My Tornadic Mind

Departing for the Plains

2011-05-13T21:19:00.002-04:00

We are departing for the plains tomorrow morning for our 2 week chasecation. Today I got my serial numbers registered at Waterloo-Wellington airport, saw a nice small storm strutting its structure off this evening, and currently finishing up my packing. Check back here often for updates and some photos.

You can track us here on a spotter network map, and you can also check out my sister's blog. Wish us luck!!!

Chase 2011 Plans in the Works

2011-05-09T01:06:00.000-04:00

So, it's a new storm chase season already - how the time flies! This year, I'll be chasing with my friend Tom Stefanac and my sister for about 2 weeks. We'll be departing from southern Ontario on May 13th... which happens to fall on a Friday.... perhaps a good omen? We shall see! The GFS was showing a ridge/omega blocking pattern for our first week, but it seems to weaken and move east with each successive run, which is a good thing! While I am down in the plains, I will post updates here, so check back to keep tabs on what's new and our whereabouts.

May 18, 2010 Dumas chase summary online

2011-01-30T23:14:00.000-05:00

I decided to post my May 18th Dumas, TX chase summary online, complete with photos galore. The rest of 2010's chases will be online soon, stay tuned!

Leedey tornado pic

2010-07-03T00:52:00.001-04:00

May 19th Leedey, OK tornado

TX panhandle tornadofest!

2010-05-19T03:51:00.005-04:00

May 18, 2010

Chased a spectacular tornadic cyclic supercell near Dumas, TX this afternoon! Great day, no idea how many tornadoes we saw, at least 5... some I did not get to photograph and some are in question due to being rainwrapped, but overall... great day!!! Excellent wall cloud structures as well! Too tired to write up a full log, so here are some stills to tide you over for now.

Greensburg

2010-05-18T02:36:00.002-04:00

May 13, 2010

Today was a down day, so it was time to do some needed laundry. Sandra and I went shopping for the afternoon.

We visited Greensburg once more and had a look at the Big Well memorial for the tornado. We then headed southwest to Guymon, OK where we stayed the night.

Kansas Chase

2010-05-18T02:08:00.003-04:00

May 12, 2010

Today we were going to target south central Kansas, where the SPC issued a 10% tornado risk for the Pratt area. We made a quick stop in Greensburg. Wow has the town really come along since the last time we went through in 2008! The new hospital was very beautiful, lots of new homes, businesses and gas stations were now built. We stopped at the Dillons for a bathroom break and a snack. An older gentleman started talking to us about Greensburg. The people here are just amazing.

It was still very cool here and overcast, and the clouds were surface based. It was quite a contrast compared to the motel we stayed at in Woodward. Perhaps this temperature gradient would have a hand in the setup for later. We then headed to Pratt to hang around there for a bit. We were waiting for the warm front bulge to move up into the area. At least the overcast dull cloud was starting to break up and it was getting warmer out. There was also a boundary that was starting to bubble up. We parked at the Walmart to look at the models, then finally around 10 to 2 we decided to head towards the Hutchinson-Wichita area. On our way there, we saw a horseshoe vortex, which is a sign of wind shear. The CAPE was 4000 with a lifted index of -10. When we got to Wichita, we stayed to the west side of town, which would allow us to intercept the storms easier. There was convection already happening early in the day, and Ron was hoping for the outflow boundaries from those storms to interact with the main storms for later.

At 2:20, the SPC issued a mesoscale discussion for the Lawton-Wichita-Kansas City area. The cap was expected to break in 1-2 hours from now. A few mintues later, the first tower that we were watching was now starting to anvil out. 10 minutes later, the first tornado watch was issued from Childress through to Nebraska. Yikes what a big area! We passed the TIV 2 filling up in a gas station. Around 2:50, a severe thunderstorm warning was now issued for the storm. We turned around in Wichita to head back towards the west. At 3:20, a tonado warning was issued northwest of Wichita. The storm was along the trough, and was moving only at 20 mph.

At 3:48, while on hwy 17, we could see the shelf cloud ahead of us. It was dark underneath! When we got under the storm, we encountered some hail. We then headed north to a main highway. Unfortunately we had to cut through a dense rain core. The storm appeared to be HP (crap). It was hard to see anything! Ron said over the radio that there was going to be a good base to our north closer to Hutchinson. At 3:60, we stopped in Pretty Prairie for a brief stop, then continued north towards Hutchinson. A few minutes after 4, we were now just south of Hutchinson and the rotation was to our east. We finally started to get into some clearing! We headed east on Arlington Road. A hook echo started to form on the Baron. Things were getting exciting! Then when we finally got out of the rain, something caught our eye - a really nice funnel extending almost halfway to the ground, and rotating!!! YES! I snapped a few pictures before it roped out. I couldn't see if there was any debris under it due to some trees. Go figure, even in the plains, there is always something in the way!

We slowly continued down the road, now. The tornadic rotation was just up ahead of us, crossing the road. Oh man now my adrenaline was going! We pulled off to the side and got out quickly. HOLY CRAP! I looked straight ahead, almost above us... the clouds were spinning in a cinnamon bun swirl, AND THE NEARBY TOWN'S SIRENS WERE GOING OFF!!! We were right behind the rotation now, which was perfect! Now if only it would drop another tornado!!! I looked behind me. Crap. The precipation core was catching up to us. "Get in now!!" I yelled. Wow that was a rush. Unfortunately the core choked off the inflow to the rotation. We managed to get out of the core and I saw a couple of other chasers parked off the road watching the storm. Unfortunately, Ben seemed to have lost his wide angel lens for his HD camcorder in the midst of the rush.

We headed northeast and encountered some hail, then stopped in Halstead for a quick bite at the Subway. We were going to leave our first storm and target the one to the south now, since it was now rotating. The storm we were on was starting to become more outflow dominant. We saw some roll clouds.

At 5:30 the gang made a stop. There was not too much going on with the storm... a bunch of scud bombs, roll clouds... mainly outflow dominant stuff. A guy that was driving by had pulled over and showed us a picture of the funnel we saw. After that, we headed east and north on 135. Off to our east, a small meso was trying to form beside a hailshaft, which made for some interesting pictures. Well, since there was not much else going on in the way of tornadoes, we decided to play in the hail, but the storm seemed to be gaining speed and we couldn't catch up to it. We gave up and turned around to work our way back to Wichita.

When we reached Florence at 6:40, we pulled into a gas station parking lot. I saw some accumulated hail in spots beside puddles of rain, so I picked up some. It was a mix of pea and quarter sized hail and showed everyone. Cold, cold, cold!

At 6:55 we saw a nice big roll cloud ahead of us, but that was pretty much the last interesting feature of the day. When we got into Wichita at 7:25, we encountered another hailcore that was estimated to be about 2 inches. Baron picked up rotation, but it didn't amount to much.

We stayed at the Econo Lodge in Wichita for the night. All in all, it was an okay day, with the best part being the funnel and rotation we saw. Apparently the funnel we saw was reported as a tornado by an emergency manager, a few miles south of Haven, which seemed to match the area we were in. Ron said he talked to a sheriff who saw the tornado. All right! That makes at least one for us!

Structure Freak

2010-05-17T01:21:00.004-04:00

May 11, 2010

I was quite disappointed with yesterday's chase, but realized that high risks were usually impossible to chase. Today was another day... another chance. The gang left Blackwell, OK at around 10 and headed southwest. Our target today was going to be around Lawton to Altus. SPC issued a slight risk with a 5% tornado risk for the OK/TX state line, the lifted index was -12 with 7000 CAPE, and there was a triple point ow in SW Oklahoma. There was also a bulge on the warm front. There were some good signs this morning... transverse rolls were in the sky early in the day, pointing the way to the target.

A couple hours later, we decided to make a pit stop at the Cherokee Trading Post to have a look around. We then pulled up into a gas station and saw some of the VORTEX 2 vehicles there. It was getting warmer out and the clouds were breaking up... a very good sign indeed. When we reached Clinton, we decided to pull into Braum's for a quick lunch and ice cream. We saw more VORTEX 2 members there and had a quick chat with them. After that, we decided to go to the K-Mart parking lot and play the waiting game and hang out at K-Mart. A bunch of the VORTEX 2 mobile mesonets were also pulling in, including a couple radar trucks and the MSNBC crew. Then I saw a familiar vehicle... from Environment Canada. I instantly knew who that was - an old chase friend, Dave Sills! I was quite happy to see him since I haven't seen him in quite a while. We chased together once in 2000 after a nasty HP supercell. We chatted for a while.

Holy cow was it hot!!! Sweat was pouring off me like I was a melting popsicle. I decided to measure the temps with my Kestrel... it was about 84 over 68, which was pretty humid. I drank two bottles of water while watching the TCU field build. Dave mentioned to me that a tornado watch was just issued. Perfect! Now all we had to do was just wait for the cap to break. By now, the parking lot was full of chasers and scientists... eagerly waiting for Mother Nature to give us something to play with.

The first storm went up. At 5:05, the VORTEX vehicles took off after it. A few minutes later, we decided to leave as well, heading towards the northwest. Then the storm died a sudden death, so we pulled into a gas station parking lot to wait some more. At 10 after 6 we decided to take off again, since another storm was going up. At 6:30 we took hwy 33 and pulled over to watch the storm build. You could literally stand there and watch as the tower pushed upward, the updrafts were something! I guess with so much instability, it wasn't surprising.

About 10 minutes later, we took off after the new storm. I noticed some transverse rolls feeding into the towers, which would be the inflow feeder bands. We went on a dirt road then took hwy 47. At about 7:08, we noticed a bunch of chasers coming the other way... "hmm what was up?", I wondered. It turned out there was no road that crossed the river. Dang it! So we turned around as well. While we were on US 183, we saw the new TIV 2 and more chasers. While we were taking E0760 Road, our tower was falling apart again. Arrrgg, nothing was punching through that cap! At least there were two more cells behind it, with one of them being about 20 miles away and the other 40 miles away, and approaching 50,000 feet. With a lot of instability, these were going to be tall storms.

We decided to head back on hwy 183. We saw one of the VORTEX 2 radar trucks scanning the skies. We headed west on hwy 665 and at 7:45, we reached the town of Taloga. I noticed more inflow bands being drawn into the new storm. According to the Baron, the storm was now starting to rotate and was holding at 60,000 feet. I looked at the storm and noticed the updraft was a bit different than most storms I have witnessed in the past... it was titled, narrow and appeared to begin to corkscrew. I had a feeling this storm was going to put on a structure show. we took US 60 to head west to the new supercell, then headed north. A tornado warning was now issued. Yippee let the fun begin!

At 8:20, Ron told us the storm was moving only at 24 mph. Perfect! No more Nascar storms! And we were on time! A few minutes later, we reached the town of Vici and headed towards Woodward. The Baron picked up another rotation marker and the supercell was slowing down to 22 mph. The updraft was gorgeous! It was hard to take my eyes off such a structure. Shortly after 8:35, we saw a brief wall cloud, then a few minutes later Ron and I saw a brief, fairly good sized cone funnel extending halfway to the ground in the distance!!! I tried to get a picture of it but by the time I was able to, it was gone. CRAP! That was certainly a surprise, given the supercell was LP. It was very hard to tell if it was on the ground.

We had to turn around again... the road options were not particularly the best in this area of Oklahoma. By now the LP supercell's updraft was jaw dropping beautiful. At 10 to 9, lightning started to light up near the top of the barber pole updraft. The anvil was still punching hard at the edges. Awesome!!! We headed on hwy 34 and saw chaser convergence. Everyone was out on this storm! It was way too gorgeous, to not chase it, afterall. We decided to pull over for some pictures for several minutes. It was incredible to witness such beauty... the twilight colors, with lightning sparking near the top of the storm, some inflow bands on the east side of the updraft, and knuckles under the anvil.

We decided to head a bit closer to the storm, but now it was starting to get dark out and the supercell was now showing signs of weakening. It was off to Woodward for the night as with a bunch of other chasers. We had a quick bite to eat at Sonic and headed to the motel. We saw the Tradd Tours vans and Warren Faidley at the same Days Inn motel. It was a very good day!!!

High Risk Nascar!

2010-05-15T02:06:00.004-04:00

May 10, 2010

Today was looking like a busy day. A high risk was issued from south central Kansas to central Oklahoma, and towards the east. The setup was shaping up for strong tornadoes! One downside to this setup? Speedy storms! I never did like high risks because of how fast the storm motion is. They can be very difficult to chase after, especially if you are not ahead of it. The target? Wakita to Enid, OK for 7:00 pm. The Weather Channel had Greg Forbes on the night before, mentioning there was a risk of EF3 to EF5 strength tornadoes. What is this? Twister? We left Childress, TX in the late morning and headed northeast.

By 1:00 pm, a boundary started to build to our west and the first tornado watch went up for western Kansas. We were going to be aiming for the dryline bulge along the warm front. By now, we were about 80 miles ahead of the warm front and the triple point low was situated near the OK/TX state line. We headed north on I83.

At 1:40 pm, we stopped in Taloga for a quick pit stop. A new tornado watch went up for this area. The boundary that I was watching go up was building rather rapidly. Oh man, things are going to get insane quickly! The cap was already eroding. The boundary now developed into new storm, anviling out at the top. It was quite warm outside, 91F according to Scott's thermometer. We turned onto hwy 281 northeast as I kept watching the new storm develop. New inflow bands were starting to feed into the storm and a precip core started to form. A tornado warning was issued but the storm appeared to be elevated. It will have to move further east to become more surface based. Also there was weak mid level rotation. Storms were also going up in Kansas, which should hopefully produce outflow boundaries that move south into Oklahoma.

There was not a lot of lightning with this new storm, but at 2:30 I saw a CG strike in the distance. The anvil was also backshearing a bit, which was a good sign. We turned on hwy 412 and turned on the AM radio to listen for lightning in the static but there was none.

Figuring we had some time yet and that our storm was not doing too much, we pulled into IHOP in Enid for our only big meal of the day. Well, we ordered our food and waited while Ron checked the models. And waited. Oh sure, we just had to pick a very slow IHOP! We finally got our food and had to inhale it literally because it was now time to leave for the chase. "Eat now, talk later!" Ron mentions. We paid our tickets and took off after the storm which was now gaining strength. By now there was a hook echo near Wakita (dang it!) and a tornado was confirmed (dang it some more!).

At 4 pm, the supercell now had striations in the meso as we were trying to catch up to the storm. Geez I hate high risks! These storms were hauling east fast! About15 minutes later, We saw a back road and decided to take it. Big mistake. It was red clay... with a wet surface. Not good. We watched in horror as Ron's car slid sideways. Then Scott's van started sliding. Crap crap crap! Scott tried to steer the van but it was useless. This was worse than ice! The rear end of the van almost made it into the ditch. The rest of us unloaded the van, figuring that more weight would make things worse. We went behind the van and pushed it. Scott was now free, but it was still very slippery. My shoes were now caked with wet clay and I must have been two inches taller with all the crap under my shoes. Ssshhhlllooop! Ssqqquuuiisssh! I tried walking back up to the main road. I looked up at the supercell, with its beautiful meso striations and I cussed and cussed. I thought I would never make it! Scott finally got the van up to the main road. Then I finally made it. Wheeeeeewww!!!! I can't believe we almost got stuck! One lesson learned... never ever take the red clay roads even if they appear dry.

Now our supercell was getting away. We had to cut through town to try to catch up to it. We noticed there was golfball sized hail in the grass on the sides of the highway. And that was already melted, with temps about 90F and the storm already out of the area, so that meant the hail would have been much bigger. I am glad we avoided the hail anyways, because a cracked windshield meant it was the end of the chase.

We headed to billings on hwy 15 north and cut east to Ponca City. We reached the town of Billings at 4:51. Our supercell was the strongest storm in the alley at the time and we were finally catching up to it. The base of the storm didn't look like much, but we saw a wall cloud on our left which did not amount to much. More large hail could be seen on the sides of the highway in the grass. By 5:20 we reached the town of Osage and our storm was now about 50,000 feet tall with stage 4 windshear according to the Baron. A tornado warning was now issued for the Oklahoma City area.

When we were on US 60, the rear flank was starting to open much at about 5:30. There were a lot of chasers on this storm, on the sides of the highway, behind us and ahead of us. Another wall cloud formed and a brief funnel cloud appeared. A few minutes later, Ron pointed out a possible tornado. It was very hard to tell due to the rolling hills. I zoomed in with my camera and at a quick glance it looked like a multi vortex, but I could not see any rotation with it at all. It fell apart and nothing more came of it. We pulled into a gas station for a quick bathroom break. Unfortunately there was a lineup and only one bathroom. I started coughing really bad due to my cold. Great! I coughed and gagged. I had some crap in my chest that I needed to get rid of. I went to the bathroom quick and went back out to the parking lot. Other storm chasers pulled into the gas station. I was now hacking up a lung! I thought I was gonna get sick. Other chasers and spotters watched me. Gosh how embarrassing! I tried to hide behind Scott's van and hack some more. This was not fun!!! After everyone was done, we left again.

There was another storm to the south of this one now. Our first storm was not doing anything anymore by this point and slowly dying. The storm motions were just way to fast! We took a gravel road south and encountered a shelf cloud produced by the second supercell. A rear flank was opening up and the storm was starting to take a hook echo shape. The meso was not fully organized yet, so we stopped on the side of the road to watch it and take pictures. The low level winds were screaming into the meso which had slight rotation and I could hear the rear flank winds howling above. Then all of a sudden, a white funnel cloud formed. "Yes yes! Drop! Come on you can do it" I exclaimed at the storm. Yep I am weird, I tell storms what to do! LOL! I was getting excited, since this reminded me a bit of the tornadic supercell I saw in 2006, with a nice green lush field before it. The funnel cloud was beautiful actually, changing shape and twisting about. Then it fizzled. Noooooo! The surface winds tore it apart!!! Talk about luck or what, sheesh!

A police deputy for the Osage Indian Reserve drove up and asked if everything was okay. I reported the funnel cloud to him and he said the storm had dropped a couple tornadoes before and was keeping an eye on things. We chatted for a bit. He was a very cool guy! He had his dog in the back and she poked her head out and sniffed my hand. One of the reasons why I love the alley... the people are very kind! Then he was off on his way again. The supercell was not doing much anymore at this point, so it was time to call off the chase. It was kind of disappointing today because if these supercells had been moving much slower and storm motions not so insanely fast, there would have been much better photogenic storms and tornadoes. Also the fact that our series of unfortunate events did not help us and the storms fired much earlier than expected. At least we managed to get something out of it.

We headed north to Blackwell, OK at a Super 8 for the night. It was a very crazy day.

Travel Day

2010-05-15T02:01:00.001-04:00

May 9, 2010

Today was another travel day. We worked our way northeast to get in position for Monday's setup.

On our way we had crossed into the moisture return flow... dense fog was everywhere! I could see nothing but fields, disapearing into the distance. The bases of wind turbines could only be seen, with the tops fading into a blanket of white. Moisture!!!

We stayed in Childress, TX for the night. Hopefully the stratus cloud deck burns away in the morning tomorrow! I checked the models once again. This setup was looking epic! Unfortunately it appeared it was going to be fast moving. SPC issued a high risk.

Alien Sightings!

2010-05-15T01:28:00.003-04:00

May 8, 2010

Today we were going to try to make a trip to the UFO crash site near Roswell and visit downtown Roswell. We went down a dirt road, and parts of it were covered in white gypsum rock, the stuff that drywall is made out of. Unfortunately the road we took eventually became a dead end. The UFO crash site was now private property and closed to the public. So we went off to Roswell and looked around the shops. I bought a little green alien dude for the front of Scott's van. Perhaps we finally would be seeing storms soon now that we have a mascot!

We then decided to take a trip down to Carlsbad Caverns. The mountains and hills were very beautiful in this area! Unfortunately the Caverns had just closed. Do'h! So much for that. We decided to take one of the short hiking trails while we were here to make some use of our time. It was very scenic here!

On our way to Hobbs, NM for the night, we saw gravity wave clouds which were kind of neat. Later that night, I checked out the models once again and the SPC issued a moderate risk for day 2. Tomorrow we were going to be working our way northeast again. Unfortunately I was coming down with a cold, I had a sore throat and runny nose. Oh how wonderful!

Escape to the warmth

2010-05-15T01:23:00.000-04:00

May 7, 2010

When I woke up in Oakley this morning, I was shivering. The temperatures dropped big time and it was apparently snowing in Montana. Yikes! Time to head south where it's warmer I think!

We headed to New Mexico today and spent the night in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico at a Super 8. It was still relatively cool out surprisingly, but it was better than further north. Not much happened today. The weather was going to be quiet for a couple days. Dang, think I should start up my stamp collection again?

That night I started looking at the models for a significant setup for Monday in the central plains. This event looked pretty big and it was time to start picking it apart.

Exploring Kansas and Hail Storm

2010-05-15T01:19:00.002-04:00

May 6, 2010

Today was possibly going to be a chase day finally. I was starting to go nuts from the ridged out weather. I am very glad I decided to take three weeks this year, since there was nothing during the first week.

A triple point low was developing over Colorado and western Kansas. There was also a dryline bulge, however there were a couple things that were a down side to today's setup... a lack of moisture and the chance that any storm that goes up will be after sunset. It was fairly hot out again today, but it was a dry heat. The skies remained bright blue with not a cloud in sight.

SPC had issued a slight risk with a 2% chance of tornadoes over northwest Kansas. We decided to hang around western Kansas, waiting for the warm front to move north. By mid afternoon, the SPC upgraded the risk of tornadoes to 5%. A boundary was setting up north of us.

