Inadvertent Tornado Avoidance
Central and Southern KS
14 Apr 12
[EDIT] The photo links work now! Thanks to Jim Caruso for noticing that.
SHORT: On a “HIGH RISK” outbreak day, intercepted 4 daytime supercells, somehow during mostly non-tornadic stages. Two brief spinups seen, lasting less than 20 seconds total. Great anvil-lightning show with Wichita supercell after dark.
LONG: On this day of a well-forecast “High Risk” tornado event, Elke and I headed N out of Norman in plenty of time to osition ourselves ahead of the dryline bulge in central Kansas — smack in the middle of the most probable track zone for one or more future supercells. Storms would be rather fast-moving, with limited time to view any single storm without driving at unsafe speeds on the township-range zigzags to keep up. Cells also were likely to develop later with southward extent. Given these conditions, therefore, our plan was to start somewhat north, tview a storm for awhile, then hopscotch down to the next one.
That normally well-reasoned idea somehow didn’t optimize our success. We would intercept five supercells in the High Risk area, but somehow only see several seconds worth of marginal tornado action the whole day.
Supercells One and Two
We arrived at HUT to refuel, heading W to get ahead of new but already supercellular convection just SE of DDC. As we approached St. John,. two originally discrete supercells to our WSW began to merge. The northern storm was more intense, and getting a strong velocity couplet on radar. The problem, at that point, was a classic case of mutual storm-scale interference: the southern storm was dumping big loads of precip into both the flanking area and part of the inflwo of the northern one, and the northern storm’s outflow was rendering the southern storm somewhat elevated. This unfortunate situation would persist for the entire time we observed the two slowly combining supercells.
West of St. John, and just two counties to the SW of its eventual violent-tornado exhibition near Kanopolis Lake, what would become the Langley-Salina supercell was a merged complex of two storms–a fuzzy, rain-wrapped HP mess. See for yourself (looking WSW at wide angle).
Storm-scale problems plagued our stage of this convection. During the 30-45 minutes we actively intercepted it (this was, as expected, a fast-moving storm!), the classical cell-merger conundrum was sickening the storm(s) like a wretched jungle disease, yielding a big pseudo-supercellular mess. The northern merger member (dead ahead to the W in the last shot) was getting rained on from the southern one’s ramming into its SW side; and the southern one’s updraft base (distant left rear) was non-rotating, scuddy, and apparently elevated above the outflow from the northern one. The main meso (left of grain elevator) was on the NE side of the whole mess, and rain-wrapped with a giant gob of precip to its S.
Until this day, I’ve never known an HP in that sorry condition to recover to the level it eventually did. Away from the heavy rain, there was just light anvil precip in its meso-gamma scale inflow; but it did feel cold; temps were in the 70-72 F range at my location the entire time. This was our last decent view of the storm as we headed E and it got further N. As we proceeded E and started targeting the next storm, its convective turret even looked rather mushy and sharply tilted, as if the storm was CAPE-starved.
Even after numerous scientific papers written, over a quarter-century of storm intercepts, and hundreds of supercells observed, events happen afield that both fascinate and befuddle me. I’m still flabbergasted at the spectacular and complete reorganization the St. John supercell underwent, after it parted with us. Some combination of storm-scale shedding of precip and entry into a ribbon of subtly higher theta-e air advecting from the ICT area may have done amazing things to what had been a moribund and junky-looking HP, and turned it into a photogenic and violent tornado machine farther NE. Could we have caught back up for at least a short reunion somewhere near Lyons, while driving safely? Probably–however, the eyewitness evidence we had seen was underwhelming. Now that you’ve viewed what it looked like back around St. John, I trust you understand.
Supercell Three
Another storm had moved across the KS/OK border and developed a nice-looking reflectivity hook near US-54, in the vicinity of Cunningham, to our SSE. This proved to be a fairly easy target near Arlington, with some storm-scale supercell structure but a rather elongated, unimposing base and a ragged overall appearance. The former hook had gone away by the time we got to the storm. By now, we were starting to wonder, “What’s the deal with this day? We’re already ruining storms.”
Under the north portion of that base, two conical scud filaments formed and began slowly rotating around each other, then aggregated into a scuddy lowering (probable funnel) that was rotating slowly. That was the best the storm could do. It turned more leftward and mysteriously perished with great haste W of HUT. Time to scoot SE and S out of the HUT area toward the next hook-bearing supercell, also crossign the KS/OK line.
