Chase 5 This Weekend

The SPC has got a nice fat risk area within range this weekend. I'll be out Friday, Saturday and Sunday, hopefully closer to home rather than almost all the way to Corpus Christie, TX.

Almost Summer Sunset

The sun sets behind Los Alamos now, meaning it's almost summer solstice.

May 4 - 5 Kansas Tornado Outbreak Film

My first film, shot during the tornado outbreak that included the Greensburg EF-5 monster. [Click on the link for a better viewing experience. When my station data updates on this page it resets the video to the beginning.]

Meso Convective System Rolls Over Los Alamos

Vorticity translation results in a meso-scale storm system showing some rotation on the radar as it approached Los Alamos. It was completely linear by the time it got to Santa Fe.

My First Tornado

A screen grab of my first tornado, which touched down about 15 miles northeast of Coldwater, Kansas. Here's a link to the video, which I shot on a Canon HV-20 HiDef video camera at 1080i resolution, although it's much smaller than that on Google Video.

I was on the west side of the storm, hence the bad lighting and noisy image. I'm not sure how far away I am here, but next time I want to be on the east side of the storm and within a mile of the ground contact.

Chase 4: The Beginning and The End

I'm kicking myself for not dropping my snake chasing in Greensburg, Kansas, to get on the storm that eventually wiped the town off the face of the Earth. It was fairly late in the day on Friday, so when Bob called me to tell me about storms going up in Texas and Oklahoma, I was more inclined to save gas rather than run for a storm I might not make until after dark. In retrospect, I probably would have been able to catch the storm about 30 minutes before sundown if I had bolted at that moment and hauled ass.


As it was, I dilly-dallied a bit more on the farm roads, looking for snakes. I took this picture of these deer before I found a lone gopher snake.


I eventually found my way back to highway 154, where I stopped to save a box turtle. By this time the storms were getting close, so I got out of the truck and took this picture:


This cell was not tornadic, but the one behind it sure was. This storm passed to my east. The one coming up was constantly lit up by lightening. I watched it approach with another chaser until we began to get pelted by hail. That was my cue to take off.

I drove through a driving hail storm on the way back to Dodge City. It was mostly nickel-sized, but there were a few quarter-sized stones in there too. The racket it made against the outside of my truck was deafening and scary.


When I got back and situated, I started to look at the current data streams. That's when I saw this monster hook echo. The light blue line is my path as recorded by my GPS unit. Check out this velocity scan showing a huge couplet, an almost sure sign of a monster tornado:


I could have been on that storm, although maybe only at night. Night is the scariest time to chase, if you asked me. You better have current data or a nowcaster who does, because it would be the easiest thing in the world to drive right into one of these monsters.

*****

I don't have any photos worth showing from day 3. Bob had me waiting in Perryton, Texas. We anticipated late afternoon initiation in that area, but it turned out to be a bust. The storms went up east, so I made a half-hearted effort to get on one of those. On the way I missed my turn and ended up core punching the storms over interstate 40. I finally got around them and on one storm, but it turned out to be linear, and outside some wall cloud-like looking scud clouds, all I got was the pleasure of driving the OK and TX countryside and a very long drive back home.

Total mileage for this chase: 1,556 miles.

There's a few more pictures here.

Chase 4: Better Than The Boobie Prize

After sleeping on a side street in Dodge City, KS, on Friday night, I headed down to Oklahoma per Bob Schaefer's instructions after deciding to bypass Greensburg, sure to be blocked off anyway after last night's town-removing monster tornado. Today was to be my first true textbook chase. Part of that was seeing what seemed like hundreds of other chasers on the road. At the beginning of the action it was as if every car or truck with antennas was going every which-way, like ants buzzing around an ant hill after it's been disturbed.


I ended up south of Laverne, OK, on a fast-moving supercell showing some lowerings but nothing really substantial. I met three guys in a nice new yellow Dodge Dakota and watched the cell pass with them, which was pretty cool in the light of some of my other chaser interactions. They took off and soon afterward, so did I, at first on the cell I was on earlier and then just to find a place to kick back and wait for the late afternoon round of initiation. On the way to my waiting spot I encountered a few openly contemptuous chasers. I guess my bubbling-over-with-enthusiasm personal style didn't suit them too well. Once again, denied by the cool kids...

After a few hours of kicking back along Oklahoma highway 64, Bob had me heading back to Buffalo, OK. New storms were going up. I pulled off on a side road, watching and taking pictures. Cells were lighting up one after another. I decided to go with my gut, which was telling me to hold back for the new cells. Then I picked one and headed off back up toward Kansas.


Here's my cell with its developing flanking line.




Along the way I stopped and watched some significant lowerings and funnels, but no touchdowns as far as I could tell. I kept going north, finally ending up in Coldwater, KS.

Here I joined a whole fat clot of chasers moving north along the highway. I passed many sitting on the side of the road, which was a great move on my part. When I finally stopped, it was on. My first tornado:




As I continued to chase, I ended up in the southeast corner of the Greensburg tornado's path, which curiously knocked down this phone pole while leaving the others standing.

Sitting in Dodge City, KS

I'm parked in Dodge City, Kansas, on a nice shady neighborhood street waiting for the convection to fire. My nowcaster Bob Schaefer, an absolute godsend as far as my chasing strategy goes, has me waiting here for his call. The Stormtrack guys are all over the place as usual, but what many of them have in common today is anticipation for a big event later in the afternoon.

With so much terrain to cover and so many opinions about where it's going to go, it's just best to pick a spot and hope for the best. It's surely a lot cheaper than burning gas going hither and yon and back to hither again.


Bob just called and he's got me headed east toward Pratt, KS.