To kill some time, the gang decided to visit Monument Rocks, which is located south of Oakley. The rock formations were something to see... from years and years of winds tunneling through this area, carving and shaping these rocks.

After that, we decided to book our rooms in Oakley for the night and go eat dinner at a Pizza Hut. By now, a stratus cloud deck was forming and the temperature was dropping. We went back to our motel rooms to wait for anything to fire.

It was now dark out. I checked my GR Level 3 radar and saw that there were a couple storms to our north, and another one forming just west of Oakley. A few scans later showed the storm rapidly intensifying right over town. I heard distant thunder and went out on the balcony to watch the storm come in. The winds picked up and marble sized hailstones were beginning to fall. I knocked on Scott's door and asked him if he wanted to watch the storm. Ben was out now, putting it all on video. The hail sounded very loud and it was increasing in size. I picked up a one inch stone and was happy to be holding some hail for the first time this year. My SDS was so bad that I rubbed the stone on the side of my face, to cuddle it... Yes folks, breaking news! I am very weird!

Ron told me he was gonna take off to core punch it soon. A few minutes went by, and I couldn't find David nor Ron! The hail must have been so loud I could not hear them call me telling they were leaving. Ben and I went to the first level to take some more video. A car alarm that sounded like Scott's was going off because of the hail. It was starting to cover the ground. Scott checked his van to make sure it was okay. Apparently one of the hailstones cracked the passenger side mirror down the middle.

As fast as it came, it went. The storm poofed on radar just east of Oakley. I never got to chase anything but at least it was entertaining to see a brief hailstorm right at the motel.

Travel day back to the land of Oz

2010-05-06T00:11:00.000-04:00

May 5, 2010

Today was a travel day up to Kansas. The day remained fairly uneventful as we pulled up into a Super 8 in Liberal early in the evening for a good night's sleep and hours spent analyzing the models for tomorrow.

Palo Duro Canyon pictures

2010-05-05T23:52:00.004-04:00

Some images I took on May4th while visiting Palo Duro Canyon.

A Magical Place

2010-05-05T02:18:00.001-04:00

May 4, 2010

I couldn't sleep anymore. I tossed and turned, and looked at the time. 7am. We wouldn't be departing for a few more hours yet. Well, I guess it was time for a shower and a hot breakfast which I had missed yesterday! I had a relaxing morning, taking short walks around the parking lot and taking pictures of birds.

Today was going to be a down day, so we decided to kill some time and work our way to Amarillo. The winds were really hauling from the south today... it was very toasty, almost reaching 90 F but at least it was a dry heat. I thought today would be a great day to make a trip down to the Palo Duro Canyon, since we had blue sky.

We made a stop in Weatherford, OK for a quick snack and Ben also needed a new piece for his camcorder microphone because it broke off. I decided to get a sundae and of course it started melting all over me. I was wearing my camera around my neck and the ice cream just had to drip on it. Okay I get it already! I will never eat ice cream with my camera again! Last year I managed to get melted chocolate on my lens. Maybe I should just not eat anything that will melt in hot weather period. We hung around here for a while and took off to the west again.

We made a stop at an Allsups outside of Amarillo to fill up on gas, so of course I had to do the chaser tradition of grabbing a burrito. Oh dear! Let the "rear flankage" begin! The southerly winds were still blowing pretty hard, which got me pretty excited. Those winds are going to bring back the much needed moisture from the Gulf of Mexico for potential chase days later this week and next week. The atmosphere was recharging!

The Palo Duro Canyon State Park is located south of Amarillo and is only $5 to get in. Holy cow. Just taking the first glimpse of this magnificent terrain was worth the fee. We got out of the van to take it all in... cliffs of red, with touches of green under a bright blue sky was simply eye candy. Then the peaceful silence was broken with first "pfffffffttttt!". Oh no... my Allsups burrito was making a come back!

After taking a bunch of pics we took a road to lead further down into the canyon. There were a lot of great places to stop along the way. We climbed up some of the rocks, took pictures and continued on, only to stop again and take more pictures. Really, it is so beautiful words cannot describe it. You have to be there yourself to experience this wonder of nature.

The roadway eventually lead to an area where a small river was overflowing and running across the roadway. Hmmmm. Ben and I saw a photo opportunity and got out of Scott's van. First, Ron went. Splaaaaaaash! Then it was Scott's turn. Splaaaaash! Weeeee let's do this again! Splaaaaash some more! The two vehicles went up the road a bit to turn around. While Ben and I were waiting for them to come back, I let another one rip... louder this time while Ben was filming! Ben and I looked at each other and started howling, bent over holding our guts. I coulda sworn our laughing was echoing off the canyon walls and someone could hear us. The vehicles came back and we continued further down the road, only to say "Holy crap!" and stop some more.

The colours, formations and wildlife were quite amazing. By now the temperature was close to 100F and I was sweating! I already had polished off a couple bottles of water. The road looped back around to the end, so it was time to go get something to chew on. After all that sight seeing, we were pretty hungry!

We had a steak dinner at The Big Texan in Amarillo and spent the night at La Kiva Hotel. It was certainly a nice way to spend a down day. We had met kind people and saw great scenery. The caprock is truly a magical place.

Now's the time to relax

2010-05-04T00:17:00.000-04:00

May 3, 2010

After checking the forecast models and getting a good night's sleep, the crew picked up David from France in Oklahoma City around noon today. The models were showing a rather quiet period for a few days this week due to a lack of moisture, and by mid-week, the GFS has been hinting at a possible chase for the central plains. I have been eyeing that system for over a week now, and the GFS has been somewhat consistent with it... there is definitely something there. Plus there would be a couple of quiet days before next week, when there is a sign of a very active chase period to be had!

Today we decided to play with a very marginal setup west of Dallas, TX. By marginal, I mean not even reaching severe limits. What the heck, we are down here and on vacation! Afterall, you can't win if you don't play the game. After picking up David, we headed south on I35. A cold front was sweeping by, which could trigger some thunderstorms around the Dallas area. I was hoping we could at least get some lightning shots at best or maybe even run into some hail.

When we were west of Flower Mound, we pulled over. I loaded the radar and a surface observation map on the laptop. The cold front was near us now, and a small line of non severe thunderstorms sprang up just west of where we were. I looked out the front windshield and saw a CG, followed by a rumble of thunder. I got out of the car and was very grateful to smell that "thunderstorm" smell once again while standing in the blowing wind. You have no idea how good that feels after not having seen any storms for quite a while! Okay I admit, I must seem very weird to you non storm chaser folk! I decided to grab my Kestrel and take some wind readings. The max gusts reached 20 knots.

Unfortunately this was all to be had today. The cold front was hauling due east, and the storms would not build any further. It was time to head back to Oklahoma City for the night at the Days Inn, once again.

We finally have Spotter Network working again. Darn technology, geesh.

2010 Update

2010-03-12T02:34:00.003-05:00

Okay, it's been almost a year since I last updated this poorly neglected blog of mine. I just thought I'd mention that I finally updated my main website www.laurawx.com. I added a bunch of photos from 2008 and 2009, as well as some storm art I've made. So feel free to check it out if you're interested. And if not, well you suck LOL!

I will be heading south to tornado alley once again this season with Ron Gravelle, starting May 1st. We will be staying down for a whole three weeks of hardcore storm chasing. We will chase like we have never chased before. I will take pictures and/or video like I have never before. Well, assuming that mother nature cooperates haha. It can't be any worse than last year, could it? Close up pictures and videos are neat to watch, but please remember to keep safety as your number one priority. Having said that, I wish all of you a very fun filled and safe 2010 storm chase season.

And if you haven't already, be sure to check out the Debris Show hosted by Shane Adams, Bridget Geaughan, David Reimer and Erik Burns, which is on every Saturday at 9pm Central (assuming they are not chasing of course). Topics range from recent storm chasing community news, issues, opinions, etc. Shane tells it like it is!

An Intense Texas Chase To End the Chasecation

2009-05-23T21:28:00.003-04:00

DAY 14 MAY 15, 2009

I was enjoying my sleep when someone came knocking on my door. The knocking wouldn't stop, so I groggily got out of bed and opened the door with my eyes halfway opened and my hair a mess. I was expecting Ron, but it turned out to be one of the cleaning ladies. All she had to do was look at me and apologized and said she would be back later. I closed the door, rubbed my eyes and looked at the time. 10:30 am?! What are they doing knocking on our doors a half hour before checkout time? What if I was in the bathroom? Would she have walked right in and start cleaning right away? Yeeesh. Well, I figured since it was getting rather late in the morning, I decided to get dressed and turned on TWC to see what Vortex 2 was going to do today. Apparently they were heading to Kansas. I looked quickly at the RUC models for later today. Interesting. Tons of instability, helicity, convergence, a moisture pocket, southerly/southeasterly surface flow, a cold front and a dryline in the eastern Texas panhandle. There would be storms across OK and KS as well, but it looked to be more linear. I didn't like the surface winds there either. SPC outlined a moderate risk with 10% tornado for eastern Kansas and a slight with 5% tornado over the eastern Texas panhandle. The whole stretch was hatched for large hail as well. I was a bit puzzled as to why Vortex 2 was headed up to Kansas. Ah well, I ain't with them after all, and I wanted our last alley chase of the year to end with a bang.

We all went to Denny's for breakfast. I ordered the Pancake Puppies, which actually resembled 3 inch deep fried hailstones. Yum! We then headed northwest from Wichita Falls, towards Amarillo. The cold front was expected to move southeast through the late afternoon. Ron and I were hoping for an isolated supercell today. Actually, Ron was certain we would see something today.

A little while later sometime in the mid afternoon, we ended up a rest stop. We could see the boundary developing. A new storm had quickly gone up north of Pampa. While I was taking pictures of the distant cells, Jack called me over. He mentioned a tornado watch had gone up and we were on the western side of it. Perfect! So far everything seemed to make good timing. We continued on our way north. A new cell was developing just to our west. The newly devleoped anvil was nice and hard, but the base of the cell did not look very healthy. We stopped to get some pictures of the anvil's edge, then Ron wanted to take one of his shortcuts to get to the supercell near Pampa, which included a road basically made of peanut butter. Some of the ruts were a little deep but the van did quite well getting through it. Luckily it was not raining because this is one road that any chaser should avoid when it's wet. Some of it was so deep it was scraping underneath the van. Clay came up out the sides just like going through a puddle. Nothing like a little Texas clay off-roading adventure! After about 10 minutes, we worked our way to a main road again and headed off towards the storm.

Soon after, a tornado warning was issued for the storm. This supercell was starting to look like a beast on radar and it was moving slow in a southerly direction! As we got closer, we could make out some of the structure. I could see some banding along the flanking line and wrapping around the meso. All of a sudden, Ron said there was a funnel cloud off to the left under the rain free base! I zoomed in and took some pictures. What a nice funnel cloud (I later learned that another chaser was right near it and it was actually a tornado with only a funnel cloud visible and debris underneath)! Unfortunately there was moisture in the air which made the contrast very low. A few minutes later as we neared the meso, we stopped on the shoulder of the hiway to take some pictures of the great structure. As we stood in the inflow, a wall cloud could be seen inside behind the precipitation. It appeared our storm was going to be one mean HP beast. A few minutes later, I could feel the winds change to outflow and it was starting to rain. The storm was heading toward us. A couple seconds after everyone loaded back in the vans, I saw a powerful CG strike near us. CRRAAAAACCCK! Holy crap!!! Oddly enough, Jack, Pam and the three clients, who were in the other van, said they did not even hear thunder with that strike. It was highly possible it may have struck the van or right next to it. Yikes talk about timing to get back in the vans! Good thing I brought extra undies!

After that electrifying experience, we headed to the storm to get on the backside out of the path. We pulled on to hiway 273, just a few miles southeast of Pampa. It was starting to hail and the rain was blinding. We pulled on the shoulder to watch. Thunk! Thud! Wham! Tennis balls of ice were falling and bouncing on the ground. Not from straight down either... with the winds, they were hitting us almost sideways! Everyone put on safety glasses.

A few minutes later, radar detected a couplet and hook just ahead of us (we were facing east southeast). Through the rain streaked windows, a collar cloud with rotation could be seen right down the road. We saw a fat funnel cloud on the left and to the right, there was a much darker creature hidden in there. I took a picture of the funnel cloud when a CG actually made it in my shot. Cool another unintentional lightning shot! There was so much rain and hail, it was actually hard to see anything hidden in there. We pulled up a few feet and stopped again because the storm was moving away from us. Jack got on the radio and said a hailstone made a crack in the windshield. The winds increased. It was starting to look more and more intense. Ben and I huddled in the middle of the van trying to get away from the side windows when I felt my ears pop. Uh oh. Something's not right. My adrenaline kicked in. Next thing I knew, Rita yelled. The side window at the rear imploded all over her and the backseat. She crawled up to the middle seat and we checked out her back. She had a small scratch on her lower back which was nothing serious, but the stinging made it feel worse. We saw a truck drive past us and towards the possible large rain wrapped tornado. They continued down the road a bit before they realized they had to turn around. I said, "We gotta get outa here, we gotta get outa here".

We turned around to get out of the heaviest precipitation and pulled over on to some road in front of some homes. I was shaking from the adrenaline rush. Apparently the other van had all three side windows implode at the same time! I mean the entire windows. Frame included. None of us never heard a smashing sound when the windows blew in and there were no big stones in the back seats, which made it even more of a mystery on why they imploded at the same time. However, everyone in the van I was in felt a pressure change which caused the ear popping. Were we too close to a potentially strong tornado? Ron said according to the velocity scans, the tornadic winds must have been about 161 mph. Yowsa, that's enough to blow your socks off. The guys tried to find stuff to cover up the windows, including jackets and duck tape. I said to Sandra, "So does that mean the chase is over?" in a somewhat disappointed voice. Sandra chuckled. Unfortunately we could no longer chase because there were no windows to protect everyone from the rain.

We pulled into Pampa and found a sheltered area at Ranch House Motel. The owners of this run down place instantly came to assist us in what ever help we needed to get cleaned up. They handed us brooms and buckets, and said if we need anything to let them know. This is why I love it in the plains... the people here are very kind and they look out for each other. Mammatus was soon overhead and I took a couple pictures. Pam and Rita kept picking small chards of glass off of them.Ron booked some rooms for the night. When Rita got her room, she went to shower to remove any glass. The rooms were small, so I had to get a separate room. It was quite run down, but at least it appeared clean. The people here offered us help and I felt the least I could do in return was stay for a night. Once I threw my stuff in there, I grabbed a broom and started sweeping up the billions of pieces. Jack's van had a spiderweb pattern in the windshield on the driver's side. Rita went to grab her Monster energy drink, but it was mostly empty. It was never opened. What the? After looking at the can, there was a small puncture hole in it from the glass! Wow that's bizarre! Jack apparently had his laptop open at the time the windows imploded, so he ended up getting some tiny glass shards inside. A couple of emergency vehicles drove by headed east. The motel owners asked if they could call up the local media news, but we had to politely decline. After all, things needed to be cleaned up and we were a bunch of hungry storm chasers. Ron and I still wanted to chase, but the supercell was getting away and we would need new windows.

Ron said there was a report of someone getting glass (no not from our vans!) in their eye and there was damage east of Pampa. After most of the glass was swept and our lugguge in our rooms, we decided to head just west of town to look for the damage. There was a large tree knocked over and it looks like it hit part of the house. The family seemed fine and the kids were playing on the trunk. Since it was getting dark, Ron decided to drop Pam, Rita, Sandra and myself off to eat dinner at Granny's Home Cookin', which offered great tasting food and wonderful service, then we called it a night.

I said I was hoping our chasecation would end with a bang, but I didn't expect it would be that gnarly! Be careful what you wish for LOL. The next day we looked for more damage, talked to a few kind folks and headed on our long journey home. Talk about timing too... the infamous death ridge would be showing its ugly face for a while in the plains according to models.

The NWS surveyed the area and rated a half mile wide multi vortex tornado as EF-2 near the area where we were when the windows imploded. There were other tornado reports, including the funnel/tornado we saw earlier on the storm which was rated EF-0.

A Texas riot

2009-05-20T00:58:00.001-04:00

DAY 13 MAY 14, 2009

Shortly after 10 am, we headed to Will Rogers Airport to say goodbye to our new France friend David. His tour drew to a close and needed to fly back home. He was a pleasure to have along and he wants to come back next year.

We headed to Chickasha, OK to have a hearty buffet for lunch at Western Sizzlin Steakhouse. Okay so it has steakhouse in the name, what great plains restaurant doesn't? After that Ron checked out the models. The air was unstable so he was hoping for a nighttime storm to pop up somewhere near the Oklahoma/Texas border. However, the sky was overcast and I never did like overcast days.

We headed southwest on I44, made a quick stop in Lawton, then continued west on hwy 62 towards Altus. Along the way, Ron saw something unusual. An old armchair was near the road. So what does a chaser do waiting for the cap to break? Ron checked out the chair for any little critters and snakes, grabbed an old storm chaser handbook, his coffee and a roll of toilet paper and sat down in the chair looking pretty relaxed. We took some pics of him with the Witchita Mountains in behind. We then continued towards Altus and made another stop near the Altus Air Force Base to get some shots of the jets flying in.

We crossed the Texas border and stopped so that David, Louise and Michelle could get their picture taken by the state sign, while the rest of us took pictures of beautiful Texas wildflowers and little critters. We headed to Vernon and stopped by the train tracks because Jack enjoys trains, aside from storms. Sandra almost stepped in a fire ant mound. These buggers were almost everywhere, so I went back to the van since I was paranoid about getting a "love bite" LOL. After, we headed to Wichita Falls and booked our rooms. We then went to the Olive Garden for dinner. I helped myself to some stuffed mushrooms and a glass of wine. Before long, ice cubes started flying past me. Leave it up to Pam to stir up a riot! Soon, Sandra and Rita started throwing ice cubes. One made it down Sandra's shirt. Is this another hail simulation exercise? I know we need some wicked storms, but I didn't think the SDS was this bad! LOL! I decided to toss one at Pam and it somehow made it down her shirt. Bullseye! Luckily, the manager and server were in good spirits. Afterall, cleaning up ice is much easier than cleaning up messy food. Just thank goodness we were practically the only customers around. We headed back to the motel to wait for any storms to develop along a boundary. Unfortunately it was getting late, and nothing ever did fire up in the area.

Kay County, Oklahoma supercell

2009-05-19T21:34:00.000-04:00

DAY 12 MAY 13, 2009

The crew got to sleep in a little bit this morning, and then went for breakfast at a Sonic. When we were leaving the motel, I saw another motel's sign with an LCD display saying "Welcome Hunters" which was referring to the Vortex 2 guys. I didn't see any of the vehicles this morning, which told me they were already on the road. At 1 pm, we took off for north central Oklahoma. The SPC had outlined a moderate risk for most of Oklahoma stretching to the northeast including Missouri. There was a 10% hatched area for tornadoes over Missouri and a 5% covered Oklahoma. A cold front was going to be moving southeastward ahead of a very unstable airmass. Once the cap breaks, storms were expected to rapidly develop and then become a linear MCS later in the evening as it moves east.

At about 3:30 pm, we stopped for some ice cream at Dairy Queen in Clinton, OK then headed towards Alva, where we had another bathroom break at 5:30. We were keeping our eyes on a boundary which was starting to grow some turkey towers. It was six o'clock magic hour and the cap was finally breaking! We could visually see the towers getting taller by the minute.

We worked out way to an area just west of Ponca City to meet up with the tornado warned supercell. We saw a wall cloud as we neared the storm. Ron pointed out to us that there was a large white funnel (possibly a tornado) ahead of us just to the right of the road. It was somewhat hard to see due to poor contrast from our vantage point. I quickly grabbed the camera and took a picture through the windshield. After that, it dissipated.

We encountered gusty winds kicking up dust from the rear flank downdraft and noticed the clear slot was starting to occlude around the wall cloud. It appeared the storm was a high-precipation type. We headed south for a little bit because of the storm's direction. Another wall cloud was starting to form. We took a back road and stopped to get some pictures. Everything was getting wrapped in rain. This wall cloud almost looked promising for a couple minutes, but it fell apart. We continued up the dirt road, and the rain mixed with some hail began to intensify. The dirt road was becoming rather difficult to drive on. Jack was driving the other van, while Sandra took the wheel in the van I was in. I must say it pays to be a Canadian with good winter driving practice. Sandra did a fine job controlling the vehicle in this mess. Shortly after, Ron looked at the Baron and mentioned there was another rotation couplet up the road 1 mile from us, but unfortunately, we couldn't see anything because of the core. In fact, I have never seen such a dense core like this before!

After a little while, we finally found a decent paved road (I think it was hiway 177). As we were heading south, the rain cleared up a bit more and we could see the sun setting in the west, and a rainbow formed. Since the storm was lining out and moving away, we headed to Stillwater to have dinner at Perkins. I tried getting some lightning shots from the parking lot but there was too much light pollution ruining my photos.

After dinner, on the way to Oklahoma City, I saw some lightning light up a roll cloud. We pulled over so I could attempt at getting some pictures. The key word here is attempt. Unfortunately since the lightning was too far away, I was not able to capture the scene without it being too dark. As we neared OKC, Ron spotted what looked like a funnel or tornado going down towards the ground diagonally off in the distance when lightning flashed. There seemed to be some scud around it, but the funnel part looked quite smooth, which soon seemed to rope out. I have no idea if this was a true tornado or not, but it was quite interesting.

