind the shelf — probably the meso — crossing 183 N of Hays.
It was after 10 p.m., and I needed to get back to Norman, so I finally decided to bail out of the scene and head home. Through the haze and intervening low clouds, I still could see at least faint lightning in the distant western sky all the way to Hesston. Norman didn’t arrive under my wheels until 4 a.m., after driving 872 miles for the day. It wasn’t cheap, given the record high fuel prices, but it was most certainly worthwhile.
Early Excitement, Late Downer: Outflow Wins!
Filed under: Summary
6 May 7, Harper KS and Granite City OK
Elke and I began the day in Medicine Lodge, 15 miles and less from the location of 3 of the few observable supercellular tornadoes later that afternoon. Our journey took us elsewhere, to say the least…and the best storm we saw was before noon!
Another night of storms and ringing motel phones (this time from an apparent system problem and not a skittish clerk) took its toll. By now I had slept like absolute garbage for three nights in a row, after the end of a set of night shifts, and was feeling very worn out. In fact, on a couple occasions during the day, we almost blew off the chase and headed home, which in retrospect would have saved us several hours and a tank of high priced fuel. Still, I would rather try than not, in May, in Oklahoma…so we forged onward.
We were cool and stable at the surface in MedLodge, thanks to a good churning and soaking from a squall line and its antecedent rain during the early morning hours. While packing, I noticed a particularly intense and relatively discrete storm with a tight reflectivity gradient farther down the line in Woodward County, racing NE toward some point not far E of where we were. I went over to visit Kevin S and Greg S, who were staying at the same motel, and they were monitoring it on GR software. We all decided to check out and head E to intercept this just for kicks, since it was going to be closeby anyway.
By the time we got just N of Anthony, gray skies gave way quickly to pronounced darkness in the murk to our SW. A phone call with Kevin, combined with the likely NNE storm motion, compelled us to reposition N a little, back toward Harper. Kevin and Greg went into Harper and just E of town, while Elke and I turned W a couple miles on US 180 toward Crystal Springs to let the possible mesocirculation on the gust front pass just to our W.
The gust front and wrapping circulation quickly came into low-contrast view, charging NNE as expected. About this time, a tornado warning blared through the weather radio…for our storm! Apparently the associated meso was worthy of TORpedoing (as Greg would say), so we held out slim hope that we actually might see a spinup. The view from that location as it passed to our W (first and second photos) didn’t reveal much, though some differential motion and broad cyclonic shear was evident.
We quickly repositioned a few miles E and N to the E edge of the Harper Municipal Airport, which is located a mile SW of town. A few minutes after we began repositioning, we heard of a “rope tornado” report from law enforcement timed right when we were parked, then we passed a parked, unmarked police car that was positioned farther from it than we had been. Say what? Since the mesocirculation came into view, we had been keeping at least one pair of eyes glued to the area of interest continually, and hadn’t seen anything of the sort. The circulation began to look a little more interesting here (actual and enhanced-zoomed). This storm was moving fast, and we knew we were going to have a hard time keeping up while dealing with driving through Harper during a tornado warning. So we just let it pass to our WNW and NW (actual and enhanced), before getting smacked by the gust front and its wall of rain. Another report came in while we were parked there. Sheriffnadoes? I head of no corroborating/tornadic damage in the area, though I don’t doubt there may have been some minor wind damage from the wet RFD.
We dropped S through street flooding in Anthony to Enid, where we ate a very long lunch and mooched some wi-fi from the Holiday Inn Express by permission. In fact, we sat in the closed main dining room at a table adjacent to the proprietors, a family from India who were having a business meeting of sorts, and who didn’t mind the company.
Lunch and data download each were good choices, but we sat too long in Enid. Man, was I ever drained…down but not out!
The outflow boundary from that Harper bow/supercell hybrid had surged down into OK and looked like to could retreat N, but I still wasn’t convinced we would get discrete mode. So we headed SW past Thomas and Custer City toward the building cluster of storms near Mangum, encouraged by the growing pall of darkness brooding off to our SW. When we got to Granite City and saw what a monumental pile of outflow-dominant horse crap it was (and not all that photogenic either thanks to contrast-killing storms even farther W), we hoisted the white flag and headed home.
My forecast target area had been fairly broad — probably too much so: Childress to Woodward. Based on available information in the morning, I had trouble narrowing it down any further, and it turned out to be displaced a little too far S. I thought the air mass might recover as far N as the OK/KS border, and that tornado potential would be enhanced for any discrete storms interacting with what surely would be a vorticity rich boundary left over from the multiple doses of morning convection. The problem was convective mode — given the weak cap and the meridionality of flow, would things go too linear too quick? hence, my bias toward a more southern play. Maybe with a clearer head I would have been more focused on the boundary and just taken the chance on storm mode…maybe not…who knows.