Supercell Four
Finally, we got on a storm that acted like a tornadic supercell for at least a short while. We headed S out of Haven toward the E side of Cheney Lake, where the valley containing the reservoir conceptually would act as a good terrain chasm across which to view the next storm. As it turns out, we stopped short of there due to trees, from a point located 8 SSW Haven and about 2 miles E of the lake.
Allowing the storm to move toward the NE took it due W of us, whereupon we began seeing a broad, somewhat fuzzy base with a core and rain-wrapped wall cloud. The system moved to our NW, as I shot vertical wide-angle imagery of the storm and intervening cloud cover. As I was removing the lens for a swap, Elke saw briefly tornadic condensation to the ground, looking WNW into the more distant, older cloud base and occlusion (which was associated with the rain-wrapped wall cloud before). I saw a couple of seconds of it while fumbling around to get the other lens back on, and of course, it went away just in time for me to shoot. It turns out that a deeply contrast-enhanced crop of the last wide-angle shot shows the start of that condensation (which was a full tapered-cone during my lens-exchanging exercise). Time was 1907 CDT (0007Z).
Of course…that’s how this day was going to be! As I was looking at the area (but not shooting), a funnel appeared on the nearer cloud base, and a fast, quick little spinneret of condensation swirled just above ground level and leftward of an intervening tree. By the time I raised the camera to shoot, the funnel tip had gained height, and the spinning condensation near ground was gone. The circulation of the old occlusion continued too, in the background, but was not obviously tornadic anymore (contrast-enhanced version). Then the closer funnel vanished, and a brief one appeared in the old occlusion again (enhanced). This storm was playing cruel teasing games with us, it seemed.
After seeing no more definite funnel action, we zigzagged NE with the storm for the longest distance of any yet this day — all the way to W of Newton, before storm motion, imminent darkness, and a growing concetnration of chase vehicles made continued intercept unfavorable. It was nontornadic for that stretch, with a ragged to fuzzy and disorganized cyclonic shear zone passing for a “mesocyclonic” area the whole time. Nonetheless, it apparently produced a tornado or two after it got away from us (NE of I-135). Spot a trend here?
We grabbed a fast-food dinner in Newton, making haste in order to be assured of beating the former Cherokee/Manchester OK supercell across that stretch of the Kansas Turnpike just S of ICT. As we ate, phone radar showed a velocity couplet crossing the OK-KS border that I’ve seen only with violent tornadoes. That duly motivated us not to tarry!
Supercell Five–Nocturnal
Skirting the downshear fringes of the forward-flank core just S of ICT, we beat the storm to I-35 with ease. I remember remarking to Elke, somewhere not far S of the I-135 toll booth, “If we break down in this very spot, we would be in deep, deep trouble.” On a different night, I might have tried exit around Mulvane and maneuver closer in toward the meso area for a look. Elke has a manifest dread of night-chasing tornadic storms, however; and we both were getting very weary. We instead zipped down the turnpike to the next (Wellington) exit, safely south of the storm’s projected track, and “settled” for lightning from a distance. Though we were too far away to make out the tornado(es) SW of ICT, this still was a treat, the best visual show of the day, by far.
Filamentous lightning zapped across the upper reaches of the storm almost continually. These types of discharges are some of my favorite observational aspects of nocturnal supercells. I shot dozens of photos like this, this, this, this, this, and this and could have shot hundreds. By a small measure, we salvaged the storm day with this grand electrical spectacle.
After low clouds got in the way, we got fuel in Wellington. It was a treat to speak with Terra Thompson there, from whom I learned more abut the amazing Cherokee storm, and to whom I extended congratulations for her successful intercept thereof. Rich Thompson (unrelated) resoundingly demolished his tornado drought with a bountiful harvest of vortices from the same storm, waking up after a mid shift and leaving “late” from Norman.
Epilogue
Lest you interpret that I document these events from some simmering dungeon of resentment and woe, that is false. I compete with nobody in the field. Instead, I just want to do the best I can, see amazing processes, experience beauty and majesty in the sky, capture some of that in photographic form, and learn something. I accomplished quite little of each. Admittedly, it stung; I wasn’t giddy to be out there on a big outbreak day and pick only the tiniest possible crumbs off the tornadic smorgasbord. I’m not masochistic. It’s disappointing to discover later what could have been with one turn here or there. But that’s mere hindsight, isn’t it?