We stayed at the Comfort Inn tonight.

Briscoe County, Texas supercell

2009-05-15T04:08:00.002-04:00

DAY 11 MAY 12, 2009

When I woke up this morning, I found Ron putting new tires on one of the vans, and then we left the motel by 11 am. Apparently this morning, there was golf ball sized hail reported in Norman, OK from some storms that went through the area. We decided to stop for breakfast at Ihop in Plainview and Ron updated himself on the setup for today. A warm front was supposed to be move through Oklahoma by the evening, and we were hoping that the morning system would leave outflow boundaries for later. The RUC showed the highest instability to be around the Childress, TX area. Jack heard that Vortex 2 was also in west Texas to play today's setup... if anything would develop, it would be their first storm.

We made a stop at an Allsups in Quitaque, TX for a little bit to wait around. We saw some of the Vortex 2 vehicles drive by. I continued the chaser tradition of enjoying an Allsups burrito, and took readings of the temperature and dewpoint with my Kestrel. It's a good thing there was heat and moisture, and the surface winds were slightly picking up. We took off towards the west, where we noticed a boundary building over Hale county moving northeast. We were in a very scenic area, near the Palo Duro Canyon so we decided to stop and get some pictures. The boundary was showing some punchy tcu's, and behind the boundary was a storm developing. Ahead of this boundary, there was a lone turkey tower and underneath it, a textbook shear funnel appeared under the base. It lasted for a few minutes before the tcu vanished into pretty much nothing. The tcu's along the boundary were only getting bigger so we took off towards Briscoe county to get closer to the storm.

At first the storm looked like it was becoming a classic supercell. On the north end, there were classic inflow feeder bands, which led into the core, where to the south of the core a wall cloud was developing. The rear flank downdraft soon kicked in and whipped up several gustnadoes. As we continued up the road, we saw some of the Vortex 2 guys parked on the shoulder taking their readings. Several minutes later up the road, the rear flank was really kicking up a lot of dust. By now the storm looked like it would become a haboob. Some of us needed a quick bathroom break and as we pulled into Allsups in some small town, we saw the rest of the Vortex 2 crew as they were pulling out. The field command vehicle was still parked however, along with some members of the media. From what I could see from the parking lot, the storm was starting to remind me of the haboob we saw back in 2006. Craptacular! I always wanted an outflow dominant storm! Of course I ain't serious when I say that.

We pulled out and continued towards the storm. The winds were really picking up and dust was everywhere. We pulled onto some back road to stop and get pictures. Surprisingly enough, I thought I would have been more sandblasted than I was. Since there was not much else to see in this area of the storm, I mentioned to Ron that we should get ahead of it again and see if there was a decent shelf cloud. As we blasted eastward, it seemed the storm was beginning to pick up in intensity. It was entering the target area, with the highest instability. I saw a very skinny narrow hailshaft, which fooled me for a second thinking it was a landspout. Off to our left, we noticed some lowerings starting to form. When we neared the Palo Duro Canyon, we stopped on the shoulder. It appeared the storm was becoming more supercellular finally. We continued on where we intercepted the core, with some hail and heavy rain. After that, we took a very scenic route through the Palo Duro Canyon... what a sight to behold! We finally got into some flat country again, where we spotted rotation just ahead of us. We stopped again and noticed rotation in the base of the storm, showing twisting action in the clouds. Soon a white funnel cloud formed in front of the downburst on the left. There was another core to the right as well. Now that's what I'm talking about! It was quite a scene, with the downburst appearing as a solid wall of precip which included a rainfoot and the almost cinnamon bun-like swirl in the cloud base.

We intercepted another core and after that, we saw the TIV and some other chasers following the TIV. Oh crap! Chaser convoy! Sure enough they turned onto the road we were on and somehow managed to get ahead of us, leaving us stuck behind this convergence. There must have been about 6 other chasers behind the TIV. We all continued through some town. We wanted to get ahead of these guys and fortunately, the TIV had finally pulled off onto the shoulder and traffic seemed to be moving quicker again. We stopped again on the shoulder and I took some pics of the ragged leading edge of the storm from behind, with scud fingers hanging down and sucking in inflow. After that, we zipped past the TIV crew and continued down the hiway. The sun was now starting to set, casting beautiful orange hues behind the storm. A pretty full arched rainbow appeared. Off to our left we saw either a massive scud bomb or a developing wall cloud.

Ron wanted to pull over and get some twilight lightning shots. Unfortunately it was starting to rain, so I had to attempt my shots without using the tripod. Ron managed to get a nice shot of a CG, whereas I was not so successfull. Instead I managed to get one of in cloud lightning. As it got darker out, there was another core to the south. We intercepted it and encountered a bit of hail. This cell was becoming very electric and I saw one CG that turned out to be beaded lightning. We stopped to grab some lightning pictures since the strikes seemed so frequent and powerful and it was dark out. Afterwards, Ron wanted to book our rooms in Childress. As we pulled into one motel, there was no vacancy left. Vortex 2 was in town as well... I saw some of the vehicles parking along the front of one motel. We finally managed to find a motel that had enough rooms for us and grabbed a hot meal at Kettle, where a few of the Vortex 2 guys were. Apparently this restaurant already fed half of the Vortex 2 crew and I could tell that the employees just wanted to call it a night.

Dusty and a Run for the Border

2009-05-13T05:05:00.000-04:00

DAY 10 MAY 11, 2009

This morning I decided to hang out in the lobby to check Tuesday's forecast and watch The Weather Channel. Vortex 2 has a live news feed every day on TWC and today was another no go. I was getting very frustrated with the model runs... they kept changing! In the late morning, the crew went to the Big Texan for a breakfast buffet and then made a visit to Cadillac Ranch, just south of town since David (France) wanted to see it. It was still cool and cloudy out. I expect this weather back at home, but not down here! Ah well, we were going to go find us some warmth anyway.

The target today was southwest Texas near Odessa. Hopefully that area would be good to us again (we saw a tornado there in 2007). Close to 1 pm, we stopped in Happy and then continued south to Lubbock around 2:30. The temperatures were starting to improve finally, and at around close to 5 pm, we made it in the Midland area. Once we got past Odessa, we saw development just north of the Mexico border. The skies were clear and it was hot out. I could see the anvil from the distant storm to our south. Ron lead us through some back dusty roads. And when I say dusty I mean dusty. Okay that was an understatement. It was more like off-roading in the outback of Australia. Ron's van was quite ahead of our's and they would kick up a large thick plume of dust which would obscure our view of them. We ended up coming to a dead end, with Ron nowhere to be seen. Ummm okay where is he? I didn't know he could perform magic tricks! Jack eventually called Pam's phone (again I say she is smart for bringing her Blackberry!) and we finally met up with them.

We turned left and then David (France) asked what was off to the right. I looked and thought "Holy crap!". There was a massive dust devil in a field off in the distance! I mean massive! One that could pass as a F1 or F2 tornado! It was the biggest I have ever seen. We all jumped out to take pictures of it. It lasted for a couple minutes before dispersing into thin air. It was no storm but an incredible thing to see. It must have been wider than the road and was very tall. The pictures I took really put in scale.

As we got closer to the storm, I noticed the anvil was starting to soften. Oh dear, are we the storm killers now instead of storm chasers? Ron then noticed that the storm was making a run for the border back into Mexico. Well I guess that's all folks. Give me my stamp collection book.

After enjoying some authentic Mexican dinner at On the Border, we stayed at a Super 8 in Lubbock tonight and were planning to head north east tomorrow for a much more promising set up. It was still not a perfect set up, but there was a much higher chance of actually seeing something. Hopefully there is something before my stamp book gets too full.

Upslope flow cold junk

2009-05-13T05:00:00.001-04:00

DAY 9 MAY 10, 2009

Today started off with a nice hot breakfast provided by the motel. Rita and I were enjoying our meal when we realized no one else was around... were we supposed to get up early? Hmmm... then Pam came down to join us. She said she never got a wake up call (she was smart... she had an alarm on her Blackberry). So we went to the front desk to see if we could wake up the rest of the crew. Once we got everyone rounded up, we took off at around 10:15 am to head north towards northeast New Mexico. It was going to be a marginal day, but Ron was hoping for an isolated storm over the mountains from upslope flow.

We stopped for a bite at Wendy's in Big Spring, Texas at around 1:30. It was pretty dull and cool out still. I was not really liking the overcast too much either. There was a trough positioned over the foothills. A later while later we took a quite stop in New Deal... Rita bought the biggest slushie I have ever seen! Only for like a buck too! Is this town living up to their name New Deal or what?

We continued our trek north towards Dumas. The skies were starting to clear. We must have seen about 10 or so dust devils in the fields on our way up hwy 287, including one that had three in a row at the same time! We also saw transverse rolls starting to organize, pointing the way towards the northwest. It looked like that if anything would develop it would be further west than initially thought. We stopped in Dumas at 6:30 to grab a bite (yes again, we eat a lot don't we?) and continued. It was about an hour later when Ron wanted to reassess the setup, so we pulled over on the shoulder so Ron could update himself on the RUC. It turned out that the warm front was actually pushing back, making the target twice the distance away from us! By now, the skies were getting all murky again. I just didn't like those clouds at all. We made the decision to give up and meet up with Jack and three new clients in Dumas. On our way back south, we saw a gust front that was multi-teired, so we stopped for some quick pictures.

At about 9 pm, we arrived in Dumas at an ice cream shop. The three new clients were David, Louise and Michelle from the United Kingdom. We had to head to Amarillo to get our rooms at a Super 8 for the night because the motels in Dumas were all booked. It was interesting approaching Amarillo at night... we could see the city lights from afar, that's how flat it is out here!

Jack invited Rita and I up to Ron and Sandra's room to celebrate Sandra's birthday. The ice cream cake was good even though it started to become really soupy. Ron and I decided to go over the models for Tuesday (I was keeping my eyes out for then because the models were hinting at severe storms in the panhandles). Of course, and not to my surprise, the GFS had changed from the last time I looked at it! This year the models have been rather difficult because of the unusual weather pattern, making forecasting even harder. The cap was very thick according to the latest run. Ron then decided to pick tomorrow's target... southwest Texas towards Odessa.

Southwest TX relaxation

2009-05-13T04:56:00.000-04:00

DAY 8 MAY 9, 2009

This morning we decided to check out the reported tornado's damage in Early, Texas. There were some branches down, some small things knocked over, but there were no broken windows. A Skywarn spotter on a motorcycle came up to us and told us about where the damaged roofs were located. We followed him and saw parts of a metal roof in a parking lot across the road from the original building. There was a news reporter and cameraman there already. A chainlink fence was pushed over. Everything seemed to be facing in one direction, which would suggest straight line or rear flank wind damage instead of a tornado. Chances are someone just saw the high winds and branches flying and instantly thought tornado. So in a way I am glad we missed the "tornado", although another chaser got on the supercell before sunset and did it ever look nice with a barrel updraft and wall cloud with the sun setting in behind.

Today we were to head southwest towards Junction. Ron figured we would have a shot at some night time storms to take some nice lightning pictures. When we stopped for gas in Menard, we noticed it was getting warmer. We were getting closer to the warm sector. As we neared Junction, the temperature rose about 1 degree per mile. The scenery in this area was quite nice and reminded me of New Mexico. When we got into town, we booked our rooms at a very nice Best Western and decided to hang around and wait for initiation.

We had a real Texas bbq dinner at Lum's and oh man was it ever good! I ordered a plate of brisket and I was quite pleased with the real bbq smokey flavor and tenderness. Afterwards, Sandra decided to go for a dip in the pool and Rita and I thought about dipping our feet in the water since we didn't bring our bathing suits. When Sandra got in, she said it was very nice, then Rita got tempted to jump in. Sandra said "Go ahead! You can do laundry after." So she slips into the pool. Then I got tempted. Unfortunately I was wearing pants (!) so I rolled them up. I got up and jumped in. SPLAAASSHHHH! Ah what the heck, I am on vacation! We swam around for a bit since it was refreshing, then the bugs started to come out. We saw some big beetle which decided to join the three of us. Uhhhh... these guys can swim? And go under water and survive?! Uhhhh. Okay time to get out now.

Unfortunately the skies seemed to getting clearer. A line of storms did fire on the Mexico side of the border and produced an outflow boundary but it died. Ah well... we still have all week yet.

Vortex 2 and Texas Boom!

2009-05-09T04:00:00.002-04:00

DAY 7 MAY 8, 2009

I was planning to sleep in today, but the phone rang at around 9 am. Rita answered it. It was Ron. He said we had to leave in a half hour. Oh crap! I needed a shower! So I decided to give myself a quick rinse down... it was really muggy! The shower controls were pretty weird though and I couldn't get it to work right. Augggghhh tell me this ain't happening! I washed my hair and got dressed and went down to the parking lot for a morning briefing.

Ron looked at us and basically said "This is a test to see if you can get up quickly."

Oh maaaaaaan I really should know better! The crew went to Starbucks and Ihop for a coffee and some breakfast. Several nice outflow boundaries from the system in Kansas were setting up in the area and heading south. I was really liking the sky so far with it being still relatively early in the day. We then decided to head south to Norman. Today was looking really interesting. There was still crap loads of instability, plus the cold front was expected to go through this afternoon and reach northern Texas in the evening. It was a slow moving front. I couldn't believe the numbers I was seeing on the models especially for northern Texas. It was insane! If something doesn't pop today, I am going to take up stamp collecting!

Today was Vortex 2 Media Day in Norman. We stopped by the old NSSL building to take some pictures and figure out where the new building was located. We finally found the new research facility and stepped out into the parking lot. I saw the Vortex 2 vehicles, so all of us walked over. I ran into Tim Marshall once again (the last time I saw him was back in 2006). He seemed pretty thrilled about his part in Vortex 2. We saw a lot of the research vehicles parked on display. I saw the beautiful blue DOW 6 truck, a bunch of vans and mobile mesonets and Tim's vehicle. I walked further down and noticed a familiar person... wow. Could it be? The real Erik Rasmussen?! Jack helped me introduce myself to Erik and we shook hands. This man was the one behind the original Vortex back in 1994 and 1995. He asked if I was chasing today and I said that we were heading south to play the boundaries. I mentioned that I hope it pops today to which he replied "It's a waste of a good airmass if it doesn't". He was not kidding either. Everything seemed to be in place. A dryline buldge, outflow boundaries, excellent CAPE and extreme LI's. The 850 jet moved in, the winds were coming from the south and southeast. There was moisture... it's gotta go!

We walked around in the lobby of the building. It was really cool to see all of this and it kinda puts the Environment Canada building to shame. In the lobby there was a globe that displayed radar and satellite... around the world! Then it would change pictures and say "Welcome to Vortex 2 Media Day". On a wall, there was a radar display. That derecho that formed in Kansas overnight was now over Missouri... and it resembled a land hurricane! It was nuts! After numerous pictures and a quick hello to Josh Wurman, we had to head south again so we could be ahead of the action. We didn't want the boundary slipping past us. Apparently quite a few other chasers were headed this way as well, including Dave Patrick and George Kourounis with Cloud 9 Tours. We decided to stop at a scenic route before approaching Ardmore. It was just beautiful in the Red River Valley with all of the wildflowers in bloom! Fields of yellow and rolling hills made for a nice scene! Some gentleman had told Jack he saw the TIV and other vehicles go by... I guess some of the Vortex 2 crew decided to play today's setup after all! After about a half hour or so, we took off again.

At around close to 4 pm, I looked to the west and saw ACCAS clouds forming... excellent! We have mid level instability! We were definitely lacking that the past several days. We were chasing this system for three days now and today looked to be the day the atmosphere would blow. The SPC finally put out a mesoscale discussion. The cap should weaken as the day progresses and expected development later in the day.

We stopped at a Starbucks in Gainsville once we arrived in north Texas to check on the models and wait for the boundary from the northwest to move in closer. A tornado was issued and we were on the northern edge of it. We sat around for a bit, constantly checking on satellite and radar feeds, and watching all of the chaser icons on Spotter Network converge all along I35. Not many chasers seemed to venture this far south since most of them were waiting around in Ardmore, OK. One thing was for certain... it was really hot and muggy! I sat in the air conditioned van to get some relief. Off to our southwest, we noticed some towers starting to go up along a boundary. Perfect! The cap was eroding away! Ron didn't want to go after these just yet, since he figured more would develop. We waited some more, but nothing else seemed to pop up except in southern Oklahoma, but those cells didn't seem to be in the most unstable airmass.

The storm southwest of Waco was growing fast! At around 5:30 we headed more south and stopped in Sanger so Ron could update himself on the models while I grabbed some snacks for the road.

Ron made up his decision and decided we were to head after that growing supercell southwest of Waco. It was a bit further away than we were hoping for, but it was also the most dominant looking storm around. We were not too pleased with the stuff firing to the north judging by models and radar. The supercell was moving quite slowly as well. A second tornado watch was put out for the stuff firing up in Oklahoma. We headed south on I35 West and somehow managed to get around the Fort Worth/Waco area. Traffic was moving a little bit slow at times. The tornado warned supercell was still growing, to a whopping 75,000 feet! Aaaauuggggghhhh of all times! I could see large mammatus underneath the anvil and could see signs that the storm was rotating, judging by how part of the anvil appeared. I've never seen this kind of thing before! We were still quite a ways from the supercell so we could not see the updraft and haze also did not seem to help... the air was pregnant with moisture and smog from the surrounding big cities. All of a sudden Ben radioed to Ron that they were having problems with their inverter in the green van. Oh crap. What more could go wrong? We pulled into a gas station so Ron could check it out. By now it was almost sunset... we were about to be in for a nice sunset lit mammatus show very soon. We headed west and saw that a tornado was reported near Brownwood. Oh nooooooo! We missed the tornado! It was a good thing that the supercell was still going strong. The core was quite dense as well, with estimated hail up to 3 inches.

As we were heading west, we watched more towers go up to our northwest as the sun set. That must have been the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen! The towers were casting shadows underneath the massive anvil, while the setting sun cast hues of orange on the mammatus. This anvil was huge, spreading all the way up into Oklahoma! I guess the good air mass did not go to waste after all. Unfortunately it was getting dark out, so we would not be able to take daytime structure shots, but we planned to stick with the storm until it weakens. It seemed to be cycling at times and backbuilding and appeared to be going strong even after sundown. Lightning was getting rather intense.

At around 10:30 we stopped in San Saba for a quick bathroom break and an ice cream bar, then continued west to get into position for some lightning shots. We took some back roads just south of Voca to take pictures. I looked through my camera and saw a dark blob. I zoomed out. It was still there, so I zoomed in and it was still there. What the heck now?! I thought. I looked at the lens. Oh jeepers! Apparently some melted chocolate must have fallen on my lens. Sandra gave me some wipes to clean it off, then I got out my tripod. We saw a rotating feature, possibly a skinny wall cloud, when lightning flashed in the dark. There was a clear slot to the left of it. I managed to get a shot of it, although it came out blurry. Aaaaauuggghh I didn't put the lens in focus! It was now starting to rain so we loaded the vans. Ron wanted to get us ahead of the core so that it would swallow us and get into some hail. Unfortunately the road options in this area were rather poor and the core was starting to weaken.

It was now close to midnight and the storm was dying... it was time to call it a night. We checked for motel rooms in Brandy and ended up finding enough rooms at a run down retro style Gold Key Inn. Ah well... there were showers and a bed, that's all that mattered now. Today made me realize how quickly a chase can possibly go downhill fast if minor issues happen. It was not really a bust though, since we did manage to meet up with the largest supercell in the country today. We chased this system for three days!

Chasing the same system... again?

2009-05-09T03:57:00.001-04:00

DAY 6 MAY 7, 2009

We left Plano around the lunch hour and decided to make a stop in the chaser capitol of the world... Norman, Oklahoma. The thermodynamics were just insane numbers according to the models! CAPE was forecast to be 8400 with a lifted index of -12. The EHI was also pretty high. We were expecting storms to go up around the OKC area this evening. The only issue was that we had to wait for the cap to break and for the cold front to move through. We hung around a Souper! Salad! restaurant for a while and watched the sky from the parking lot. Towers really wanted to go up. The updrafts were tilted but just not punchy enough. Where the heck was our front? All this unstable air and nothing to show for it! It was getting later in the day and I was getting a bit frustrated. Now we could only hope for something to fire up after sunset, but I was doubting it. We booked our rooms in OKC for the night. A very disappointing day indeed... it seems the cold front decided to retreat. Again.

We decided to go for some drinks and something to chew on at Texas Roadhouse... it was pretty funny when we had a peanut shell fight. I drowned my sorrows of the day with two drinks. Now we could only hope for tomorrow... and it was looking much more promising. A derecho was expected to go through tonight, helping to break the cap for later tomorrow.

A somewhat down day and bust

2009-05-09T03:53:00.001-04:00

DAY 5 MAY 6, 2009

We left Abilene and headed on our way southeast today towards the Waco area. The atmosphere had tons of instability and there was a triple point low and dryline bulge setting up to the west. Timing was for it to be around Waco around 0z and cause the capping inversion to break. We decided to take the scenic route on some interesting Texas back roads. Texas in May is truly a beautiful site to behold... wildflowers in all sorts of colors were everywhere. We drove past a ranch and happened to see a cute horse trying to scratch his itchy spot. He rubbed along the fence and stomped around, it was pretty funny to see. Also along the way, Lorene chuckled at something. Then the green van turned around to stop. It turns out there were some interesting metal structures out in the field of a giraffe and an elephant. A little while later, we saw smoke coming from the field... so Ron wanted to check it out. We drove on some windy dusty road to try to get closer to the fire. We saw some flames shooting up above the trees. It could have been garbage burning or a controlled burn.

