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.
Southwest Oklahoma Classic-HP Supercell
Filed under: Summary
Hollis to Apache, OK
13 Apr 12
SHORT: Chase route GCK-LBL-HHF-LTS-OUN. Intercepted occasionally photogenic supercell from inception near Hollis to N of Duke, then as it got absorbed into what became an HP “Stormzilla” NE of LTS that crossed Wichita Mountains. Activity forming SW of that merged/absorbed it after dark N of Apache.
LONG:
The day before turned into a storm-free “bustola” on the western Kansas dryline, with only distant convection to the north near sunset. Elke and I salvaged something from the 12th by heading to Monument Rocks for the late-afternoon light, then bunked down in GCK.
Today’s most straightforward storm intercept target was over the NW TX, SW OK and SE Panhandle region near CDS. We left GCK for a long but simple jaunt SSE down US-81, with lunch in Perryton. While there, storms already started firing over central and SW OK. Early initiation stinks, especially when the observer still is over 150 miles away!
A distant line of building convection hovered just above the SE horizon as we headed out of Perryton. Now we targeted the area of its prospective backbuilding into the slowly retreating late-afternoon dryline. The pre-dryline baroclinic zone upon which the storms were forming was supposed to retreat N also, after 21Z. My thinking was that the future western storms would represent the latest, highest-CAPE development, farthest removed from the threat of interference by upshear convection.
Given our distance and target area, we obviously missed the Norman tornado, not that we would have targeted specifically that needle-in-haystack HP supercell event anyway. As we reached Wellington, big towers began to backbuild on the pre-dryline boundary toward the Hollis-CDS area; so we turned E on US-63 into SW OK to get into position. We fueled up at Hollis as a young storm began rotating ESE of town, and newer convection with cores formed to our S-SW near Vernon and CDS.
Using phone radar, I noticed a nasty-looking hook had developed on the W side of Norman, with an HP supercell attached to a larger cluster of storms extending westward. It was a mess, but a mess with a meso. I called my daughter, who told me she just had experienced a tornado at the high school and had been safe in a windowless room, under a desk. The first concern, and relief, was that she was fine. My son was elsewhere, well SE of the path. Both were OK, so I could shake my head and marvel at the truth that, once again, a tornado had occurred in Norman with me observing other storms far away.
We cruised E out of Hollis, preliminarily targeting the storm to our ESE, but with a contingency to stop and let the newer development to our SW (then the tail-end conceptual target) come toward us if it started looking good. That’s exactly what happened. CGs from the newly organizing, tail-end convection slammed all around us between Hollis and Duke. We turned N out of Duke, found a good vantage 3 N of Duke, let the disorganizing eastern storm move away to our NE, and watched the newer storm approach and strengthen.
Alas, still more convection formed upshear, but the storm began looking distinctively supercellular as it crossed the section road to our W. This would become the Altus-Apache supercell, but not before producing a nice wall cloud, one with strong rising motion but only modest cyclonic turning. Another lowered area, likely from an older occlusion visible in the last windmill shot, loomed in the background.
Neither got any better organized; indeed, the entire storm started looking somewhat strung-out. We considered breaking off and heading toward the newer activity W of Hollis and W of CDS, as some others already were. However, we needed a pit stop in nearby LTS, while the supercell began turning into a dark, menacing, precip-filled mass to our N. We decided to stay with it for awhile, watching what by now was an HP “Stormzilla” over the western nubs of the Wichita Mountains.
Our supercell developed a nasty-looking HP hook on radar with a deep, intense mesocyclone; but we couldn’t see anything in the dark murk from LTS regarding the tornado report near Blair. Even without the bathroom break, I’m not sure we would have been able to get in position to see much.
By the time we reached Snyder, it was to late to do much with the western convection before dark. We also knew that the storm would head into an awkwardly configured road void in the Wichitas, cutting us off. [I had circumnavigated the void successfully last November 7, but from a different angle. That day, I beat the storm. This day, the storm would beat me.]
Driving several miles N out of Snyder, we hoped to see whatever the storm had to offer before it got into that road void. Here was its S side, along the rear-flank gust front looking W. Here was the E side, looking NNW toward a small but slowly rotating cloud protrusion with a clear slot. That looked interesting for a few minutes, until being undercut by a massive surge of the heavy precip-loaded RFD.
The photogenic HP storm moved off into the road void to our NE, and we knew it would be dark by the time we could get through Lawton and go N toward Apache to see the storm again. The storm produced a rainy twilight tornado during that interval when we were repositioning, fittingly enough.
By the time we reached Apache to see what was left, we found a storm still supercellular but again messy. Our viewing timing with respect to the best-organized stages simply wasn’t working out. At least, for a short time, the downshear anvil region sparked mightily and beautifully overhead. Our last decent wide-angle view of the storm, from a hill just E of town, featured the lights of the wind farm and Apache to our W, what was left of the wall cloud and main updraft region near center (NW), the vault area to the right (NNW), and of course, cows.
Before the storm could cut off itinerary options again, we headed NE toward Chickasha and home. The storm merged with convection to its W, evolving into a small bow, then moving over Chickasha and toward the Purcell/Pauls Valley area a weakening blob of rain and occasional hail. By then, we were home, tired from the two-day, thousand-mile trek, but eagerly anticipating the big severe-weather day of the 14th.