The bad-luck part is out of my control, but not the decisions. Part of me really would like to be able to offer you a tale of glaring error I made, in order that you and I can learn from it. I’ve done so before in this forum. But I can’t find any major mistakes or smoking guns that clearly say, “Roger, you dumb-ass ignoramus, you failed right at this particular decision point, you should have known better at the time, and here’s why…” Maybe that’s the hardest part–not knowing.
The irony is that I thought (at the time, without knowing of the northern or southern storms’ amazing production) that we had great strategy–intercepting four supercells on a fast-motion, “high risk” day from good vantages for any tornado that would form. They just wouldn’t produce. Three of them looked surprisingly like fuzzy garbage (including the eventual SLN storm, which looked the worst of the four, on radar and in person, while we were on it).
I’m not sure what I could/should have done much differently, given the information available when I left and while I was traveling. I actually wish I could find something to second-guess about my decisions and strategy that day; it would be easier to learn from true mistakes (as opposed to doing the best with what was known, and just coming up essentially empty). Maybe that’s the best way to describe the impression this day left with me…empty. Not angry, not resentful, not jealous, just…blah. Empty.
Still, after the preceding 10 months of amazing fortune, I am in no position whatsoever to whine or moan. I know that:
1) The tornadic aspect of storm observing is a streaky and fickle thing. Those of us who chased in the late ’80s in Oklahoma understand this truth quite well.
2) There are those who had to work this event or couldn’t chase for other reasons. I’m very familiar with that situation.
3) However beneficial are skill and understanding, both meteorologically and with in-field maneuvering, there still is so much we don’t grasp yet about storm-scale behavior and meso-gamma scale influences. As such, a non-trivial share of both success and failure on any given chase can be assigned to the presence or absence of good fortune.
I had my amazing tornado stretch from 21 May 2012 through 18 March 2011; and that came to a resounding halt over the weekend. The ebb and flow of storm observing works that way. I don’t chase just for tornadoes, or even primarily for them. This was far from my first rodeo. I drew the easiest bronc, rode ’em clean out of the gate, and just slowly slipped off for no apparent reason before the horn sounded. I intend to saddle up again…and again…and again, pardner. I am confident that the tornadic fortunes will return through persistence. Until then, all of these fascinating processes are observed from a framework of appreciation, wonder, and learning. Tornadoes or not, I’ll be out there at every justifiable opportunity.
2012 Season-Opening Success in Southwest Oklahoma
SW OK
18 Mar 12
SHORT: Intercepted merging storms then resulting single supercell over SW OK, with spectacular structure and three short-lived tornadoes.
LONG: A little advanced planning made possible a splendid start to the 2012 storm-intercept season, on the 87th anniversary of the Tri-State Tornado.
Before Tornadoes
My daughter Donna and I headed out from Battlestar Norman at 19 Z, thanks to 1) her outstanding academic performance and judicious spring-break homework planning that freed her this time to chase, 2) her ability to drive to meet me at work, and 3) Greg Dial’s swapping shift hours with me from the previous day. It was a good day for some dad-and-daughter time on the highways and byways of southwest Oklahoma. We targeted the LTS/CDS area, well-advertised for a few days as part of a corridor of dryline supercell potential.
Forecast thinking was that early cloud bases would be somewhat high, but storms likely being discrete given the presence of modest capping and decent component of mean-wind orthogonality relative to the dryline. Low-level and deep-layer shear would be more than sufficient. Boundary-layer moisture would increase as storms moved off the deeper mixed layer air of the dryline environment, deeper into a moist sector.
As we cruised W across the N side of Lawton (S edge of FSI), we started to experience promising breaks in the low clouds, while the first robust reflectivity echoes sprang up SW of CDS and E of Crosbyton. I immediately targeted the northern echo because it would be moving into: 1) the forecast target area, with a somewhat more favorable environment slightly sooner, and 2) a better road network over SW OK than for the storm headed to the Crowell area. Both of these would evolve into supercells eventually, along with a third echo farther S.
As we approached Hollis, the small, young storm came into view, still well to our SW near CDS. Being a softie for abandoned structures of the Great Plains, I couldn’t resist parking at a wondrously decrepit old house, located 3 E of Hollis.
The westward-listing relic of the homesteading era creaked in the wind, as if mournfully moaning some of the last words in its long and mysterious life story. A loose strip of sheet metal on its roof flapped hither and yon in the prairie wind, its clanking noise advertising the structure’s vulnerability for all to hear, but with only us listening. Yes, the old house was well worth shooting, both in its own right and as a foreground for the approaching storm.