Of course I cannot forget a moment when I was sitting up front with Pam when Ron got on the radio and asked if I was there. I replied and said yes. It went something like this:

Ron: "Hello? Laura?"

Laura: "I'm here, Ron. Can you hear me?"

Ron: "Laura?"

Laura: "Can you hear me?"

Ron: "Laaaurrrraaaaaa... you there?"

At this point I started to chuckle.

Ron: "Are you on channel 7? Laura?"

I laughed harder. Then Pam laughed.

Laura: "I'm on channel 7, are you?"

Pam and I then figured Ron was playing one his pranks on us again.

Ron: "Is the PL on?"

Now we were not quite sure if Ron was really playing or not. We pulled onto the shoulder and Ron walked over to check my radio. He seemed to adjust something and tested it.

We took off again and Ron could hear me again. Unfortunately when he radioed me, I could hear Sandra and Rita laughing their butts off. Gosh darn dang it! I got pranked again! That'll teach me. Of course I am a good sport so I had a laugh myself.

When we arrived in Waco, we pulled into a Sonic to get something to eat. There was a cumulus field building but they seemed a bit feathery. We were not really expecting much today but figured we would try anyways since we were in Texas. SPC issued a 2% tornado risk for an area just east of our target. There was a stationary front to our west.

Unfortunately as the day progressed, the cumulus clouds were not getting any bigger and harder looking. It was time to reassess the setup. It turns out there was no inversion at all and it was releasing all the energy into the atmosphere. Also since the front was stationary, it was just not moving. We had no lifting force to kick up all this energy into storms. We decided to call off the chase, and went to Wal Mart for a bit. We then went to Olive Garden for dinner, and headed north on I35 to stay in Plano for the night. I don't like the Dallas area... what a pain in the butt to drive around here, plus I could feel the smog irritating my eyes and throat... blech! It was dark out so we pulled into some parking lot to take pictures of the skyscrapers, with all the times turned on.

Tomorrow we are planning to head north towards Oklahoma City.

A Prankster of a Day

2009-05-07T04:04:00.002-04:00

DAY 4 MAY 5, 2009

Well, it was quite an interesting morning for me. My sister Rita got up and had a shower at around 8:30, so I decided to stay in bed for a little longer. At 9 am, I finally decided to get up. Before I knew it, everyone came knocking on our door telling us to hurry and that we were leaving soon. I was a tad confused because last night Ron said that we wouldn't have to rush this morning. Well, boy did he ever make me rush. I was not even awake when I walked into the lobby room, still rubbing my eyes and shaking my head. Next thing I know, everyone started laughing at me. Doh! I fell for one of Ron's pranks again!

It was a cool overcast and foggy morning in Amarillo. It would have been much nicer to wake up to a crisp sunny blue sky instead... and warmer temperatures. I don't need this crappy weather here, I can get that at home gosh darn it. Well, we decided to head to the Big Texan again, this time for the two new guests to do some shopping. Out front in the parking lot, we saw two racing cars (one of them being the fastest car in the world apparently) for the Gumball 3000 race across the country. These guys were on their way to California from the eastern US.

Unlike those guys, we were not headed to California but instead down towards Abilene. A triple point and dryline buldge was setting up from Abilene towards Fort Worth. We stopped in Plainview to have a nice bite at IHOP. Ron and Jack decided to fill up the vans with gas while we waited for our food. Meanwhile, I sat at the table with Pam and out of the blue, I must have exploded. I sneezed so hard that the table shook and somehow, some of Pam's drink jumped out of her glass onto the table and started dripping on her foot. Oops did I do that? It's not my fault, I swear! I didn't invent wobbly tables LOL. The guys came back and wondered what we were laughing about. Then Ron, being the prankster that he is, basically said that he is leaving now, and the rest of us can go in the other van and meet him 40 miles to the south. He walked out of the restaurant and hopped in the van. He drove around and disapared for a little bit. He really had the guests and Sandra going LOL! Sure enough, he came back and all of us took off. For real this time.

The skies were starting to open up and let sunlight through. It was getting much warmer compared to the dull weather back in Amarillo, even though we were still north of the warm front boundary. We headed southeast, taking shortcuts to save some time. The SPC issued a moderate risk for central Texas, then at 3:06 pm a mesoscale discussion was put out. SPC had a 10% hatched area for tornadoes. There was just one problem with today's setup. A capping inversion was holding on. At 3:30, we stopped at a Dairy Queen in Crosbyton and sat around there for a bit. The temps and dewpoints were rising. Then we saw some tcu's building off in the distance! Finally! A sign of hope! A tornado watch was issued.

It was getting close to the dinner hour and I was getting anxious. I was keeping tabs on the Baron's radar. A small storm developed near Breckenridge. I watched it for a while, but it became elongated and weakened. I could see some transverse rolls were forming. We headed east to Abilene at around 7 pm to book our motel rooms for the night. While we were in the parking lot, some towers were building along some boundaries, but they were not looking punchy enough. However to our east, there were some healthier looking towers. I looked on radar and saw that another storm developed in the Breckenridge area just as the first storm died. This one was looking much more dominant and became a southeasterly mover. We continued to watch it grow and start to glaciate. I had a strong feeling this would be the only chaseable storm today. Ron and I talked about it, and decided to go after it. It was just a bit more east than our initial target. I rode in the front with the Baron and GR3 running while Jack drove and Ron and Sandra took the other van.

We headed east on I20. According to Spotter Network, there were already a number of chasers on this supercell. Oh jeepers it was about 50 some odd miles away yet, I hope we were not too late! As we were approaching it, we witnessed one of the most beautiful updrafts I've ever seen... the anvil had rings and rock hard knuckles under it and the updraft was punchy!

When we got closer to it, I could tell it was ending its mature stage... the anvil was starting to soften. Oh rat infested son of a.... We finally managed to catch up to the storm, but the base under it looked a bit elevated. We saw what looked like a funnel cloud a couple times, but they just disinigrated instead. According to GR3, this was one heck of a hailer and according to the Baron, there were a few rotation couplets inside the storm.

We ended up in the town of Cisco and about called off the chase since the storm was starting to weaken. It was now getting away so Ron and I decided to take some backside lightning pictures. Another chaser had the same idea, but there was a light post in the foreground which kinda made it hard to get some nice shots. I was hoping for a nice cloud-to-air strike coming out of the backside, but intead the flashes were all in-cloud. I saw some reports that a chaser had damaged their vehicle from 5 inch hailstones! Yikes! We decided to quit and grabbed a bite to eat at Sonic and headed back to Abilene for the night. I guess Ron was not the only one that decided to pull a prank today.

Return to the caprock

2009-05-05T01:14:00.003-04:00

DAY 3 MAY 4, 2009

This morning, Jack, Ron and I decided to sort out the two vans for good... time to take care of this "cable city" disaster! Velcro and cable ties can be such a wonderful thing. Ron and Sandra took the green van, or simply known as "the other van" (another inside joke), while I rode in front of the red van with Jack. We managed to get the Baron and MS Streets and Trips working, but I also wanted to get Spotter Network up and running. Unfortunately the stupid thing won't let me use the same GPS antenna for two different programs, so I had to disconnect Streets and Trips in order to use Spotter Network. I wanted to get my GPS antenna (that came with my 2009 Streets and Trips software) working, and surprise, surprise, I could not get it to work. I guess I need to get the driver from somewhere. Damn technology!

We picked up new clients Lorrine from England and David from France in Oklahoma and continued west to Amarillo, TX. We encountered quite a bit of rain but it eventually cleared when we crossed into Texas. The air was still pretty cool out, but at least the winds were blowing from the south. I don't think I've ever felt TX this cool before, but then again it was early May.

Before we arrived in Amarillo, we decided to stop for pictures of the leaning water tower. The crew had a delicious meal at the Big Texan, and Pam, Rita and Sandra ended up feeling pretty darn good from their intake of the Big Texan's yummy pina coladas. Ron decided to book a limo ride to the motel for the night just for fun. I sure hope we didn't scare Lorrine from our craziness!

We booked rooms at the Comfort Suites in the southern end of Amarillo, which is relatively a month old. Talk about nice big rooms! Just too bad the wifi sucked in the rooms (the walls must be like 3 feet thick or something), so I decided to go to the lobby to check out the models for tomorrow instead. Turns out Ron and Jack had the same idea, and soon Rita joined us.

It looks like a pretty interesting dryline setup tomorrow. Man it feels great to be back on the caprock... I missed this place.

Oklahoma Bound

2009-05-04T00:20:00.002-04:00

DAY 2 MAY 3, 2009

Today was going to be another travel day. While we were packing up the van, Ben and I watched some geese walk around the parking lot. They would come up pretty close, and one hissed at Ben while he as filming. We had to go to Springfield, IL to pick up the other van. Jack and I sat in the front of the original van, while Ron and Sandra took the other, then we took off for Oklahoma. Today was the 10th anniversary of the May 3, 1999 tornado outbreak in the OKC area, and it was also Ron and Sandra's 18th anniversary. We decided to stop along the way in Tulsa, OK to have a nice bite to eat at a steakhouse.

We pulled into Oklahoma City at a Super 8 for the night. Tomorrow we will pick up two clients from France and England.

If you're wondering why the APRS still has us in Indiana, we had a bit of an issue from blowing a fuse, but we should have everything working by tomorrow after getting the vans properly organized.

I am chase-ready!

2009-05-03T00:18:00.004-04:00

DAY 1 MAY 2, 2009

May is here and you know what that means. It's chase time! Today, I will be traveling along with Ron and Sandra Gravelle, Jack Kertzie, Rita (my sister), Pam Gregory and Ben "Camelot" Fuller to the alley once again for two weeks. We didn't get to leave Ron's place till shortly after the lunch hour because we had to wait for Jack to show up. Once he arrived, we loaded everything in the van, slapped the antennas on the roof, and were on our way. Sarnia customs was pretty good today, hardly any traffic and nice folks. Wish it were like this every time!

Along the way, we had our share of the giggles and jokes. Ron purchased a new Garmin GPS and downloaded a "Dr. Nightmare" voice... at random times, it would say something in a very deep Dracula-like voice such as, "Have you checked your trunk lately?" or "We need to drive some place more interesting". We saw a somewhat large fire burning in a field, almost looked like some type of house or barn. We made it as far as Indianapolis, IN tonight and staying at a Super 6. It's an okay motel and area, but the internet connection here really bites. Tomorrow we will continue our trek to Oklahoma, making it another travel day.

We will be streaming live and running APRS during the trip. We will also be on Spotter Network.

The WHOOOOOSSHHH Chase

2009-04-25T23:48:00.004-04:00

April 25, 2009 storm chase summary

In the early afternoon, I noticed some accas over head. A chance of thunderstorms was in the forecast for today, so I decided to see what was cooking for this afternoon. I came across a couple of severe thunderstorm watches issued for the Windsor and Sarnia areas due to a bowing squall line along the cold front coming in from Michigan. A lake breeze convergence zone was also shaping up from around London through Waterloo and north. The line of storms had a tail end charlie down in the Detroit and Port Huron area that was resembling a small but punchy bow echo. A thiner line of storms extended north of the bow echo segment and were crossing over Lake Huron. I decided to wait and load a few more satellite images and give my uncle and chase partner Dave Szozda a call to let him know of the situation. After a couple more satellite scans, it appeared the lake breeze convergence zone was shifting more west of Waterloo... perhaps the boundaries from Lake Ontario and Lake Erie seemed to be pushing stronger inland than the one coming off Lake Huron. Around 18Z I noticed the southern bow echo was starting to show signs of falling apart... at one point it did hit a 67.5 dbz reading on GRLevel3 but I figured that spike was the storm "downbursting out". Sure enough, the 18Z SPC mesoscale discussion had mentioned that area was starting to stabilize and sure enough, the bow echo weakened. However, we were keeping our eyes on the northern stuff to our west which was still holding over Lake Huron! Were the border customs being nice today? It was nearing Goderich around 3pm. I was hoping the squall line would intersect the lake breeze convergence and re-intensify. I loaded the RUC and saw that CAPES were about 1300 with a lifted index of around -6 to our west. Okay good... instability? Check. Lifting force? Check. Moisture? Check. The downside? The line was clocking at a good speed - 70 mph! Yikes!

We finally made our final decision that it would be best to head west towards the Listowel area for today's chase. I honestly was not expecting too much from today's chase, although I really had the itch to get out there again. If there were no tornadoes or structure, I wouldn't mind having a little bit of wind or hail. I also wanted to give my Streets and Trips GPS on the laptop a test run before leaving for the alley in a week. All good reasons to head out today, right?

Uncle Dave showed up around 4 and we headed north and west on hwy 85. There were a lot of elevated clouds in the area now due to the convergence zone. As we neared the line, we noticed a small shelf cloud off in the distance. As we neared it, I noticed how elevated it had appeared, and I couldn't believe the color of the precip core in behind... it was black with a slight hint of greenage!

We pulled off on Regional Road 11, just south of Conestoga Lake and pulled off the road onto the shoulder. I got out and was wowed by the amount of dust from the dry plowed farm fields being kicked up under the shelf cloud. Knowing that the storm was moving at a good speed, I had to grab my pictures right away and quickly before we would get blasted.

Around a quarter after 4, the winds had started to increase, so I decided to get my Kestrel to get an accurate wind reading, however, as soon as I turned it on, the intense winds and dust hit. WHOOOOOOOOSSSSHHH! Ow my bare legs! Ow my eyes! Ahhhhhhh! Luckily, I was still behind the van at this point, so that sheltered me a bit. I covered my face and hung on. Dirt piled up in my shoes, in my clean hair and inside my shirt, and Uncle Dave tried to open his door... he opened it only about 4 inches before the wind slammed it shut on him again. I figured it was time to get INSIDE the van. Uncle Dave finally got inside as well. Dust was blowing from the fields like mad! We estimated the winds to be very close to 100 km/h if not stronger. I was not able to get that accurate wind reading afterall, but with a dust blasting like that, I was more concerned about protecting my eyes and the camera. I looked out the windshield and saw a white structure tumble for a good distance in the field... it almost looked like some kind of metal shed. After the dust, the heavy rain hit. Winds were still pretty strong, but we were able to turn around carefully and head back on hwy 85. We saw a couple of felled branches and broken signs. I decided to try calling Canwarn to give a report but I couldn't hear anything due to the heavy rain and winds. I wanted to get ahead of it again, but unfortunately that was not possible. The leading edge was way ahead of us by now.

With it being such a thin line earlier, I was amazed at the amount of rain this storm was dumping. I believe the lake breezes may have helped played a roll in today's setup. We pulled back at my home close to 5pm, all covered in dirt but happy. It was a pretty good chase considering I was only expecting a LITTLE bit of wind and rain. I don't think we could have planned it better to intercept today's action.

Distance: 58 km
Time: approx 1 hour

Torn or Tornado?

2009-01-26T18:55:00.003-05:00

I am feeling so torn at the moment... on deciding on how to spend my two weeks vacation time off work.

A couple months ago, I had originally decided to go chasing with my friend in May. It's what I looked forward to ever since I went down to the alley for the first time in 2006. It was the second driest year since 1988, but we managed to see some of the best storms we have ever witnessed including the May 31st hybrid/haboob type storm in CO/KS and the isolated classic tornadic supercell on June 5th in SD.

Rumor has it that this year's season will be dry because right now, there is hardly any moisture on the plains, especially in the panhandles. Some were worried about the lack of moisture depth. Yet some others mention that there will be trouble on the plains this year... after quite an active season last year, I think there could be some great opportunities this year... but then again I hate long term forecasting because weather patterns change. What I found with 2008 was that although it was quite active, there were a lot of hidden tornadoes... HP was a big thing that season. I hope that maybe with the lack of moisture this year, there might be more classic isolated storms offering high contrasted tornadoes. That is the photo op I've been waiting for... I am sure all chasers are waiting for that opportunity.

Anyways... to the point. I planned to go down again during the first two weeks of May with my chase buddies. Just recently my BFF from high school invited my sister and I to go up with them to Manitoulin Island to spend two weeks at a lake front rental cottage. Here's the catch. I only get two weeks paid vacation from work. It's not easy for me to take extra time off because my job is quite important for the business. So now you can see why I am torn.

Do I take the chance and skip out on this year's chasing and miss a possible good tornado photo op? Or will the plains give me nothing but a sunburn? I love my BFF dearly, we are very close. We've been friends for over 10 years now! She is well aware of my tornado chasing obsession though. I just don't want to disapoint her... I would love to go up with them in the summer, but tornado season is limited. Seeing a beautiful tornado is almost like a once in a lifetime opportunity. Heck, storm chasing is my life. I fear the day that I would never be able to chase again.

Ever since I went down in 2006, it's like the plains have been calling my name. I only go for two weeks each year, but that place kinda feels like home to me in a way; I call it my second home. There's just something about that place I love... the openess, the interesting kind folks you meet on the road, the scenery, the storms, the endless big skies..... ok I think I just answered my own question... tornado alley here I come.

A Weathered 2008

2008-12-31T14:08:00.005-05:00

Well it is the end of the year. I don't know about you, but I have gained a lot of weather memories this year, including the "spring forward snow storm" in March, which brought 18 inches of snow, to beautiful storms in the plains to the "summer of rainbows", which brought a lot of high precipitation storms and still plenty of sunshine, and a very snowy autumn. Also including recent events such as more rainfall and major flooding in nearby towns and strong winds across the region. I would have to say that 2008 has been well weathered and is going out with a big chill.

Kitchener-Waterloo has made its third wettest on record since records have been kept in 1915, with 1,160.7 mm recorded at the University of Waterloo weather station. It was just shy of the record set in 1985 of 1,186.4 mm.

You can read Canada's top weather stories for 2008 here
You can also check out the U of W weather station blog here

May you have a very storm filled 2009!

Winter Morning

2008-12-23T22:35:00.006-05:00

To all my readers, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Happy New Year! The days are getting longer.

Blowing snow

2008-12-21T23:57:00.004-05:00

Ok I decided to get brave and run outside tonight. Man it's insane out there! Blowing snow everywhere with almost 0 visibility and not to mention a drift on our lawn that looks to be almost at my waist. I wanted to walk through it but I didn't have my big winter boots on and I did not want snowy pants either.

I grabbed my mother's camera because I still gotta charge the batteries for mine. These pictures are not the greatest, but this is what you get with point and shoot cameras at night. They really don't do justice of what is was really like.

Merry Crispness

2008-12-21T22:38:00.004-05:00

No that isn't a spelling error... it really is crisp outside, with a current wind chill reading of -18F (-28C). This weekend, southern Ontario was walloped by two snowstorms. One on Friday which brought about 8 inches of the white stuff, and one last night. I am not sure how much new snow fell last night because there was a lot of blowing and drifting snow. We do have a rather big snow drift on our front lawn. No, lawn is not the word... front arctic view might work better.

I was tempted to charge the camera batteries, but after watching the "snownado" out there, I chickened out and just sat on the couch inside the warm house. I am a big wimp when it comes to cold weather. I don't mind the snow and I must admit it looks rather pretty after a snowfall, but unfortunately the cold comes with it.

Sure, the latest snowbombs do not top the big snow dump we had last March (18 inches), but with these two storms combined, we gained a lot of new fresh snow, and another one coming on Christmas. It will depend on where the rain/snow line falls... Environment Canada is calling for either rain or snow. I hope it doesn't rain because that will make the new snow ugly looking and the rain will just turn into ice anyways.

Well I guess it could be worse... I could be living in the northern plains dealing with the arctic surge of extreme cold air. Yes... I am a big wimp.

In other news, if you're a member of SpotterChat.org, be sure to keep Sunday, Jan. 4th at 9pm Central open... Scott will be bringing in another big guest! More details coming soon. You can also read the chat transcript with Reed Timmer here.

Courtesy while Shopping

2008-12-14T18:47:00.005-05:00

I went out shopping with my mother and sister yesterday. As we pulled into the parking lot, it was obviously pretty packed. Lots of busy people are rushing to grab items for Christmas baking or finding that hard to get present for their loved one. Lots of rushing and crowding. Unfortunately what else comes with it is lack of courtesy for other shoppers.

As one person was about to pull out from their parking spot, we signaled our lights to take that spot next because it was in front of the store we wanted to go to. All of a sudden, some lady in her own little world decides to signal for the same spot as well, and pulls right into the spot after the other car leaves. Then what does she do? Gets her kid out and walks, not into the store, but way further down the parking lot to some other store! Not only did she steal our spot but she also had the nerve to go somewhere else. We did manage to get another spot in front of the store, but that is besides the point. Why on earth would you steal someone else's spot and not even go to that store? Why not pick a spot closer to the store you are going to? It would make it more convenient for people who are going to that store, don't you think?

I would never do this to someone else. It just wouldn't feel right. Please for pete's sakes, show some courtesy for other people this Holiday season. You are not the only one in this world. Treat others as you would like to be treated.

Special Guest Chat

2008-12-01T01:17:00.002-05:00

Steve Miller OK from SpotterChat.org announced tonight that on there will be a special guest chat on December 14th at 9 pm Central, featuring Discovery Storm Chasers star and fellow chaser, Reed Timmer. This will be a moderated live question and answer chat about the show or anything else you would like to know. So be sure to book this one in your schedule, it will be a fun evening!