Moving generally toward us, the storm became better organized, until distinctively supercellular bands and striations materialized. We repositioned a couple miles east to distance ourselves from the vault’s lightning production, while its base expanded. Another rotating storm formed just SW of the Hollis storm’s flank and moved NE, dumping its own front-flank precip into the back edge of the first storm.
Cloud-base spin began anyway, along with intermittent pockets of faster rotation and rising motion with lowerings (looking W). The first serious occlusion wrapped a good deal of precip around the low-level mesocyclone, with a short-lived, conical, rotating lowering that might be termed a ragged funnel cloud.
Meanwhile, as our gradually merging storm(s) got messier, things got very interesting 60-70 miles to our S. The classical, flying-eagle reflectivity appearance of the middle (Crowell) supercell tempted me enticingly, especially when the red polygon showed up. Despite that storm’s digital allure, we stuck with the northern storm based on visual cues, even through its struggles with mergers and resultant HP-like precip cycles.
Here’s why. The storms’ merger cast a lot of messy precip across the scene, but somehow didn’t kill the initial supercellular rotation area. We would stick to our original target. This was purely an “eyeballs” decision. On reflectivity animations it did look like a disorganized mess. Visually, it still was conducting a series of occlusions. Good thing I trusted my eyes more than radar this time!
While I’ve found wireless radar access generally to be a benefit in the years since its availability, this event was a fine example of how onboard radar access sometimes can be a curse instead of a blessing. When visibility sucks, and all you have to work with is radar, you go for the storm with the best organization, if the environments are somewhat similar. In this case, however, the nowcast environment also was a little better for the northern storm in terms of slightly weaker CINH, and similar to slightly stronger SRH in another 2-3 hours. It was a gamble of patience that paid off.
First, however, the messy, temporarily HP storm character brought down contrast (wide angle view looking NW) as the whole process churned northeastward. A new area of rotation developed ahead of the old, rain-wrapped circulation, as the storm(s) gained distance from us. It was time to reposition N and E through Shrewder. This meant going N six miles on a narrow but hard-packed dirt road if we were not to lose visibility. One stop W of Shrewder afforded us a view of a new and old meso with rainy pseudo-nado (looking NW). Meanwhile, that portion of the second (merging) storm that appended itself to the flank of the first began to exhibit some wild striations nearly overhead to the SW.
Upon seeing that, I knew the combined storm was evolving into a wedding-cake special, and we needed to get many miles farther NE to get enough of the storm in view for decent structure shots. We zigzagged through Russell and Mangum toward Brinkman, watching a couple more occlusions and short bursts of moderate cloud-base rotation. One stop near Russell afforded us this splendid view to the NW. We turned W from US-283 onto a paved road running S of Brinkman, looking SW toward the Reed area, and toward a stunning, sculpted supercell.
Tornadic Stages
While admiring the structure, I spotted something tubular emerging leftward (southward) from either within or behind a rain core under the base. Donna shouted over the wind, “Hey dad, is that a tornado?” I shouted back “Yes!” and managed to snap just one photo of the serpentine vortex (alas, with the 24-70 mm glass still attached…here’s a cropped version) before I reached into the car for the zoom lens. Time was 0004 Z. By the time I got the 300-mm lens on, the little tornado was gone, the area where it had been exhibiting only a scuddy lowering and some precip filaments. I don’t know how long the tornado existed before it popped out of the murk, but can’t imagine more than a minute or two. I called it in to the WFO, advising that the tornado had dissipated. [A couple of subsequent attempts to call during later events would be met with busy signals.]
Remarkably, this was Donna’s first tornado on a chase! She soon would add two more. Donna had been on 15-20 tornado-free storm intercepts with me over the years, and had seen three tornadoes while not chasing.
Staying in the same spot, we let the storm approach rather uneventfully, watching one more non-tornadic occlusion occur, then decided to head back east and gain more distance for structure shots. As I drove, Donna and I (she with direct sight, I via rear-view mirror) each noticed a smooth lowering forming in a somewhat rain-wrapped mesocyclone to the distant WNW. We turned around and pulled over at the first safe vantage, 5 E of Willow OK, right alongside Bruce Haynie and his chase partner Matt from LBB. The lowering was a funnel that rapidly became apparent as a tornado. Time was 0029 Z.
The condensation tube fattened into a tilted, tapered cone, while the clear slot eroded more ambient cloud material and a core dump grew to pseudo-tornadic form elsewhere in the mesocyclone area. A real tornado and a lookalike, all in the same view! Here was a 300-mm zoom at 0029 Z, seconds before the tornado appeared to dissipate.
Dense precip filled the entire mesocyclone below cloud base, and we started heading E again. We were just half a mile W of OK-6 and 7 N of Granite when another lowering showed up in the rain–tornado 3. This time, contrast was very poor, as was my attempt to photograph it (see deeply enhanced version). Time was 0039 Z.
Better vantages were had from both closer and farther away, and more to the NE. At this moment, I was located in that netherworld between close enough for a good shot of the tornado, and far enough to pull out structure. Sometimes a storm observer’s timing is off that way, but I’m not complaining…Donna got to see her third tornado of the day. Shortly after the tornado roped out (within a minute), we noticed a suspicious cloud lowering deeper into the precip, probably in an older occlusion. The feature was just too distant and low-contrast, beyond intervening trees, to determine its nature (severely enhanced crop).
Post-tornadic Period
On the way to Retrop, we stopped to view the majestic and now non-tornadic storm, exuding ghostly pastels in early twilight, here at wide angle looking NW with a mobile radar that wasn’t scanning. When we turned back onto OK-6 to head N, we saw that the radar truck was parked smack in the traffic lane–since then I’ve learned that they were broken down in that spot instead of stopped intentionally.
We stopped one last time, a few miles E of Retrop, to watch the storm go elevated and weaken in the deepening twilight. We were satisfied beyond measure with our first chase of the season, and fortunate to have experienced such a phenomenal storm with minimal hassle. We managed to avoid the worst of the chaser hordes, and saw generally safe behavior even in traffic.
Given the late hour by the time we reached the next sizable town (Cordell), celebratory steak dinner would have to wait until the next day. We did, however, enjoy some Sonic food, followed by a little more dad-and-daughter time on the couple hours’ drive back home.
[EDIT] Post-chase, I learned that my camera clock was 6 minutes slow. The clock has been reset, and the times above corrected.
Spring 2011 Grand Finale: A Tornado-fest
Filed under: Summary
NW KS to south-central NEb
20 June 11
SHORT: Food, fishing, baby-bird rescue and a bunch of tornadoes…on final chase day of the vacation and season for us, with three tornadic supercells in northern KS and southern NEb.
LONG: Awakening to a windy, moist, scuddy morning in Alma, NEb, beneath a rip-roaring ENEly low-level jet, Elke and I knew this could be a productive storm day, but had no idea that it would land in the top few of our entire storm-observing careers. Indeed, if you include the calendar day–having witnessed the second of two spectacular, lightning-illuminated supercells after the stroke of midnight (story here), there is no question that his goes down as an all-time top-5-class chase day for either of us.
Pre-storm
After looking at morning charts, I targeted two plays:
1. Mid-day tornado potential in the “bent back” region of the occluding surface frontal zone, W of the dryline and near the surface low. Even by mid-morning, this regime was taking shape in west-central KS and moving directly N toward us, with only some diurnal heating and a storm needed to engage intercept mode.
2. Late-afternoon potential on the nose of the dry punch, near the dryline/warm-frontal triple point, over east-central or SE NEb. This is the regime I had in mind for a couple of days, but forecast backing of flow with height in the midlevels (a harbinger of linear storm modes) had me concerned.
Obviously, given where we were, #1 was a no-brainer as first choice, despite my historically lame fortune with “cold core” supercell regimes. If that option either busted or died out early enough in the afternoon, the rather slow eastward component of the deep-layer cyclone’s motion meant we could blast east, preferably on a road suited to it like I-80, and intercept the dryline storms.
With that strategic concept in mind, and a lack of food options in Alma, we headed for HDE to eat late breakfast/early lunch, then to a nearby city park to bide some time reading (Elke) and fishing (me) before storms went up.
I didn’t get too many casts into the lake because of a sad sight I found underneath a tree: two dead baby robins, blown out of their nests by one of last night’s supercells, and one still alive and shivering with hypothermia. After some deliberation about what to do, we noticed other robins and nests up the tree. Elke, who has a longstanding soft spot for baby birds, warmed the featherless little critter while I shimmied up the tree in search of a suitable nest in which to place the orphan. We got it in a snug nest (albeit alongside a much larger and older baby), hoping its new sibling could keep it warm and the new mama would feed it. Chances are it didn’t survive; but we tried.