All Things Chaser

2008-11-24T02:17:00.004-05:00

Finally, there is a cool place where you can browse dozens of chaser related items, such as DVDs, t-shirts, photos and more all under one roof. Recently opened, www.chasersupply.com, is your one-stop shop for chaser related stuff. Just in time for the Christmas shopping season! If you want to be notified of new releases, you can enter your email (at the bottom of the page). You can help a fellow chaser by posting a review of their video. It is the perfect place to find SDS treatment. I am actually debating on selling photos through Chaser Supply. It's something I've never done before, so we will see I guess.

The person behind this great idea? Scott Bennett. Not long ago, he introduced a new service to the chasing community, called SpotterChat.org. It is basically a chat program exclusively for spotters and chasers. Often, special chats are held. Before potential chase days, forecast discussions are held. It is like reuniting the chaser and spotter community. So far, I have immensely enjoyed it. You must give it a try! Hurry and sign up before SpotterChat becomes "invite only". Tonight, SpotterChat has reached 300 members, and growing!

I just don't get it...

2008-11-23T03:15:00.009-05:00

Why is it that some people go on TV and then get their panties up in a bunch when someone writes about them? Isn't it something that they should expect to happen? It was public TV for crying out loud. If you don't want to be criticized then don't go on TV. It's that simple. You're just simply asking for it.... everyone will talk about a certain individual who was on TV. Look at reality shows. Classic example. I attack actions, not people. My newest "friend" obviously did the latter... he failed to answer my questions regarding safety and made immature personal lashes. Sorry if I offended him, but that still doesn't give him a reason to retaliate in such a manner. Instead of stooping to an all-time low, why doesn't he use the blog he just created and talk about why he does what he does and how he is coming along. I have no problem with research. Then maybe, just maybe, people will start to show a little more respect for him.

7 °F

2008-11-22T15:49:00.003-05:00

Friday. It was the day of an uber snowsquall in a small Ontario town, Arkona. 76 cm, or 30 inches, of the white powder fell in a period of 24 hours due to classic lake effect snowsquall bands. My friend George Kourounis went out and managed to get some great photos of it all. I recommend visiting his site.

It was also the night of very cold temperatures across the region. A forecast low of 7 °F was in order and 12 °F for Saturday night. I was out taking my dog for her walk and I couldn't believe how cold it was. It was more like a damp cold, the kind that goes through you no matter how many layers you are wearing.

I thought they were predicting a warmer than normal winter, but so far it is only mid November and it feels more like mid January.

What gives? Framing photos

2008-11-17T02:35:00.002-05:00

When you want to print your photos in its proper proportion, you will run into issues. You look in every photo/framing store you can think of and you look up your nose. No where can it be seen... a 8x12 inch photo frame. They sell 8x10 and 11x17 and 8.5x11 but what about 8x12's? What gives?

Needless to say, I had quite the fun time this weekend trying to find something to put my photos in. I had to buy 11x17 frames and leave a black border around the photo. A little bit more costly than I'd like.... maybe it's all part of some marketing scheme. "Buy my 8x10's or pay more for bigger!". You know... since most photographers use cameras that have the 2:3 ratio.

I honestly see no appeal in 8x10's. What do the photo lab people do? They distort the image by squishing it to make it fit, and if you were to do that with a portrait of somebody or an object you recognize, you will notice the distortion.

Guess there is a monopoly to be had even in the photo industry. Shame.

What next? Irresponsible chasing on TV?

2008-11-17T01:04:00.002-05:00

First of all, the Storm Chasers show on Discovery is well worth watching. Probably one of the best shows I've seen in recent times that is chasing related.

Next up? Wannabe yahoo chasers on TV. Not something I would like to see. I apparently just came across some info regarding a Wife Swap episode of a storm chasing family and a safety family. That should prove to be interesting! The "storm chaser"? Richard Heene. Ya you heard me, I just called him out. Seriously, this dude apparently loves to make chasing storms priority number one, over school and other important life issues. They have a megaphone to wake up their entire household to go chasing and they sleep with their clothes on. I can understand being really passionate about chasing, but come on? To make the kids skip school so they can chase tornadoes? Sounds like to me they have their priorities mixed up. I came across some videos of the family and they all need a wake up call.

I really have no idea what this guy is trying to accomplish, something about researching magnetic fields around storms (he thinks mesocyclones affect magnetic fields locally). He's been featured on several news segments, which make me think he is just in it so he can be on TV. He has no website that I know of and isn't anywhere to be seen on any of the storm chasing community sites such as Stormtrack. I guess that is a good thing because he would probably get criticized on there like what I am doing now.

Heene states that the risks is all in the name of research. You can tell that is a load of BS right there. He rides a motorbike into the storm. Here's a news segment. My point? People like him on TV make us devoted, safe real storm chasers look like idiots in the general publics' eyes and we need to end this nonsense.

A while ago, many of us received an email from Heene. A Stormtrack thread erupted in its wake.

We should take his so called magnetic field and repel him off the plains. Sorry Heene, this post had to be made.

Storm Chaser Gear for Dummies

2008-11-06T01:38:00.003-05:00

You know you're bored when you start creating lists like these.

Storm Chaser Gear for Dummies

Camera - To take pictures of the blue skies while the chaser over in the next state has the tornadoes.

Video camera - To gather proof of chaser hordes wherever the DOW and TIV are. Also used as a way of having proof you really were inside that tornado.

GPS - To plan escape routes to get away from the DOW and TIV hordes. Also used to find where the nearest Dairy Queen or Sonic is.

Tripod - Used as a road block.

Ham radio - Used to report BSC (big scary clouds) while spotting.

Cell phone - To call mom when you are peeing your pants from freight.

Sunglasses - To make those big scary clouds seem darker than they really are.

Laptop - After consuming plenty of junk food on the road, the chaser develops a laptop.

Nose plugs - A must have if your chase partner eats an Allsups.

Spotter Network - A software tool to see where the chase crowds are headed.

Baron Mobile Threat Net - A software tool to find out where the heck your supercell is since it is no where to be seen.

Cooler - A hail storage container.

Light bar - Used to stir controversy among the chaser community. Sorry Stormtrack, but I just had to throw that one in there :-)

Disclaimer: These lists are intended for humor purposes only. They do not have any relation to the various for Dummies books.

Weather Instruments for Dummies

2008-11-05T22:14:00.005-05:00

On a November evening, I sit and ponder what to do during the winter season. This is a start. Oh dear, it's going to be a long winter....

Weather Instruments for Dummies

Anemometer - If it's missing, it's very windy out.

Visibility Sensor - If you can't find it, it's very foggy out.

Precipitation gauge - If it's flooded under, it's very wet out.

Thermometer - If you're sweating, it's too damn hot; if you're shivering, it's too damn cold.

Barometer - If you have high pressure, go see your doctor.

Hygrometer - If you think you're melting like the Wicked Witch from the Wizard of Oz, it's too humid out.

Ceilometer - If you get sunburned, there's obviously no clouds.

Doppler - Purple means the sky is falling. If it's rotating, bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

Eyes - Used to detect real time weather conditions used by those who can't afford to purchase fancy weather gadgets.

August 18 backyard storm chase

2008-09-25T22:31:00.003-04:00

Finally got a quickie backyard chase in. Backyard meaning as not in the alley.

I was watching the squall line take form on radar as it was heading in a SE direction towards Listowel. I gave Uncle Dave a call after Dave Patrick sent a message that there was a nice shelf cloud with it (thanks Dave!), so we both agreed to give it a try for a photo opportunity. As I was waiting for him, I saw some nice mammatus above my house as the anvil's leading edge came overhead.

We left at 7:30 and planned to set up just outside of Elmira on hwy 85. A photogenic shelf cloud came into view already, although not as contrasty as some of them have been, but still quite nice. Then again, there was only about an hour or less of daylight left. We pulled off the road near a barn and took some nice photos. It was starting to come right overhead by now. There was not a lot of wind with it, which was a bit surprising. Maybe it is because I have the Kestrel and it is wind shy? In behind, there looked to be a fairly decent core. There were some white bands which indicated a hail and rain downpour. I then saw a weird looking small roundish looking cloud, almost resembling a meso, but it was too small and didn't last longer than a couple minutes.

After the shelf cloud went overhead, I saw what looked like a low contrast funnel cloud in behind. I watched it closely for a few seconds but it disinigrated. Just a scud bomb. We felt the rain drops starting to fall and the outflow was starting to blow so we decided to bail the storm. On the way back into Waterloo, the shelf cloud was losing its well defined edge and seemed to be weakening, but the mammatus was still there. I guess we got this storm just in time! Got home close to 8:30 and not even 20 km driven! Gotta love those backyard chases sometimes... just a very simple chase with nice photos to boot.

Got home in time for the downpour of rain and intense lightning.

The High Risk

2008-09-25T22:26:00.002-04:00

DAY 12 JUNE 5, 2008

All right, time for the big day! Well at least that is what we had hoped for. It was going to be our last chance to catch anything before heading back home. If things went well, we would be following this system on the way home. I woke up around 9 am, and headed into the lobby to check out what was going to unfold today. Ohhhhhh crraaaaaap. No no no! Not a high risk! Damn damn damn! I hate high risks, they usually mean that these storms will be traveling at faster speeds and be mostly high wind events instead. There were two PDS tornado watch boxes out for Nebraska into Kansas and Oklahoma, but after seeing that high risk, I didn't have much hope anymore. Last year during our last chase day, we tried to catch up to a high risk setup over in Wisconsin but that was very hard to do given the motion speed. Ron never really had much luck with such setups. He prefers the moderate or even low risk setups for tornado days. I would tend to agree. But we were going to try. The low level jet was increasing. Central Nebraska it was.

We stopped in Kearney for another oil change and went to Best Buy since Ron needed a new power supply for his laptop. His laptop wasn't charging and was being drained of energy. It was pretty critical that he get it fixed. We waited in the parking for what seemed like an hour or so. The sky was getting filled with towering cumulus and turning grey. Finally, we were off. A storm was positioned to the west. Outside of town, we stopped on the shoulder to watch a wall cloud trying to get its act together. It looked like it was trying to produce a funnel cloud. Then a tornado warning was issued. Oh yippee! Let this be number one for the day please! Or not. The wall cloud began to fall apart. As we were watching the storm, a couple of women in a car driving by stopped on the road to ask us why we were taking pics. The storm lady! Look behind you! It sounded like they didn't like us standing there on the SHOULDER off the road. It wasn't even an interstate. Well excuse me miss, but we were not blocking traffic at all, it was completely safe where we were. There were NO signs saying no parking here. She could pass on by just fine. Plus we were not the ones who stopped in the middle of the road blocking other traffic to ask someone why they were taking photos! She seemed pretty oblivious to the potential developing tornado. Auuuggghhh. We just basically ignored them. No sense in arguing with people. We continued on after realizing there was not going to be more of a show.

We headed east toward some small town and pulled into a restaurant parking lot. Ron was still having some troubles with his laptop, so Jack decided to install the Baron on his instead. Oh what fun on a high risk day! I wanted to grab an ice cream cone but it was just a sit in restaurant instead. After fussing over laptops, Ron and Jack somewhat resolved the laptop issues for now, and we headed northeast. Ben saw what he thought was possibly a wall cloud, so we turned around to take a look. It was just a lowering over a hill, and the storm appeared to be going linear. I guess that ends this pursuit. At least we got away with seeing a wall cloud in this high risk setup, so I guess it was not a complete bust... just a big dissapoint for lack of a better tornado setup if you will.

It was time to start heading east and begin our journey home. In Stromsburg (I am so tempted to call it Stormsburg), we noted quite a bit of local flooding near the river from the numerous storm systems recently. The Kearney area sure has been hit hard. Unfortunately somebody's house was going to have some water damage. The entire foundation was under. There was also a park with the river running through it. This park was like a big pool of brown water. It looks like this flood was receding a little bit - the pathways we were walking on appeared to be under water at one point. What a mess! And then there was a wide puddle on one single side road. Hmmm. Ron told me he was going to get Jack to splash through that with the van. LOL. High risk setups = boredom stupid fun things. So? Ron and Jack get in the van, with Jack at the wheel. They headed towards the puddle. Splaaaassshhh! Water went up high on the sides. It made for some interesting photos. Let's do it again! Splaaassshh! And again! Ok maybe that was enough... we needed the van to get us home. It has been hit by a tornado, dented with 3 inch hail, coated with mud, soaked with big puddles and getting a bird stuck in the front grill. This van will have quite the story to tell once Jack returns it in Buffalo! Hah!

Our storm system was linear and beginning to bow out in eastern Nebraska already. It was traveling at 60 to 70 mph. Yeeesh! Forget that! After 10:30 central, we began our way east towards Iowa, we watched a bit of lightning. We went to spend the night at a Motel 6 in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Tomorrow was going to be quite the drive back home. Good bye tornado alley! See you next year!

Nebraska Supercells

2008-06-08T21:29:00.001-04:00

DAY 11 JUNE 4, 2008

In the morning, we hung around at the motel in Oakley, KS. I noticed contrails in the sky, a good sign that it was cold enough up there. We ate lunch at a truck stop nearby, then headed northeastward to get in position for the storms. We wanted to be north of the warm front. A dryline bulge was also setting up near the triple point low and the trough was expected to move in from the west and should be in the plains tomorrow. Tornado watches had been issued for central Nebraska.

Pam took the wheel and we went on the dirt roads in Kansas. Ahead of us was a big muddy mess. Hmmmm. A rental van that had been hit by a tornado and dented with hail. A muddy wet road. Hmmmm. Pam was too tempted to drive through it. SPLASH! Well, we made it without getting stuck, but the van sure got filthy! Mud splattered all over the windows. Hey I thought we rented a blue van and not a brown one! We continued north of hwy 283 and stopped in Prairie Dog State Park for a little bit to stretch our legs and move around a bit. One look at the van made me laugh out loud. It was just covered in mud! I guess now we can blend in with the local traffic.

A thick cumulus field was setting up nicely. Jack and I downloaded some models. CAPE was approximately 5000-6000, dewpoints were 16 behind the dryline, while they were in the 60s ahead of it. Now that was quite the dryline! The centre of the low was forecast to be in northwest Kansas by the evening.. Ron noted a line of storms starting to go up in northeast Nebraska, so things were starting to pop.

At 3:45 CDT, we crossed the Nebraska state line. By now, the cumulus field was growing, forming turkey towers. Some of the towers were showing signs of wind shear as well. All good signs. Unfortunately we hit road work and had to wait about 10 minutes for the lead car to let us go through. I hate it when we get stuck in these things.

Finally, we headed north on hwy 183. Ahead of us was one of the first storms of the day to go tornado warned. It was one county away, so we figured we should try to intercept it. Not too long after, another storm goes up further north of the other storm. By now, they both had hooks. We wouldn't be able to get to the second storm, so our only shot for now was the one west of the Kearney area.

We took some back dirt roads. As we neared the storm, structure was starting to show, so we pulled off the road and walked up on a hill (when you need flat land, you don't have it, and when you don't need it, you have it). The storm was starting to look great now. We stood in the strong inflow watching a wall cloud and then a funnel cloud try to form. A thin long beaver formed pointing towards the precipitation. I heard a familiar sound I have not heard since 2006... the constant low thundering sound of the hail shaft. A heavy rain and hail core could be seen in behind the structure. A few CGs struck. Ron said the supercell was 65,000 feet tall according to the Baron. Wow! Talk about updrafts! He also said that there was approximately 3 inch hail in the core. By now, several supercells were training one after the other, so this storm was just our first picking of the day.

As the core neared us, we decided to take off and head west to the next storm. Unfortunately for us, there was no low level jet for the storms to play with. Where is that trough when you need it? As we skirted the core, we saw a small fire caused by some gas lines. Luckily, a sheriff was further down the road so Ron told him about it. The sheriff was glad we brought that information to him, so he told us that our first storm had a funnel cloud reported. Jack turned the van around and we headed back east.

Unfortunately with this many storms around, it is hard to decide on which storms to go after. Ron kept checking on the Baron but there was not much else happening, so we decided to continue west again. Oh wait a minute. Now our first storm has an inbound and outbound couplet on the Baron, with 120 mph shear! We pulled into some small town to fill up on gas then went back east to our initial supercell. One lesson learned here is to never leave your initial storm.

All of a sudden the storm started to turn right and move east towards Kearney. Just what they need, another storm to clean up after, I thought. As we went through the Kearney area, the storm had evolved into a shelf cloud. We turned onto another road and pulled onto the shoulder to watch it move in. A couple of other chasers were nearby as well. Great, the storm was becoming outflow dominant. We took off eastward again on I80 and saw the shelf cloud morph into a classic roll cloud. We made the decision to give up on this storm and head back west to the other storms coming up this way. Ben thought he saw some rotation nearby so we pulled onto the shoulder. Unfortunately a sheriff pulled up in behind and said over his speaker "Driver you must move your vehicle, you cannot park here." Jack took off, which was the best thing to do. Why risk getting thrown in jail over something as small as that and not get any storms period? Sure we felt we were perfectly fine where we were, but we wanted to obey the law to avoid any complications.

Further down the interstate, we saw the tops of our initial storm get lit by the setting sun. Off to our west was another storm and from a distance, I could tell it had some structure to it. As we neared it my jaw dropped. It was a georgous barell shaped rotating mass of cloud. I tried to grab stills but since we were driving, they came out blurry. Plus it was getting dark out. Ron wanted to position us under the storm. As we went under it, we could see the entire base was rain free! WOW! It was just unbelievable that this big thing was not dropping any rain at all. We kept our eyes peeled for any sudden changes such as funnels and downbursts. We pulled onto a dirt road to take some pictures. It was just eerie and awesome at the same time. The winds were on the cool side but light. Almost like the calm before something big happens. We hung around for a little bit more, then Ron said we should go further west because a much bigger storm was coming up this way. This LP supercell was just not going to produce, but it sure as heck was eye candy!

Our next storm intercept was going to be the one that came up from the Denver area. Ron said this storm had been going on for hours. We saw lighting in the distance but the light show grew more intense as we neared the storm. We decided to park off on the side of a small road to try our hand at lightning shots. Great bolts were striking everywhere and everytime lightning flashed, I could see that some neat structure was hidden in the dark. I managed to grab some great lightning shots, which turned out to be the best ones I have ever taken. In some photos, it appeared that the storm had a stack of plates, three dramatic teirs formed. Some chasers or storm spotters pulled in behind and we had a small chat. They informed us that a tornado was going to be near Farnam, about two miles away. We decided to intercept it but changed our minds since Ron was worried about getting stuck in a muddy road at night with a tornado threat.

We continued back east and saw some CGs strike just off in the distance. We basically followed this storm all the way back to Lexington, where we planned to stay the night at a Super 8. In the parking lot, there was a large rain puddle that we went through. The water went up onto the hood with a big splash. Weeee that was fun! Let's do it again! The rest of us unloaded the van, and Jack went around to drive through it again, with Ben filming it this time. SPLASH! Now that is one way to clean a dirty van!

Today was a great day despite not seeing any tornadoes. If the low level jet had moved in, these beautiful storms would have been truly amazing. I was still happy with the shots I got though. Hopefully tomorrow would prove to be our big tornado day.

Cap is breaking

2008-06-04T03:58:00.003-04:00

DAY 10 JUNE 3, 2008

Today, Ron was sure we would be in for some rotating storms to our south. He had narrowed one area down (there were five potential areas for today). One of them was down in Missouri but that was too far of a drive, so the next reasonable option was to stick around eastern CO and western KS.

We got to sleep in today (Ron especially was pretty tired), so we left the motel at 11am MDT and headed into Burlington, CO to get some lunch at a Burger King. The cumulus field today was definitely better than the previous day, which had a 5C inversion. A trough was going to be moving in from the west, so we were expecting some pre frontal storms today, hopefully ones that would rotate.

After lunch, Felix wanted to film us along a dirt road outside of town by a field. That took about an hour, and we managed to get a nice tan. I continued to watch the cumulus field develop and some towers were going up to our west. We sat around for a bit more while Ron downloaded some models. The mobile internet connection on his laptop was giving him frustrations earlier. It always works when you don't need it, and it never works when you need it the most. Due to the time it took for Felix to film us, it set us back in time for catching up to any of the storms to our south.

We drove southward anyway and decided we go for ice cream in Lamar. Ron decided to go for a nap in Felix's car. A little bit later, Jack mentioned a tornado warning went up for the storm to our south, so he told Ron over the walky talkie. Ron came back to the van and we went after the storms to our south. We would skip Lamar and go slightly east into Kansas and head south. Storms were also going up just southeast of us, but appeared elevated. Hail shafts could be seen and a small hailbow formed off to the east. Ron looked to the west and said, "There!". A small wall cloud with a funnel cloud be seen off in the distance, but the funnel cloud eventually disapeared. The wall cloud was also losing its shape as we neared it, but Felix was getting excited nonetheless.

We crossed into Colorado. The storm still seemed to be high based and it was starting to weaken. Dang it, not again! We gave up on that storm and headed back east into Kansas. Back and forth, back and forth. Getting dizzy yet?