First tornadic phase: “Long Island/Stamford” supercell
During the avian-rescue experience, a storm had formed (early, as cold-core storms often do) and quickly had become supercellular near HLC. By the time I got a good radar read on it, the storm already was tornado-warned. Though it was moving our way, we still were in HDE, well to its NNE, so…back S through Alma we went, and across the KS line. Mike U already had seen his festival of tornadoes by the time we caught the storm S of Long Island KS, but it was far from done.
Terrain in the area was somewhat choppy and frustrating to navigate, so we settled for the first decent hilltop view we could get, 3 S of Long Island. The supercell was moving toward the N and NNE at various times, with dark murk inside, a tall precip cascade on its SE (rear-flank) edge, and clear, blue sky to its E (our SE). Surface winds blew from the ENE to NE, as they would throughout the duration of our engagement with this supercell. We and the storm were a little leftward of the track of the surface low!
In the murk–and curiously, in the forward-flank interface region ahead of the main mesocyclone, we saw a small, tightly rotating wall cloud emerge, with a pencil-shaped tornado dangling beneath (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions).
The tornado lasted about three minutes and dissipated, before a different, seemingly shallow, front-flank mesocirculation started spinning like mad to our W. That planted a dusty multivortex, which also was low-contrast (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions). Whoa! I had based our intercept positioning, relative to the supercell, on the likely track of the primary mesocyclone, which stuck out eastward from the SE side of the north-moving storm.
By now, I had figured out what was going on, but that didn’t make it any less surreal. Pearls of enhanced rotation were forming and spawning front-flank tornadoes, along a necklace of very rich vorticity characterizing the inflow-outflow interface. A conceptual model of the situation looks something like this 2-D cartoon. Why this supercell was going nuts with front-flank mesocirculations, whilst most others don’t, is a question I’ll leave to the numerical modelers for the time being. In the real world of a storm intercept, this presented a strategic quandary, in that getting closer to the front-flank tornadic necklace also meant getting in the path of a rain-wrapped HP mesocyclone of a fairly fast-moving supercell.
As the second tornado churned northward, in step with storm translation, another suspicious feature caught our attention (Elke actually saw it first). A wide view of the storm (photo: as seen) shows the precip-wrapped, main mesocyclone to the left, and at far right, the dusty multivortex. Right before taking that shot, we spotted a dark, smooth, persistent, and reasonably wide lowering in another area of front-flank rotation, buried somewhat back into a precip-filled notch. That made ground contact, with rapid rotation of cloud material above and around the tapered-barrel shaped tornado. We had two ongoing, plus one that likely was underway in the main mesocyclone but not yet visible. More on that beast later. As for the two we knew, the arrows point to the visible tornadoes in this super-enhanced/zoomed version of the last shot.
We had a peculiar situation at hand.
After a few minutes, we lost sight of the southern front-flank tornado as it buried itself in precip, while the leading one narrowed and proceeded toward the N. We headed N too, crossing the KS/NEb state line about the same time as the leading tornado to our W (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions).
Once that dissipated, we still had an original, dominant mesocyclone to our SSW, in which we couldn’t see anything thanks to persistent, rotating moat of heavy precip that cloaked the mysterious tempests of danger lurking within. This situation was getting weirder all the time, and was about to become truly bizarre.
I drove through Orleans and a few miles NW on US-136, which angled us closer to the front flank and somewhat in the path of the big meso. Lo and behold, just ahead of the rain-wrapped main meso, a tall, skinny, dusty tornado came into view to our WSW (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions). This definitely was separate from the previous tornado, and probably just S of the KS/NEb state line. Meanwhile, a new and relatively robust shear-zone updraft to our NW (separate from the dissipated dusty tornado #2) started spinning frantically, and beneath a shallow, bowl-shaped and rapidly rotating lowering, spun up another short-lived, dusty tornado (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions)! After the latter tornado dissipated, the prior, dusty tube seemed to spin down gradually instead of roping out, as if it simply lost its will to rotate.
Whither the main meso? At long last, we started seeing the answer as a rapidly rotating, nearly ground-to-anvil column of rain and hail churned toward us. Something very menacing, dangerous and unsavory began to appear from within the whirling dungeon of heavy precip–a big fat tornado (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions). Look behind and above the tree row. I think what we’re seeing here is not just the rain-wrapped low levels of the tornado (dark wedge below cloud base, with helical scud coiling about).
Also, note the convective column containing the tornadic circulation (and not much larger in width than the visible tornado down low!) bending above and to the right. This is NWward with height on a N-moving storm, looking SW. [Conceptually, turn your usual NE-tilt on an E-moving storm leftward 90 deg as in the 2-D cartoon ]. In essence, you’re seeing the tornado-cyclone from ground into the mid-upper levels of the storm, visually. Yes, it was convective-looking, but corkscrewing pretty fast visually. Alas, even the mid-upper part didn’t shed its cloak of rotating rain curtains for very long; mostly it had been a bear’s cage from ground almost to anvil, for much of this storm’s lifespan in my view. I’m glad the curtains parted just long enough to reveal this fascinating deep-layer structure–and of course the hefty hose beneath.
My question: Was this the continuation of the Mr. Umscheid’s wedge from way down by HLC, or a separate tornado? Some shots by Walker Ashley seem to indicate a smaller barrel====>cone tornado earlier in this meso’s lifespan, and farther SW in KS. If so, either
1. Walker;s tornado expanded again to a rain-wrapped wedge shown here, or
2. This was a new one.
Whatever the case, the main-meso tornado likely had been ongoing for a long time, given that we had observed tremendously rotating rain curtains around the area for many minutes. This clearly was a very large, well-formed and mature tornadic vortex by the time we finally could see it. The entire tilted cloud column was rotating rapidly.
Wrapping precip again obscured the tornado within two minutes, or about the time it crossed into Nebraska. Orbiting rain curtains continued around the mesocyclone for several miles N toward Stamford an perhaps beyond, until the entire supercell evaporated from below and died W of HDE.
I read reports of “skipping” tornado paths with this storm in this area, which is bogus on two fronts:
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1. By definition, a tornado cannot “skip”. If it’s not on the ground, it’s not a tornado.
2. Semantics aside, there simply was no “skipping”. The various different tornadoes in this area near the border, lined up similarly, probably gave the illusion of “skipping” of damage.
After the initial storm died, we got fuel in HDE and then couldn’t flank the downshear Elm Creek storm. We knew it was tornadic based on spotter reports and the SRM signature, but it was planted squarely on the highway to our N, near I-80. The first storm had put us out of position to see the business end of the Elm Creek supercell, so we jumped on the Interstate with its 75 mph speed limit and pressed the pedal hard in an eastward run for the second target area.
Second tornadic phase: “Hampton and Bradshaw/Stromsburg” supercells
Visually, a series of deep, glaciating towers to our ENE-E-SE looked reachable and was growing. By the time we passed the HSI/GRI exit, an unbroken wall of dense cores loomed to the E on radar, their convective towers lit by a blend of direct and filtered sunlight. My hope was that, despite the linear mode, a “tail-end Charlie” would roll up toward I-80 after I could penetrate the line and get into the inflow air. Linear storms don’t tend to hurl gorilla hail; so I was at ease with cruising up to the back and shooting through a relative gap.
That’s exactly what we did, except that the southern part of the line was breaking up into more discrete (and disturbingly, rotating) cells right as we started the penetration. We took a pounding from marginally severe hail, gazing southward through precip to see if anything could show up in the nearest area of rotation S of the Interstate. As we cleared precip and a ragged base came into view adjacent to the core, Elke saw a brief needle funnel 4/5 of the way to the ground. That might have been a tornado; though flooded fields precluded appreciable dust generation. No debris was visible beneath.
As we neared the Hampton exit, another core loomed to the SSE, moving N. We continued to press E, getting pounded by still more hail. Clearly the line had broken up into closely-packed supercells and we needed to get out of their way! A few minutes after we cleared the N side of the intensifying precip area, I glanced behind us to see a barrel-shaped, rain-wrapped tornado in the S part of the same core, about to cross the Interstate (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions). That was a little too close for comfort, though we really had about 5 minutes’ cushion. I pulled off the road, jumped out, and gestured wildly at some westbound traffic not to go that way. Fortunately, they slowed down and pulled aside.
What appeared to be a big, low-visibility and significant tornado (as it turned out to be!) was almost upon the Interstate (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions), and I was hoping nobody would drive into it. Enough precip wrapped around the tornado that we couldn’t see it with our eyeballs as it crossed I-80 (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions), though it narrowed somewhat to a stilted stovepipe and became more visible again between I-80 and US-34 (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions).