On the storm to our east, it looked like a wall cloud formed beside the precip core on the south side. And it was also weakening. Go figure. We filled up with gas in a small town back in Kansas and Felix and our group parted our ways. We saw a bit of mammatus from the storm off to the east. Well now it was time to travel back north again. Yeah I know, we just came from there. A developing bow echo was still going strong with a couple of rotation couplets that the Baron had picked up. We noted a bit of structure and banding on the storm once we neared it. It was all clear sky in behind, so when the sun set, the fields became really constrasted against the dark sky. It was a beautiful prairie scene! A partial rainbow formed to our right. We saw some scud rising and a wall cloud was trying to form. There were a few TVS markers on the storm and Ron mentioned that there were inbound and outbound winds. If it was going to produce a tornado, it would have made for a beautiful Kansas scene. Unfortunately the storm didn't really do much more and we called off the chase. As we were getting closer to the core, I attempted to get a long exposure of it with some lightning. It got very windy and tried to knock over my tripod. By the time I set up, it started to rain, so my attempt failed. We booked rooms in Oakely for the night.

All in all, it was nice to see something in the sky again. Today was going to be a good sign of things to come. Instability was in the air and today's convection helped break the cap a bit. Tomorrow and the next day looks to be much more interesting as the trough sets in from the west. Stay tuned.

Cap: Boom or Bust

2008-06-04T02:29:00.000-04:00

DAY 9 JUNE 2, 2008

There were two areas of interest today, one to the north and one to the south. Dynamics favored rotating storms for the south but the cap was stronger, while the cap was weaker but less chance of rotating storms to the north.

We departed from Ogallala, NE at 11am MDT. It was a bit of a bumpy ride, it seemed the balance was off on the tires. In Sidney, we grabbed a Pizza Hut buffet lunch and went to go for an oil change and have the tires looked at but we couldn't find a place that would do it quick enough. We continued south and stopped at a Super 8 so Ron could get some wifi to check the models. He was still a bit uncertain of which target to pick today. While he was doing that, I was doing some sky reading. It seemed that things would definitely rotate today... we noted a small cumulus actually rotating in the shear environment. The sky was pretty clear still, a telling sign that the cap was in place and would be stubborn to pop. But if it went, things would get real interesting.

Ron finally decided that we head south and east, hoping that the strong cap would budge and give us good storms later in the day. On hwy 36, we saw some really old cars stuck in along the banks of a dried up river, probably to help prevent erosion. The people out here sure have interesting ways to use their resources, that is for sure. We continued east into Kansas and stopped in Colby to have something to chew on at, yep, a Sonic at around 8:30 CDT. We watched the sky and Ron continued to update himself on models, satellite and radar feeds.

We saw some development to our west back in Colorado, just east of Denver (go figure!), so we decided to try our hand on catching up to it. So we head back on I70 west. As we were nearing the supercell, it started to look very promising. Ron was hoping to get us into position to see a nighttime tornado. We were about a half hour away from the supercell when it started to turn right and hook. Dang it! Why can't these things just wait till we get there?! Well, it looked like a very healthy supercell so our hopes on catching something interesting remained high. At one point it had a v-notch and it was 60,000 ft tall. Beautiful! Unfortunately it appeared some small towns where in the path of this tornado warned storm.

Then something unexpected happened. A microburst occurred just northeast of the supercell and it started to collapse. Noooooooooo! Not only did we miss any potential tornado, but we missed the storm when it was at its best thanks to the microburst. The cold air have pushed everything away that the supercell needed to survive on, such as inflow. We took some back roads and saw a little bit of lightning and pulled over to observe and photograph lightning but that didn't even go as well as I had hoped because the storm was dying. Unfortunately by now, it lacked structure and good bolts. Boooo, Hissss, Roar! We gave up on our frustrating day and spent the night in Limon, CO at an Econo Lodge.

The storm that almost did it

2008-06-03T02:23:00.001-04:00

DAY 8, JUNE 1, 2008

Today, we met Felix from France. He was going to follow us on our chases for the next couple of days.

We left Liberal, KS to heard north on hwy 83 and stopped in Garden City for a data stop. Since we pulled in late, Ron didn't get a chance to check on the models. The poor man needed some sleep! He is one dedicated individual, but if he wanted to sleep, he must have been very tired. We did one more stop in Oakley so Ron could get more updated models and analyze them, while Felix filmed him. A cirrus cloud deck with a nice cumulus field was setting in, and a solar halo formed.

We headed west on I70. Pam mentioned she had to go to the bathroom, so we tried to look for one opened in a small town called Kanorado. This placed looked a little poor and to our surprise we coudln't find any decent bathrooms, so we continued to Burlington, CO to eat lunch at, you guessed it... Sonic! That place is great when you need a hot meal right away at a good price.

Ron decided to drive with Felix, while I helped Jack navigate us north to Julesburg on hwy 385. I was constantly checking satellite and surface winds. Things were coming together nicely, with southeast surface backing winds. SPC issued a tornado watch for west of where we wanted to go. Storms were firing up in northcentral Nebraska in Cherry county and creating an outflow boundary, while another storm was developing near Scottsbluff, NE from upslope flow. I figured the outflow boundary would track west as the Scottsbluff storm tracked eastward. It was only moving ENE at 29 mph according to the Baron. I watched the storm on radar as it continued to organize better and turn supercellular. It eventually looked like it was going to split and become a right mover.

When we got to Julesburg, we continued north towards the storm. The storm looked like it was back building and the anvil just kept pushing out rock hard. We took some dirt back roads and saw some beautiful structure, including two wall low bulky wall clouds. We turned left on another back road to try to get closer to the wall cloud. I happened to look up above us and see a pointy funnel cloud almost right above us. I told Jack to stop now. We watched the funnel cloud but it dissipated, so we continued on. It seemed to remind me of what happened in Pratt, KS on Monday. Off in the distance, we saw a downburst form. We had to cut through part of the rain and hail core. I really wanted to get us to the other side of the core, but the road options were a little less to be desired in this area. I saw a road that went south on Streets and Trips, but it was just a cattle road. Great. Jack said we were getting too far from where we wanted to be, so we pulled over. Ron came back to ride with us and try to find a way to get on the other side of the core. We turned around to get back on an actual highway.

We cut through the hail core once more on I80 and pulled off on the shoulder under an overpass to wait out the hail. It was starting to accumulate. Once it let up a bit, we headed back west and south to get a better view of the wall cloud. By now the Baron was showing a hook forming and a tornado warning was issued. The supercell was turning right, as I had thought it would do. The RFD opened up and kicked up a whole bunch of dust in the fields so high it went up into the wall cloud. Ron got us in position where the inbound and outbound winds were meeting. If it was going to produce a tornado, it was going to do it nearby, so we had to keep our eyes peeled. There was a lot of inflow and outflow kicking up dust and a few times it almost looked like something was going to develop. We continued north. No tornadic vortex signatures were indicated but some shear couplets were picked up, although nothing too dangerous. We re-entered the hail core one last time. It was amazing that our windshield held up. We figured it would have a few weak spots because of the chips in it. Once we got out of the hail core again, we saw a nice bell shaped storm to our south with lightning flashing in it. Beautiful! I wanted to get a shot so Ron pulled over for me. I had to stand under the back hatch, but I was still getting a bit wet. I managed to get a couple of good stills with the bell shaped storm and cloud to cloud lightning.

We stayed in Ogallala, NE tonight at a Super 8 and plan to head due east tomorrow's moderate risk. Oh yeah, did I mentioned I typed this at 2 am? I don't need no stinkin' sleep!

Binger, OK Supercell

2008-06-03T02:19:00.001-04:00

DAY 7 MAY 31, 2008

We left Lamar, MO and headed west to Oklahoma on hwy 166. We decided to go wait for a little bit in Wakita, OK at the Twister Museum while Ron checked the models. The sky looked capped today but indices and dynamics for a tornadic supercell were there. A boundary was off to the southeast. Ron expected the action to occur in southcentral Kansas and northcentral Oklahoma. We decided to head a bit more west to get closer to the dryline bulge. We pulled in to Alva, OK for a mid afternoon lunch at Sonic and hung around there for a bit. I took wind, temperature and humidity readings. The winds were coming from the east northeast and it seemed a bit dry, but some towers were starting to build along the boundary.

We pulled into a McDonalds after to get wifi so Ron could get an update on the models. I noticed something building off in the distance along the boundary. Some of the TCU was starting to explode and anvil out! I called everyone over to have a peak. It was such a great thing to see, given it was getting later in the day and we were about to give up. We continued to watch as it grew more. This storm went up in less than a half hour, which indicated that the updrafts were quite strong. Jack brought up the Baron to see what it was doing on radar. It was southeast of our initial target, but it was only about 60 miles away and probably the only storm of the day. Ron's words? "Ok let's go."

On our way south on hwy 81 through Enid, the sun began to set, creating a beautiful sunset with the supercell. The storm was 60,000 feet tall already! The sun set but we did not give up on the chase. At first lightning couldn't be seen, but as we got closer, lightning illuminated the supercell's features... it seemed to have a classic barberpole effect and beautiful updrafts! Oh I was it were daytime! We pulled west at Minco on hwy 152 to get to the south side of the storm. A low big bulky wall cloud could be seen near Binger. We pulled onto a dirt road to watch the wall cloud and grab lightning shots. Later we decided to continue west to get closer to the rotation. We pulled over and got out of the car. The first thing I noticed was a tornadic roaring sound... the winds in the vault region of the supercell were cranking! A large rotating wall cloud hung low to the ground. I did another attempt to get lightning shots with the wall cloud, but after I took the first picture, my camera decided to not cooperate. I wanted to keep the shutter open on bulb but it shut closed on me without letting go of the shutter cable release. I couldn't figure out why and I was getting worried that my camera was screwing up, so I tried putting in a new memory card. It still did the same thing, so I threw in a new battery, but it still did the same thing! "Gosh darn it why of all times must it do this?!", I thought.

After taking a better look, I realized that I must have accidently switched camera shooting modes and my settings changed on me. Doh! I set it back to manual and continued to get another atempt, but the rain started to come down. I played back my pictures and realized that I actually did manage to get one picture of a CG right beside the bowel shaped wall cloud. Awesome!

It was close to midnight now, and we still had to get back to Liberal, KS because Ron booked rooms there. We were supposed to neet Felix from France, who is doing a severe weather documentary. We had a 4 hour drive to do, and it looked like we would be pulling into the motel at 4 am. Oh dear!

We called the chase off and stayed at a Super 8 in Liberal, KS. We were getting very giddy from such a long drive and pulling in very late. It looked like a nice place to stay but too bad we would only get about 4 hours worth of sleep!

Ron was planning to target northeast Colorado and western Nebraska tomorrow.

Missouri Lightning

2008-05-31T04:06:00.006-04:00

DAY 6 MAY 30, 2008

I had SUCH a rough time waking up this morning. I guess that is what I get for staying up late and going to bed at 5 in the morning, heh. Last night Ben, Jack, Ron and I were reviewing the tornado video that Ben had took. It shows up quite nicely. Apparently the dark feature we saw under the wall cloud to the right may have been the Kearney tornado because the tornado was reported to be around that area in that time frame. When I first saw it, it did have a smooth tornado-like edge, but got obscured by the wrapping core. Never did see the power flahses though. The small tornado on the left was very likely a satellite tornado. We picked up a copy of the Omaha World-Herald newspaper because it had an article on the Kearney tornadoes. Yeah, it sounds like there were a few.

We met Cheryl Chang from Florida and had a chat about the storm on Thursday and then departed from Kearney, NE and decided to head towards western Missouri and eastern Kansas for later today. Just east of Kearney, we saw moderate tornado damage, with some buildings blown apart and irrigation systems tipped right over. That tornado definitely seemed to have lasted a while, and judging from the damage path, it was decently wide. We are glad that no one was injured or killed!

We stopped in Lincoln, NE to grab some snacks. The roads in that town were so messed up, we kept running into dead ends. And then we found a store to grab some snacks. Ron wanted to pick up some rice crispy squares but the clerk had obviously no clue what they were. "I think I've seen those before...." Ummm okay, never mind! Ron said the food cans had dust on them. Talk about rat infested or what. We then took a break at Wilderness Park to stretch our legs. We were planning on staying for a couple hours, so Pam decided to go for a long walk. The rest of us basically stayed at the van. Jack and Ben were trying to upload video to WKBW Channel 7 Buffalo of the tornadoes we saw yesterday.

A tornado watch had gone up for the risk area and SPC was extending the moderate risk further southwest. Perfect! Ok Pam time to leave! Where the heck is she? Crap. We had to find her in that thick forest. The trails were muddy and one trail had big branches going across it. The other trail had poison ivy. Oh wonderful, I thought. It took a while to get Pam (Ben and Jack had the idea to call her Blackberry because she did take it with her). Pam finally came out of the woods. I took a leak behind a big gravel pile. Talk about one giant litterbox!

We had to travel to Missouri because the setup was looking better throughout the day. It was going to be a late evening and night chase this time. Ron expected the storms to fire right along the slow moving cold front, with the storms starting off in the northeast and then firing along down the line into southeast Kansas. We were going to aim in between the slight and moderate risk areas.

At 6:02 CDT, we entered Kansas City, MO. A few TCU were starting to form. Tornado watch boxes were going up from Illinois and extending soutwestward towards our target. It was going to get interesting. A convergence area of TCU was developing along the boundary just south of Kansas City. We planned to get into the area and just wait for things to explode.

We headed south on I71. The TCU was going up very nice along the boundary, forming turkey towers. The winds were blowing from the south and temps were in the 90s. Very good so far. Ron loaded a surface winds map on Baron... they were looking very promising. We stopped in Harrisonville for a quick bite to eat at 6:50. As we were eating, we watched the towers along the boundary fire up... what great updraft motion! As we stopped for gas, we watched as the updrafts were beginning to corkscrew... what a great sign!

Time for intercept... at 7:50 we continued south on I71. We could see the boundary just explode all the way along. Ron got an updated map and noticed a dryline bulge in southeastern Kansas. We were eventually going to work our way down there.

As we neared the boundary and developing storms, I noticed the bases were elevated... not a good sign for tornadic activity. High bases have a hard time producing. Nonetheless, the towers were just amazing to see. They were rock hard, there were mammatus under the anvils and some of the updrafts were corkscrewing a bit. Plus, the sun was setting which casted beautiful orangey pink hues on the towers. According to Ron, the storm we were going to intercept was 55,000 feet tall. Man I wish they were not elevated because they had so much potential!

We continued straight south towards one of the storms that went up ahead. Heavy rain soon engulfed us and we continued south to get ahead of the storm. When it finally cleared, we turned west and then went on some back dirt roads. We saw some chasers taking shots of the storm, so we continued to go down further away from them as to not interfere with what they were doing. We wanted to get lightning and we didn't want other vehicles around us. When we got out to set up, lightning bugs (how appropriate!) were flying in the fields. It was pretty neat. Most of the lightning was in-cloud with a few nice CGs. I snapped a few images and only one of them came out good. A bit of a wall cloud was forming and a long inflow tail formed, with strikes coming out the bottom of it. The other chasers eventually came up to us and said hi, but I was too busy shooting lightning shots to chat with them (no idea who they are). They left, and we hung around for a little big longer. It started to rain so we decided to play another area of the storms to get another lightning spot. We pulled onto a back road just on the outskirts of Lamar, MO to take more lightning shots. This time I managed to grab a few nice ones with a water tower in the foreground. The storms were weakening and getting further away, so we decided to stay in Lamar for the night at a Super 8.

Tomorrow we will be heading to Oklahoma.

Kearney, NE tornadoes

2008-05-31T04:03:00.004-04:00

DAY 5 MAY 29, 2008

We left Delhart, Texas in the morning and headed north towards south central Nebraska to chase the moderate risk area. Indices were quite high and seemed favorable for tornadic supercells. At least that is what we were hoping for. It was going to be a typical get up and go haul. The warm sector was heating up nicely, with southeast backing winds increasing in speed throughout the day. We had to be on I80 by around the dinner hour near Kearney, NE.

On our way up, we passed through Greensburg, Kansas, a town that was hit by the first EF 5 tornado last May. It was quite eerie since there were still a lot of scars leftover. However, they were making good progress of rebuilding their town despite what had happened. That town just amazes me because of their sense of community pulling together after a disaster. The people there seem to have so much hope for a brighter, greener future.

A nice cumulus field was setting up in western Nebraska, with towers starting to build up along boundaries that were taking place. So far things looked really good. By mid afternoon, a supercell was starting to develop and track eastward. That was going to be the first major storm of the day. Ron mentioned that SPC had put out a high risk. Oh boy here we go... I can see it now, a bowing segment with clocking forward motion speeds. High risk days seem to do that to us. We were still hoping that the developing supercell over western NE would stay isolated.

As we kept tracking north, the supercell had formed a hook. I was able to get mobile internet working on my laptop, and came across a picture of a nice wall cloud that a chaser took 20 minutes ago. We were going to be in for something good today! We could already see another storm just to our west starting to go up, with mammatus under the anvil.

We crossed the NE state border and headed slightly north. The supercell that we were targeting was finally coming into view. Wow what a nice stack of plates developing! We saw a small funnel cloud. We cut eastward to get ahead of the storm and managed to find some back roads to get into position with a good road network. We saw a few chasers on the road but it was not very crowded, which was nice. Strong inflow started to kick up dust into the storm. Wow! By now, the stack of plates was starting to look really dramatic. The Baron was picking up several rotation couplets on the storm, and we could see a wall cloud and a couple other areas of rotation. When we were south of Kearney between I80 and hwy 34 on 690 Q Road approx. 3 miles northwest of Minden, NE, we saw a dark solid looking feature underneath the wall cloud. According to the Baron, this storm was cranking. What the heck is that? Tornado? It took on kind of a wedge-like appearance. Ben and Pam then pointed out a definite tornado just to the left of this interesting feature. I looked to my left and saw a light tan colored condensed funnel halfway to the ground with a debris swirl underneath it. That at least makes 3 for us this week so far! Woo hoo! I grabbed one photo of it while Ben rolled video before it quickly dissipated. By now we lost sight of the dark unknown feature because it became rain-wrapped. We were facing north towards Kearney and it all happened around 5:32 CDT.

After that excitement, we turned left on another back road to watch an area of rotation. It was pretty neat watching it spin and a clear slot was overhead. We watched this for a little bit before continuing back north to I80. By now the storm was crapping out and picking up forward motion speed. A typical high risk setup. We headed east to try to catch up again but gave up and turned around and headed into Kearney to fill up with gas. We had trouble finding a gas station that had power. Driving through town, we saw large trees uprooted and slight structural damage. Some windows were blown right out and shingles peeled off roofs. We finally found a gas station that was opened and filled up. We then decided to take a look around at some of the damage. Some of the tree damage was just incredible. One particular tree that was beside a sidewalk got uprooted and lifted up a few of the sidewalk blocks with it. Some other trees fell right beside homes just barely missing it. Roof shingles were blown off with some parts of roofs totally stripped of shingles. Some metal posts were bent, signs damaged. The people in town were walking around and seemed to be ok. We didn't find anyone that needed emergency help which was a good thing. Some of the damage was facing in one direction while the rest of it was facing another direction, which suggested possible tornadic activity.

Later on, we heard that some people, including chasers saw power flashes while the storm was happening and it was confirmed that a tornado was definitely in town. We think that the dark feature we saw under the wall cloud could have been the tornado. We decided to grab a bite to eat at USA Steak Buffet. During dinner, I happened to look out the window and see beautiful sunset lit mammatus. I went outside to grab some photos. After dinner, we sat in the parking lot during twilight to look at the mammatus as it got dark. Definitely the best mammatus I have ever seen. My photos came out quite nice, with lots of color and dramatic appearance.

Tomorrow we plan to make our way towards Oklahoma if no storms are expected. A great day, despite missing the Kansas tornado fest.

Hailer in New Mexico

2008-05-31T04:03:00.001-04:00

DAY 4 MAY 28, 2008

Well, I kinda regret not getting to bed earlier. I had a lot of blogging to do to get caught up, so I didn't get to bed till around 5 am. Thank goodness we got to sleep in today! Hell, I don't need no stinkin' sleep anyway.

Anyway, managed to finally wake up and went online to check models for Friday's forecast. So far it looks very interesting in Nebraska. Models were hinting at an isolated tornadic supercell. But that's tomorrow... today we need to worry about the 5% tornado risk for eastern New Mexico. Prior to leaving the motel, Geoff, Drew, my sister and I were playing a game of bouncy ball catch in the parking. It would bounce off their vehicle. I wonder if Spotter Network would take a report of bouncy ball hail?

We left around lunch time, and headed west on hwy 287. Shortly after 12:30, the overcast sky finally started to break up into a nice cumulus field to our north. We stopped in Amarillo for lunch at the Big Texan and visted the Cadillac Ranch. We then continued west towards New Mexico. On the way we saw nice big transverse rolls.

Boundaries were setting up New Mexico. At 4:29 MDT we saw a developing supercell west of San Miguet, so we decided to target west northwest of Santa Rosa, or southeast of Santa Fe. The Baron was already picking up rotation couplets and a boundary heading westward was expected to intersect the storm. As we were heading west on I40, two supercells were now developed, one to the north of the highway and the other to the south. We planned to take hwy 84 because it was the best road option to go north. There aren't many road options in New Mexico, so this was going to be tricky to intercept. A tornado warning was issued for the first storm, which was moving northeast at 39 mph.

At 5:13, the north storm went east of hwy 84, so we had to turn around and go find a road further east. By now the southern storm was weakening while the northern storm was still cranking. The couplets were getting stronger as the storm was tracking east and it slightly slowed down a bit to 30 mph.