The Hampton tornado appeared to hook NNW and move away from us. Our last view of it (photo: as seen and super-enhanced versions) came with a troubling realization: we still were getting peppered with precip, including increasingly large hail! The real tail-end Charlie still hadn’t reached I-80 yet; and indeed, another core was moving overhead with a low base diffusely visible to our SSE. Time to high-tail it east again! As we pondered getting off the Interstate at the Bradshaw exit, Elke looked out and up to see rapid cloud-base rotation nearly overhead, atop that very exit. We kept going!
Behind and slightly leftward of us, the tornado first appeared in the rear-view mirror while driving out from under the meso. A small dust plume spun up just N of I-80. Above that loomed a rotating cone funnel that extended about 1/3 down from cloud base. We zipped a mile or so E, then pulled safely off the road to watch. This tornado was highly visible and quite photogenic, a marvelously sheathed column into which the condensation funnel seemed to poke, spike-like. “Finally,” I thought, “all these tornadoes today and we have a high-contrast specimen!” I said something more coarse, but fortunately, cannot recall precisely what.
Without an immediately available north road, we watched for a few minutes as the tube widened and retreated northward away from us, a wide-angle view revealing more of the tail-end supercell’s swirly updraft structure. Although rather distant, we had the tornado in view all the way through JYR and up US-81 to a point 4 ESE of Polk, where we pulled over briefly to watch it rope out to the WNW. This was our longest continuous view of any of the day’s tornadoes: 18 minutes.
A new lowered base even farther N told me this storm wasn’t through with cyclic tornado production yet. As it was moving N rather quickly, slightly ahead of abeam to port side, the town of Stromsburg and its inevitable slowdown dead ahead, we had to get moving for any hope of seeing the next hose. A few miles S of Stromsburg, we saw the newest and last tornado of our day emerge from the haze, to our NW.
Of course, traffic slowed to a crawl in town, a chain of cars inching N at about half the posted 25 mph speed limit, some slowing down or turning indecisively as if thoroughly bewildered. Townsfolk stood in at least half the yards gazing in various skyward directions, not sheltered, despite the ominous wail of storm sirens. I thought, “They’re safe and don’t realize it yet; but if the tornado were headed into town, we would have multiple casualties amongst all these unprepared and confused citizens”. What I actually said might have been a tad less civilized, so it’s good that I can’t recall that.
By the time we got extricated from Stromsburg and headed N for a few miles, contrast improved enough to pull W half a mile and get a few decent shots, including this one looking NW across a corn field at the stout, grinding vortex. Motion of the ragged cloud base around the top of the visible tornado was impressively speedy. Driving a few more miles N on US-81, we finally got roughly abeam of the tornado again, only to see it rapidly narrow and then rope out.
Just in case the storm would cycle once more, we headed up an unmarked road off the east bend of US-81, in the general direction of Duncan. Alas, the supercell quickly displayed a rain-wrapped, outflow-dominant structure, and would produce no more tornadoes. We turned around to head back to JYR, photograph a couple of elevated cells (looking E and looking N from the S side of JYR), grab a room, and get some celebratory steak dinner before restaurants began to close.
Epilogue
A hearty meal was in order too. During a long storm-intercept day, we successfully had observed at least 8 and perhaps up to 10 tornadoes, from three different supercells, in two separate forecast targets and meteorological regimes. All I can say is, wow…only 3 May 1999 clearly exceeds this for my one-day tornado total. We don’t chase just to see tornadoes–far from it, actually–but you bet we’re appreciative of them for their rarity, uniqueness and power–the dichotomously ironic “Beauty of Atmospheric Violence” that is the title for my storm-photography shows. Best of all, nobody was injured through all the whirling mayhem of the day.
It was an amazing grand finale to an unprecedentedly bountiful 2011 Great Plains severe-storm vacation (and season)!
I had called in several of the tornadoes as soon as safety and cell signals would allow, a few while they still were underway. Within a couple weeks after we returned, I processed the day’s images (before all others from this vacation) and sent an itemized table of tornado times and estimated locations to the affected WFOs, with embedded links to many of the same photos as above. That table includes times, locations and links to the above photos. The tornado log file is in the public domain, and linked here in MS Excel format, freely accessible for anyone interested.