We finally found a road option to go north on hwy 129. At 5:46, a new tornado warning went up. It was difficult to really see the storm from a distance because of the hills and mesas. We encountered heavy rain and saw a small beaver tail ahead. We then turned left on some back road and pulled over to watch the storm. A brief wall cloud formed but fell apart. We had to turn south once again to get out of the approaching rain and hail core, but it almost caught up to us. A few powerful CGs struck some of the hills. We had some small pea sized hail but then heard two loud thuds on top of the van. That was the sound of golfball sized hail. That's okay, it's not like we actually own the vehicle anyway! Just hope they don't question Jack when he returns the van back to Buffalo, with the sandblasted windshield and headlights and two new hail dents on the roof.

We finally got ahead of the core and had enough time to watch an area of rotating scud, but we had to get ahead of it again since the core was catching up. We stopped briefly to take pictures of the heavy core, but then the core finally overtook us. The core was wrapping around with the storm's rotation. At 6:49, we turned around once again to check out the storm behind our current storm. We didn't see much else, other than another developing wall cloud and some outflow features. A couple of chasers passed us quickly... no idea who they are, but the white van was tailgating the other guy ahead of him. Crazy, but whatever floats their boat I guess. The storm was no longer doing much else, and we said goodbye to Geoff and Drew. Glad to have made a couple of new friends on the trip as they are cool guys.

We decided to start working our way east back up to the Oklahoma panhandle. We went to a small convenience store to take a bathroom break. We got back on the interstate and saw a small compact wall cloud directly ahead of us. Ron wanted to get a shot of it but a light post was in the way. By the time the viewing cleared, the wall cloud had fallen apart. On our way, we were keeping up with the storm. We found a gas station and filled up with gas. Lots of lightning and heavy rain. We did get some pea sized hail mixed in there as well. The storm was starting to bow out. We stayed the night in Delhart, TX at the Comfort Inn. Tomorrow we were to get up early and haul north in time for a potential tornado fest in Nebraska and Kansas.

Structure and Mammatus

2008-05-28T05:11:00.002-04:00

DAY 3 MAY 27, 2008

Ron asked me the other day, "What is luck?". I didn't have an answer. He said, "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity." I would have to agree with him on that one. It really does apply to chasing, and yesterday proved it.

Our second night was a much better sleep... when we stayed in St. Louis the first night, we had constant loud thunderstorms go through the area in the early morning hours. It kept waking me up. It was great to hear thunder but when you are running on a 4 hour sleep, you want to get as much sleep as you can in order to function for a chase day. Of course it is pretty ironic coming from me, as I am typing this log at 3 am Wednesday morning. Sleep? I don't need no stinkin' sleep.

Anyway, today was looking like another risk of storms, although not as big as yesterday's event. At around 10 am, we all gathered. We saw the Cloud 9 Tours group and George Kourounis came by to say hi. I also got to meet Charles Edwards for the first time. After chatting for a bit, we decided to take off and pick up Pam and Ben at the Dennys restaurant where we were supposed to meet up at. We let them finish up. We figured the rest of us would get something to eat in Oklahoma City. Ron wanted to get further southwest than originally planned. In the meantime, we had apples and bars to tie us over until then. Ron was having some issues with the mobile internet so Jack sat in the back to work on his laptop to get it to run faster, while I helped Ron with navigating.

Today we were looking at a cold front set up, with a large outflow boundary from the previous storm activity in Kansas and Missouri. SPC highlighted southwestern Oklahoma and the eastern Texas panhandle area for a 5% chance of tornadoes with a slight risk of severe storms. We ate a quick lunch at a Sonic just outside of Oklahoma City and met up with Jeff and Drew in Lawton. It was a bit hard to find them at first because we really didn't know where they were in related to the highway. We met up with them in a Ramada Inn parking lot near the highway. We watched a bunch of prairie dogs run about in a grassy area beside the inn and had a quick restroom break. I loaded a satellite loop and saw numerous boundaries setting up and colliding in our target area already. I had a feeling we were going to be running a bit behind. The SPC issued a mesoscale discussion for Childress, Texas, Jackson and Harmon counties in Oklahoma. By mid afternoon, storms were already firing up along the outflow boundary near the area and we had to get over there quickly.

We pulled into an Allsups in Frederick, Oklahoma to fill up on gas (and for myself, an Allsups Beef and Bean burrito) at 4:30. As we continued westward, the storm came into view. It almost had a bell appearance to it and I could see a bit of beaver tail pointing into the core. I could tell that this storm would possibly put on a structure show. We then took hwy 5 to get closer to the storm. We saw a chase tour group and some other chasers, but not near as many as yesterday. As we neared it, Ron pointed out a small funnel cloud, which I didn't see at first. It never amounted to anything.

The structure started to take on a nice smooth rounded appearance, so we pulled off the hwy to grab some shots. It looked like the RFD was coming in, but I didn't like the winds blowing away from the storm... a bad sign that this storm would become outflow dominant. The RFD did kick up some dust in a field. We continued toward it for a bit, got into some rain, then we turned around to get ahead of the storm. As we were doing so, dust started to get picked up in the fields and a gustnado formed to our right. It was beginning to remind me of the haboob that Scott, Ron and I were on back in 2006 in Colorado/Kansas.

As we got ahead of it, we found another spot to pull over to get some more photos. We watched an area of rising scud, which I thought was going to be our wall cloud, but alas it broke apart. There was just not enough inflow happening here. I saw no feeder bands and we realized this storm was not going to do much else but rain itself out.

Ron decided that we abandon this storm and try a newer storm located just northwest of Vernon, Texas. We took hwy 91 and followed it towards a small town called Chillicothe.

We didn't see any structure to this storm... it was basically "crapvection" rainstorms. I am sure the plains would love to see more rain... some areas have been flooded and are still very saturated from the previous storm systems. There has been a lot of activity within a week and yesterday created a lot of rain which triggered flash flood warnings in parts of Kansas.

We decided to give up. We found a spot near the railroad crossing in Chillicothe to wait for Jeff and Drew to catch up to us, then we booked rooms at a Quality Inn in Childress. As we were unloading the van, mammatus was overhead and the sun was just getting ready to set. We put our stuff in our rooms, got out our cameras and tripods and headed just on the outskirts of town to photograph nice sunset lit mammatus. Nothing like a peaceful way to end the day. We then went for dinner at Pizza Hut.

Tomorrow, Ron is looking at eastern New Mexico. So far the SPC day 1 outlook has a slight risk.

An Ozsome Experience in Kansas

2008-05-28T04:02:00.003-04:00

DAY 2 MAY 26, 2008

Today we were going to play the triple point and dryline bulge in central Kansas south of I70 and west of I35. Ron favored this area due to convergence and an outflow boundary tracking southwest from the night's storms in Missouri, with good low level shear, instibility and moisture.

We left St. Louis in the morning and headed west on I70 towards the Salina-Wichita, Kansas area. The SPC had issued a moderate risk with a 10% chance of tornadoes. On our way west, we saw signs of horizontal vorticity - transverse rolls. Accas could also be seen in some spots, noting signs of instability. Finally at around 2:03 pm CDT, a tornado watch had gone up for south central Kansas into the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles.

We pulled into a service station somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Kansas and met up with a film crew, Jeff and Drew, doing a documentary on lightning. Ron knew the guys from previous filming in the past, and we were going to help them get into position for a good filming shoot. It was still overcast in this area due to the storms in Missouri and the winds were a bit on the cool side as well, with wind gusts clocking at about 15 knots. Temperate and dewpoint were about mid 70s over mid 60s so that wasn't too bad of a sign.

We all continued west on I70. Fellow chaser Fred Plowman waved at us as he passed by. A storm began to develop south of Wichita, but we decided to not play it because it was still a bit early and east for the real action. We were hoping that the storm would create an outflow boundary/feeder band for the storm we would plan to intercept later on. We stopped at a Subway in Wichita and watched the storm to our south. It did exactly what we thought it would do, create an outflow boundary and feeder band for our storm later on. It was all pointing in a good direction, so we had our sign of good inflow.

At around 4 pm, Ron wanted to head slightly west of Wichita towards the Pratt/Greensburg area. Ron went on mobile internet to get a satellite feed. It showed two boundaries going to collide into each other in our target area. A storm was also going up to our southwest, and around 5:15, a tornado warning was issued. As was got closer to this new storm, the one south of Wichita was finally dying and the flanking line on our supercell was getting bigger... the outflow from the Wichita storm was feeding into this new supercell. We filled up with gas and went on our way. The film crew wanted to get a shot of the beginning of the storm through a line of trees, so we eventually found a spot on a dirt off the interstate. Jeff and Drew got their video, so we continued on our way towards the storm.

As we neared the storm, we got into a rain and hail mix around 6:09. The hail was about 1 to 1.5 inches in size. It looked like our storm was going to become of the high precipation type. On our way west on hwy 54/400 we saw a long armada of the DOW truck, mobile mesonet vehicles, chasers and possibly local folk driving away from the storm. We were wondering why, but that didn't stop us from going inside. If we wanted tornadoes, we had to get closer than that to see them in this HP mess. A bit dangerous? Yeah, but with all the rain, any tornadoes that would form would likely be weak and brief. Ron knew what he was doing.

We pulled off the hwy onto a dirt road. Jack seemed to have a little bit of trouble handling the wheels at first due to the slipperyness of the "road" but soon managed to gain better control. It was a rental van afterall, so he was still learning the ropes. Hmmm, a rental van you say? I wonder how much we can get away with before the insurance nails us? Off to our right, I saw a large hail/rain core in the distance with a slight greenish tinge. Realizing we were not seeing much in this area, we went north again back to hwy 54. By now we were just southwest of Pratt. Ron decided to stop on another dirt road to get some photo opportunities of the giant core. What strong inflow this thing was sucking in! We watched it for a bit before I yelled for everyone to get into the van - I could literally watch as the core rapidly approached us down the road! Pam sure has interesting ways to get inside a vehicle quickly, practically falling backwards into her seat in the back of the van, while dragging her feet across one of the middle seats. Well, whatever works I guess, LOL.

Jack drove onto hwy 281, where we quickly got into very torrential rain and hail, with almost zero visibility. For a few seconds I thought to myself that a tornado would be on the other side of the precip, and then the precip actually did clear. Then what happens? Well, a small tornado touched down in a field to our left, crossed the road in front of us and went into the grassy field on our right all in a matter of several seconds. It was approximately 50 to 100 feet away! I saw it spin in the grass field, so I quickly rolled down the window to get a better view since it wasn't raining anymore. A howling/hissing noise could be heard! I was actually hearing my first tornado! I managed to grab one good shot of it. The tornado was semi transparent but it was very evident tornadic circulation was there as we could see it partially. Everything was moving so fast. Normally, we don't recommend to intercept tornadoes this way most of the time because you really don't know how big it could get.

After that exciting but brief encounter, Ron logged the tornado into Spotter Network. We went on another dirt road to get off the interstate to watch another area of the storm. About 10 mintes later, I saw a lowering just to our north that looked like it was trying to form a wall cloud and rotate. A piece of scud curled like a wave quickly. I watched the area for several minutes before deciding that it didn't seem to be doing much. We continued up the road, and pulled over again. At around 7:18, Jack noted a funnel cloud right above us, but I couldn't see it from my vantage point. Basically right after that, a circulation of dirt and tumbleeds among other things came wooshing at us - and quickly! Winds went in one direction before suddenly changing directions! Then it stopped. At first I thought we were getting hit with RFD but RFD winds do not behave like that. Ron has always told me on our chases to keep an eye on any sudden change in wind direction... well this was definitely one of those times! Pam and Rita saw this circulation continue briefly behind us into a field before dissipating. Ummm, did a tornado just form on top of us? It sure looked like that given how the debris looked when we were in it and Jack's funnel cloud proved it afterall. After gaining my senses back, I realized it was indeed a tornado. Well. That was the first time I've ever been directly hit by a tornado! I've heard of other chaser stories of similar encounters in the past... again not something you really want to mess with. It was sure a big surprise for us, and it just goes to show you anything can happen on chases. The tornado actually did sandblast the windshield and headlights. It also left small chips and a small crack in the windshield from the debris. Ron estimated it had winds close to a F1 rating. He also reported this tornado into Spotter Network.

Well, we just got down to the alley and already have two tornadoes to account for. We decided to call it a day and book rooms at a Motel 6 in Wichita for the night. We ate dinner at an Ihop but the service was very slow. Rita, Pam and I were getting giddy. I rolled a drinking straw wrapper up into a tiny ball and flung it with my fingers. It hit a waiter as he walked by and we bursted out laughing. I was laughing so hard that apparently I didn't notice that I somehow managed to get my drinking straw from my drink stuck in my hair dripping chocolate milk on my shoulder! When I saw it at first I wondered what the heck was this? And soon we bursted out laughing again. Why do these things happen to me? Sigh. All in all, a great day. Tomorrow we are headed south.

Quick update for May 26

2008-05-27T02:10:00.006-04:00

Just a brief update on our chase on May 26th - I will complete a full log on Tuesday because I am tired and it is getting late.

Couple of close calls in Kansas today. Ron, Jack, company and I observed two brief weak tornadoes on Monday around the dinner hour near Pratt, KS. We were driving in a very heavy rain/hail mix - vis was almost 0 at this point. Things cleared and a brief semi-transparent tornado formed approx 50 to 100 ft away from us and crossed the road in front us and went into a grass field on our right. I rolled down the window to grab this shot quickly... we could hear a classic howling/hissing noise from it!

About 10 to 15 minutes later, we were on a dirt road and Jack pointed up and said there was a funnel right above us. Then I saw a circulation of dirt and tumbleweeds come right at us... it passed directly over us! Winds shifted directions very quickly which suggested that the funnel Jack saw was indeed a weak tornado. It continued for a few seconds later behind us. No one is hurt and it was a weak tornado, with winds of F0 to F1.

Gang is staying in Wichita KS tonight and maybe heading to OK tomorrow. Cloud 9 Tours is at our motel, so maybe we will get to see George Kourounis.

May 25 2008

2008-05-26T01:09:00.001-04:00

DAY 1 MAY 25, 2008

Well, today was going to be another day we would depart for tornado alley. This year, it was Ron Gravelle, Jack Kertzie, Ben Fuller, Pam Gregory, my sister Rita and I. It was going to be Rita's first tornado alley chase trip.

We left Ron's shortly after 8 am and were on our way south through Detroit, towards St. Louis, Missouri where we would spend our first night.

We, of course, had to have our omens on the way down, a yearly tradition. This time, I spotted 3 dust devils in a field on our right. Near Indianapolis, we stopped for a Chinese buffet dinner, "Chow-chow" as Ron calls it. Rita had the best fortune cookie fortune, which unfortunately I forget what it said at the moment, but it was another one of those omens. On our way west through Illinois, tornadic storms were firing up in Iowa, and another storm to our southwest. The anvil blow off on that storm was quite long, approximately 100 miles away. I noted a small patch of mammatus.

We couldn't intercept those today if we were going to want to get into position in central Kansas tomorrow. SPC has a moderate risk highlighted for central Kansas, with a 45% hatched area. Supercells along an MCS were expected to form, along with the possibility of strong tornadoes. We are hoping that the dryline will bulge out and interact with the outflow boundaries from tonight's system, near the triple point tomorrow. Low level shear would be present in the warm moist airmass.

As we approached St. Louis, storms were firing up to our north, south and west. Rita wanted to get a picture of the St. Louis arc, so Ron pulled over off the interstate to stop for pictures. Rita did manage to get her first lightning shots, hand held mind you, but nonetheless it was a lightning shot. We continued on to our hotel as the squall line neared us. Soon enough the rain came down really heavy. We had a few close CG strikes.

Trying to navigate in a big city is quite hard to do with all the highways and offramps... plus they don't warn you ahead of time which exit we needed to take to get to another interstate. It just gets confusing sometimes, and we would end up going on the interstate the other way, so I had to keep changing the route plan. We finally pulled in at the Quality Inn close to 11 pm CDT. Tomorrow we are headed towards Salina, Kansas.

Sorry that the APRS has stopped working since leaving Detroit... I don't know what happened but I will let Ron and Jack know tomorrow morning.

Chasecation '08

2008-05-22T22:54:00.003-04:00

Looks like we may be in for some storms during the first few days of our trip. So far so good. We will depart this Sunday morning. You can track us here.

I will try to update this blog at the end of each day.

Spring Forward Snowstorm

2008-03-10T19:23:00.005-04:00

Ok so it's March. That mean's storm chase season is almost here. We had a day or so of mild weather with 10C temps. Talk about a tease. It melted some of our snow, then we got it back with, you guessed it, another winterstorm on March 5th. We got 20cm of, dare I say it? White crap. Sorry snow freaks, but winter is cold, icy and tornadoless. That just doesn't appeal to me. Pretty ironic coming from a Canadian born winter baby.

Then after that, I heard talk of a blizzard that was in order in the next couple of days. Oh good gawd. You mean winter is NOT over yet?! Then I heard talk of it possibly being a dud and that we would only get about 20-30cm. Ok, so that was the minimum forecast amount? It would depend where the line that divides 20-30cm and 40-50cm would end up, which was supposed to be east of Waterloo. Ok, I can deal with that, I think... better than 40-50cm!

So March 8th comes around and it is snowing like nobody's business. This doesn't look good, I thought. At 1:50pm I decided to take my first measurement. 7 inches already?! But the storm just started! How is that possible? Well............

At 4:50, I measured 8 inches. Ummm why is it still accumulating? Please stop....
Time for dig out number 1! The snow was at the rear bumper of the van.

And it still snowed and snowed. Then at 7:55pm, 15 inches had fallen. Oh please stop, I'm begging you!!! The storm didn't end until about an hour or so later, with a whopping 16 inches... or 40cm. And if you include the lake effect snow band that came from the southwest later that night, that would put the amount of new snow to about 42cm. Say, that's nothing... Ottawa got 52cm. Poor folks... maybe that's why all the storm chasers live south. Hahahaha!

My father and I dug out for the second time. Our snow banks are just a little over 5ft tall and the depth of snow on our front lawn looks to be at my waist. It is level with the bottom of our bay window. The snow in the backyard is at my thighs. Our backyard fence is more than half buried. Unbelievable but any snow loving kid would be in heaven. I am not a kid and I am not snow loving, so therefore I am not in heaven, but rather in hell that froze over.

If it were not for the melts we had, we would have snow hiding close to half of our house it seems.

We got so much snow that the Newfoundland Club in Cambridge had its roof collapse. No body was killed, but injuries ranged from a bruised lung to fractured vertebrae to frostbitten fingers.

THIS IS THE MOST SNOW I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY FRICKIN LIFE! Apparently the article in the paper today said that we broke our winter of 1923-24 record (245.3cm) for snowfall amounts this winter. Good grief. Where is spring when you need it?

Global warming my ass. Here is a pic of the aftermath the following day. At least with "spring forward", it is one hour less of winter!

Mid-February Fun

2008-02-21T23:28:00.003-05:00

Ok so it's the middle of February. This has to be the worst time SDS (supercell deprivation syndrome) for storm chasers. Spring is so close, yet to so far away. It has been quite chilly the last few days and we still have 4 foot snow banks, with about 1-2 feet of snow left on the ground.

Last night I froze my butt off watching the lunar eclipse. I went out 4 times, in 10 minute intervals because it was so cold that one could get frostbite. It was almost -20C! Ice crystals in the air formed light pillars from various light sources. I decided to try my hand at moon/eclipse photography. Needless to say, I did run into issues such as blur (long exposures don't help because the moon moves across the sky quickly) and sometimes the moon would come out looking like a white glowing orb with ghosting/flare. I must have taken about 60 photos last night, but I finally managed to get one of Saturn and the eclipse that I thought was somewhat decent.

I used 400 ISO, 8 second exposure, with F stop 14, on my 18-200 Tamron
lens (focal length is 200 in this pic).

More chase plans

2008-02-18T13:49:00.002-05:00

So I haven't posted much since my last tornado alley chase trip... for the first time since 1998, I haven't chased locally here in Ontario in 2007. July 8th was very frustrating for me because I had no means of transportation to go chase after a classic cyclic tornadic supercell, which I must say is a very hard find here. Congrats to those who ventured out that day! My friend Ron Gravelle caught some awesome photos of a white cone tornado - it looked like Kansas! I think that day was the only real storm action that season. Just thank goodness for my tornado alley trips otherwise my SDS would make me go ballistic.

And speaking of tornado alley trips, Ron and I are once again planning another trip for last week of May and first week of June. This time my sister will be coming along with us! This kinda thing can be very addicting.

Day 13 June 7, 2007

2007-06-08T01:34:00.000-04:00

Today was our last day to chase tornadoes. A high risk had been issued for Wisconsin and a moderate risk for parts of Minnesota. Ron seemed a bit iffy on this setup... the winds were howling at a good speed, which would be problematic later on.

We headed east on interstate 90 through Minnesota. There were strong surface winds blowing dust in fields. I noticed a boundary to the east, with storms in the distance. Another boundary was to our northwest with a developing line of TCU. Tornado watch #358 had been issued for the storms that were ahead of us. There was just one problem. We had to haul east quickly to be able to get caught up with these fast movers. They were traveling at a good 50 mph northeast. Ron said he never liked high risks because of the strong winds and fast moving storms, but we were going to try intercepting the new storms to our southeast over Wisconsin. It was going to be tricky.

We then received reports of a tornado on the ground from the north storm south of interstate 90 at 4:10. Two hours later, the NWS said the risk area was under a Particularly Dangerous Situation. There was a tornado warning issued for south of Madison, Wisconsin. When going through the La Crosse area, I was really hoping the terrain would not be hilly like this area was... it'd be very dangerous to chase tornadoes with all the large hills and trees! Surprisingly, traffic was not terrible for it being a work day around the dinner hour. We received another tornado report. This time it was a quarter of a mile wide, located near Summers and that there was significant damage done to buildings. Tornado watch #360 was then issued, effective until midnight. We took interstate 39 south. Another report came in at 6:20. This time it was 4 inch hail, although I am not sure where it was.

We saw darkening skies to our south and couldn't make out any structure. Storms east of the Mississippi river are quite different compared to the ones west of the Mississippi. We the encountered a bit of rain at 6:40. A few minutes later, I saw what looked like a lowering. It looked like a developing wall cloud, and it must have had weak rotation in it judging by the looks of the clouds. We got off the interstate and found a back road. We parked near a cornfield to watch what it was doing. Dave got out of Ron's car and said to me that it was falling apart. Dang it, not two days in a row! By now, the wall cloud wasn't really much of a wall cloud anymore... it looked like crap.

Ron managed to get wifi and checked the RUC models for updates. It looked like the show was pretty much over. High risk my butt! We headed to Janesville for a Mexican dinner and stayed at a Hampton Inn for the night. Tomorrow we are departing in the morning to head home.

Day 12 June 6, 2007

2007-06-08T00:44:00.000-04:00

Scott and I were in the van... then we saw it - a funnel was coming down in the distance. A beautiful white cone! Debris, we have debris! This tornado looked like a good one. I grabbed the video camera... but wait. How come it wouldn't record? I try again to get it working, but failed. Then the phone rang.

I jumped out of bed, somewhat shaking. It was my wake up call. I got dressed and headed downstairs. Today was shaping up to be a big day... was it going to be our grand finale of the trip? Only Mother Nature knew, but things were shaping up nicely. The only issue was the inversion layer. It was pretty strong, but we figured if the storms were to start firing, it could be potentially a busy day. The SPC had issued a moderate risk for parts of Nebraska and South Dakota. There was a hatched area for a chance of F2 to F5 tornadoes. I had downloaded models the night before and I was pretty pleased with the setup so far. And so was Ron. We were to head towards Murdo, South Dakota today.

On our way through Nebraska, we popped in to the Nebraska National Forest Park. It was quite pretty and reminded me of camping back home. There was a tower that you could climb to get a great view of the area but it was locked off. While taking our pictures, Ron was looking at the models deciding where to go. A warm front was making its way through the central plains and that would help bring the much needed moisture into the region for the system to come together. The backing winds were quite good today... they were screaming from the southeast.

We continued on our way to Ainsworth to grab a bite at Subway at 2 pm. Ron and I then went to find wifi to get updates on on the models. Our favourable area would be near Murdo. There was great flow, the helicity was supportive of tornadic supercells, and there was a dryline bulge near the area. A tornado watch was issued.

We headed slightly west to Valentine. When we neared Bassett, we looked for a tornado damage path that Mike heard about from the May 5th storms. We encountered buffeting crosswinds and dust was being kicked up by the strong winds. We got onto highway 7 north of town. I saw some tree damage and empty areas where homes used to be, with only tornado cellars left. We went west on highway 183 and saw a house damaged, including more tree damage.

I saw an old gentleman approach Scott. Scott asked him if he was the guy who was inside the tractor when the tornado hit, and if he minded sharing his story. The windows exploded and he had glass bits in the side of his face. He then mentioned a van. "It rolled three times.", he said. Luckily it was unoccupied at the time. I said to him that he was very lucky. He invited us to check out his property and take pictures if we wanted. Tornado damage is something I don't particularly like to see, but it seems to be a part of life here in tornado alley. People get used to it. I walked around and saw vehicles with entire windows blown out. The van that rolled three times looked pretty banged up as well. The house was quite badly damaged... it looked like it would be pointless to try and fix it up. A good part of the roof was ripped off and thrown behind the house onto the lawn. Chunks of insulation was strewn across the property. It was pretty unbelievable to see all this. We shook his hand and thanked him for allowing us to have a look around.

We continued west. At 4:40, I noticed an anvil off in the distance. I was guessing the storm was located near our target. Scott mentioned that the winds were so strong that it was cutting into the anvil and making lines. I also spotted a couple of transverse rolls off to our north.

A severe thunderstorm warning was issued for northwest Cherry county at 5:15. It had weak rotation and it was capable of producing winds in access of 70 mph. Ron said that it was 60,000 feet tall, and it could have 2 to 3 inch hail on the ground. The shear was also increasing. We reached Valentine to get more updates, and then headed north on highway 83. It was time to intercept.

Once we reached Murdo, we went west on interstate 90. Ron said that there were a couple of rotation couplets. I saw some transverse rolls being tilted into the updraft by the helicity. It was pretty neat to see, and it was a good sign. We then saw a beautiful shelf cloud at 6:30. As we were taking pictures, a sheriff had pulled up to get info on the storms. We then continued west. A tornado warning had been issued. We encountered strong winds from the shelf cloud. Scott then saw a white tractor trailer get blown over on its side and landed in the centre median. The sherriff that approached us was there to assist the truck driver. We also saw the DOW truck and the Tornado Intercept Vehicle heading east.

Ron led us on a dirt road going north to do a big loop around. Ben pointed out a very distant wall cloud but it was hard to see because of the hills. We finally made it back on interstate 90 eastbound. Other than the shelf cloud and distant wall cloud, this storm wasn't doing much. It now looked like it was becoming more outflow dominant. We did a turn around and headed west a little bit again to see if we could get behind the storm. We turned around once again to go east and stopped at a gas station. Ron said the storm was falling apart. Not good at all. We ditched the storm and decided to head east to Mitchell for the night.

Heading east on interstate 90, we saw developing storms along the outflow boundary shoot up. The anvil appeared to be backshearing. I went on the radio and said to Ron that I think we should check it out. I then happened to put my hand on my neck and felt something. It was a tick! Luckily I was able to get it off and there was no bite mark or blood, and it was easy to remove and intact. That just made me paranoid for the rest of the evening. I must have picked it up when we were viewing the tornado damage since there were tall grasses and horses nearby. Gross!

We pulled up into a gas station to check things out. Ron didn't seem to be confident in these storms and I could see the disappointment in his eyes. I know he really tried his hardest today but there was nothing we could do about the lack of an outbreak. We hung around for a little bit and watched the towers build. Ron said we can continue east and see what happens. We neared Mitchell and Ron updated us. The storms that were building had poofed on radar. Dang! We ate at Ruby Tuesday's in Mitchell and went to a Best Western for the night. I was pretty worried about the tick because I never had one before, so I did a Google search on tick bites. I realized I was safe afterall from the diseases. But from now on, I'll never walk in tall grasses again! After that, I then found out there was approx. a half hour long tornado just west of where we were. Oh well, it wasn't like we were tornadoless on this trip anyways. It was like the video camera in my dream was a symbol of the setup that didn't quite come together to make that outbreak we were expecting.

Tomorrow we are to head due east for a high risk setup near Wisconsin. This would be our last chance to get tornadoes.

tornado vid caps

2007-06-07T02:49:00.001-04:00

Here are a couple of tornado video captures I grabbed off my video from June 3rd near Odessa, Texas.

I will update my blog from Wednesday on Thursday... I seem to have forgotten the notes in the van and I am too tired to go get them nor remember what I wrote lol.

Day 11 June 5, 2007

2007-06-06T02:58:00.000-04:00

Today was a travel day, so there wasn't much to write about. We left Clovis, New Mexico around 9 am and departed northward to North Platte, Nebraska to get near position for Wednesday's setup. In fact, the next few days looked interesting. On our way through Amarillo, we stopped at the Big Texan gift shop once more. Ron had bought a bright coloured orange foam cowboy that was 4 times the size of his head and wore it in Pizza Hut in Dumas. He sure looked pretty funny.

We went through the town of Hooker, Oklahoma once again as well. We went inside a small gift shop to get a couple of little souvenirs, then continued north. Sandra, Pam and I sat in the van and watched three movies... Fast and the Furious, Twister (which I haven't seen in 10 years) and Sam I Am. That really passed the time. In Colby, Kansas, we ate at a Montana Mike's. I had some salmon and grilled shrimp with sweet potato with a Fat Tire beer. I really needed that meal... I felt so re-energized afterwards.

Once it got dark out, Ron's antenna was glowing green at the top. Scott and Ron joked about turning down the voltage on the ham radio equipment. I wasn't quite sure what they were talking about, but apparently Mike and Dave had purchased a little LED antenna light back in Roswell to surprise Ron. Scott dubbed Ron the "Electric Cowboy".

Of course while going through north Kansas, I noticed infrequent lightning way off in the distance that must have been hundreds of miles away to the west. Lee thought the beer was getting to my head because she didn't believe me, but I only had one, I swear! We stayed at a Comfort Inn in breezy North Platte overnight.

Day 10 June 4, 2007

2007-06-05T02:42:00.000-04:00

The day started off with a phone call. It was Lee who wanted to know if I wanted to go eat breakfast with them. I had a half hour to get ready... I was really trying hard to wake up this morning. It felt like I've partied all night minus the headache. Before bed that evening, I checked the SPC reports for June 2 and our tornado was listed. It said was on the county line of Ector and Winkler counties crossing highway 302 and lasted for one minute around a quarter to five. That sounded about right to me! We went to go eat at Norma's Cafe. Nice little place with good food and great salsa! I had to purchase two 16 ounce containers because that stuff was so good. After lunch we came back to the hotel. I decided to check out the SPC outlooks page and lo and behold... a moderate risk was already issued for Wednesday! I know this is early but I've heard chasers on a forum say they were impressed by the setup so far and that we would possibly be looking at a potential severe weather outbreak.

Before checking out of the hotel, we paid our dinner bill from last night. I didn't want to leave it unpaid because the waiter would have to pay for it if we didn't. Besides, it wasn't the waiter's fault that the service/food was a little less to be desired. On our way out, an old gentleman walked by and asked if we chased the tornado yesterday. He said he was on his roof and saw it take a house and then he went for cover. I should have asked him if he knew anyone got hurt. Of course, that was the last thing I wanted.

Today, Ron wanted to head just down the highway for the target. On our way, Ron mentioned to Pam and I that the funnel cloud we saw the other day half way to the ground was confirmed as a tornado. Apparently someone else had saw the entire thing and mentioned the funnel was half way down but had debris underneath. With our poor vantage point, there was no way for us to see the debris swirl on the ground. I guess this brings our tornado count on this trip up to two.

The skies were clear and we didn't have to go very far today, so we had time to kill. Ron wanted to see if we could find the damage path from yesterday's tornado. Ron and Sandra really tried to find a road that led to the county line from the highway but there was none. We finally took an exit and went north and then east a little bit. We finally got to a road that was right on the county line, but trying to find this damage path was pretty tough... there were lots of low trees and bushes. Obviously finding damage from the air is a much more efficient way. After an unsuccessful attempt, Ron and I thought it was best that we use this day as a travel day to start heading north for Wednesday's setup. The crew agreed on a quick trip to Roswell, New Mexico.

Ron booked our hotel rooms at a Hampton Inn in Clovis. On our way to Roswell, a couple storms had popped up on radar and they would have brief rotation couplets. It seemed these storms were pulsing; they would lose their rotation couplet and regain it again several times. They were headed south-southeast this time towards Roswell. well now isn't that convenient? Just outside of Roswell, we noted a bunch of precip cores. This storm was just going to snuff itself out by raining where the inflow was supposed to be.

In Roswell, there was only one street that had alien themed shops and attractions. There were UFO "signs" that looked like a UFO had crashed into the building, a McDonald's play area windows were shaped in that of a UFO... there were weird alien signs and paintings everywhere. Even the street lamps were not regular lamps... the lights were an alien head at the top of the posts. Most shops were closed but we found one and got ourselves a tee shirt. The gang then watched as the storm came into Roswell. A nearby heavy precip core made for some interesting pictures and there were some good lightning strikes. The storm lost its rotation and it was just dumping itself out.

On the way into Clovis, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset. The storm that was over Roswell was dissipating and had a few lightning strikes. A small partial rainbow formed and the sun casted a pink/orange hue on the clouds and precip. It was by no means anything severe, but it was sure pretty.

Tomorrow we are headed north towards South Dakota or Nebraska for Wednesday. It was going to be one long haul tomorrow... we plan to get close to the target as possible.

Day 9 June 3, 2007

2007-06-04T01:10:00.000-04:00

Our crew had a good lunch at IHOP and did some shopping in Lubbock and headed south towards Odessa for today's target. It was a nice and easy day with little travelling. We were expecting today to be similar to the storms from the other night, with the cap breaking later in the day.

As we were heading further south, we saw darkening skies off to the southwest around 2 pm. I noted a couple of inflow bands, one coming from the east and the other coming from the north. Baron had detected 2 inch hail and the updrafts were increasing. There were quite a few CGs and some positive strikes as well. Sandra had noted that the temperature dropped 6 degrees a half hour later. We had crossed a boundary.

Behind this little storm was a larger supercell that had popped up on radar around a quarter after four on the New Mexico/Texas state border and was due east. A tornado warning had been issued. We went through Odessa and took highway 302 westward. We saw the Tornado Intercept Vehicle once again on this trip, parked on an overpass. A wall cloud appeared just west of town. Ron noted that this storm had become a right mover... oh boy! Things were going to get interesting. We actually had trouble finding a good viewing spot to get ourselves in position. A bunch of desert trees were in the way. Trying to watch a wall cloud with tornado potential through all that was quite frustrating. About 10 minutes later, we parked at a good viewing spot. At around a quarter to five, all of a sudden we saw it... a wedge shaped tornado! Holy crickey! I've never seen one this big before so this was definitely new to me. According to Ron, this was approx 20 km away from where we were, so the tornado must have been almost three quarters of a mile wide. We got reports on the radio that a sherriff had reported a tornado on the storm. Wow... okay so we weren't seeing things afterall! The tornado went from a wedge shape to a stovepipe and then fizzled out a couple minutes later. I was really glad that it hit somewhere in the middle of nowhere on a county line and not right in town.

After all that excitement, we continued a little more east to get some structure shots. Wow what beautiful undercut wall cloud structure. There was actually blue colours in the undercut area! We watched this for a good several minutes as it came towards us and got great imagery. Since the core in behind was coming this way, we decided to head south, closer to town, to get into a bit of hail. We stopped on the side of the highway and watched in amusement as one inch stones pounded the vehicles and accumulated on the ground in some spots. The road was pretty much covered in the stuff before the rain came.

After that, we decided we were pretty pleased with what we caught today and headed to our hotel in Odessa. We had a beer and steak dinner at the restaurant located in the hotel but the overall quality was somewhat mediocre. Half of the steaks were not cooked right and they weren't as tender and lean as other steaks we've had several days ago. Plus it took forever to get our food and our tickets. The place wasn't even busy. We managed to get a free drink on the house for the poor steak quality and then waited and waited for our tickets. Dave went up twice asking for our tickets, but somehow the manager couldn't figure it out. After waiting too long, we gave up and left. Okay so today wasn't bad afterall... a tornado and free dinner!

Tomorrow it looks like we are headed right down the highway not too far from here. I must say that Ron's uncanny when it comes to predicting storms right down to a highway.

Day 8 June 2, 2007

2007-06-03T02:57:00.000-04:00

We left Wichita Falls around noon after eating a good brunch at Denny's. We were going to head southwest around the Lubbock area today. I really liked the southeast backing winds this time. Today could turn out to be something more decent than yesterday. SPC had issued a 5% tornado risk area for the caprock. Supercells were likely with possibly a few tornadoes, but they could evolve into a bow echo later in the day from the upslope flow. Surface based CAPE was close to 4000 J/kg with a lifted index of -8.

I think we were in for one lucky day today. Sandra was sitting in the front passenger seat in the van and she had her window rolled down. All of a sudden, a bird crapped in the window right on Sandra's lower lip and I even got a bit on me - I was sitting in the middle seat! Scott said we were in for a really good day. Gross but I guess this was a sign of really good things to come!

We decided to have a break in Lubbock. The cap was still holding. Some TCU's would try to go up but would hit the inversion layer and get ripped apart. We grabbed something to eat while Ron went to download models. We stayed there for about an hour or so then Ron said we should go get our rooms and wait. I was really curious what was happening just to our north... I could see an anvil. I checked radar and there was a storm that was trying to go supercellular to the north about two counties away. After several scans, this thing was trying to organize itself. It also had pretty good hail from it and it was slowly moving to the east-southeast. I decided to tell Scott about this storm. Him and Lee just had a swim in the pool, while Sandra was working out on a treadmill. All of a sudden, Ron came in and said to pack up our things. We were going to intercept this storm since it was the only one out there. YAY! I must say I don't think we've ever departed so quickly yet on this trip before. We left at 7:30 and gased up quickly. We headed north towards Hale and Lamb counties.

The anvil was beautiful with its overshooting top. It just kept backbuilding. The edges of the anvil would go soft and then knuckle out again. At a quarter after eight, there was also a great flanking line, with the sun setting in behind and a corkscrewing updraft. What a great looking vault region! It made for great images. When we neared the storm we got reports of a tornado 5 miles east of Sunnyside... we were not very far from this at all, but I think we were several minutes too late to see the tornado. Ron said the core of this supercell was 10 miles wide, and it was moving 17 mph southeast. Ten minutes later, we saw a wall cloud forming near the flanking line. It was so neat to see with the sunset in behind. When we went through the town of Earth, we saw another wall cloud forming. We now had two areas to watch. A small light coloured funnel cloud came out of the new wall cloud, but didn't last long.

We continued to get more west. We then cut south a little bit. Baron had picked up two rotation couplets. We were keeping our eye on the second wall cloud when I spotted a funnel cloud going halfway to the ground! I really thought this was gonna be it. We went up the road a little bit and stopped to get images, but the funnel cloud had dissipated by then. I couldn't tell if there was a debris swirl underneath it, but it sure looked pretty good. It started to rain and we continued southward again and then east. We stopped once more to get some pictures. Then it started to rain, so we headed east and then south once again. The rear flank downdraft had opened up and dust started to get kicked up. We drove through the thick dust.

We would get ahead of the precip core a little bit, pull over and get some quick lightning images, but it wouldn't be long before we could hear the hail approaching. Dave had got pinged right on his upper lip by a hail stone. Ron came on the radio and said that a hook echo was starting to form. We got ahead of the hail again and stopped for lightning pictures once more. I got one really cool looking image this time. In the photo there was a tilted updraft that looked like it was corkscrewing slightly. A tornado warning had been put out for Lubbock and vicinity by now. The hail once again caught up to us and we went due southeast towards Lubbock. The storm started to weaken so we went for a quick dinner at McDonald's since nothing else was opened. It sounded like we would be basing out of Lubbock for at least another day.

Day 7 June 1, 2007

2007-06-02T02:21:00.000-04:00

Today marks the halfway point of our trip. As we were going through Liberal, Kansas to get ready to depart south, we happened to spot the Tornado Intercept Vehicle and a couple of Project ROTATE vehicles parked at a motel. We decided to have a closer look at this interesting piece of metal on wheels. Let's just say that I would never be caught dead riding in that thing... but I do give credit to the guy who drove this TIV all the way from California!

We were to head south into the Texas panhandle today, just south of Lubbock, possibly on the New Mexico state line. There was a large tornado risk area for today according to the SPC. I never did get a chance to download models last night to see what was cooking for today because we pulled in late and I was pretty tired, but Ron was going to download anyways.

While on the way down, we saw numerous fields flooded out by a previous storm system that went through several days ago. A lot of rain must have fallen here because the puddles were still pretty big and almost look like small lakes. When we got closer to Amarillo, we saw two small storms, one to the west and another to the southeast. Mammatus could be seen under the anvil of the western storm, while an interesting inflow band on the southeastern storm grew fatter and eventually attached itself to the base of the storm. Since I was riding with Sandra in Ron's car, I decided to check the Baron to see what was cooking. These appeared to be small supercells with no rotation couplets. When we arrived in Amarillo, we went to eat a buffet lunch at a place called Furr's. For under eight bucks you definitely cannot go wrong. The food was delicious.

We swapped seats once again and continued our trek south of Amarillo towards Lubbock. We took highway 114 just east of Lubbock. The storm that was to our southeast now had 4 rotation couplets on it according to the Baron and that it was moving 20 mph southeast. Ron said. A tornado warning had been issued. We were going to intercept it because this was all that was available at this time. As we got closer, we saw a nice hail shaft and hailbow. The hail shaft actually had quite a foot on it, indicating the strong outflow winds. From this vantage point, it looked like there was low level moisture being fed into the storm updrafts. We headed towards Abilene, and went through a rain/hail core that had poor visibility. In Aspermont, we gased up and had a quick restroom break, then continued on highway 283.

By this point, the storm didn't look very good at all... there was a lot of outflow from the hail core, and that was cutting off the much needed inflow to this storm. The bases had clear breaks in them. Crap. At one point, after heckling this "great big storm of Texas", scud tried to gather and form a wall cloud. I saw a brief skinny pointy funnel cloud come out of it, but that was all that it amounted to. We pulled off the highway to take some pictures. It looked like a small shelf cloud was pushing its way through over us, and off in the distance to the south I was watching a pretty good piece of scud rise up and attach itself to the base of the storm. It then started to rain, and we continued on highway 277.

At around 7:30 pm we punched the core of the storm... it wasn't a real threat since the biggest hail was past us. Flash flood warnings had been issued. I could see why... the area was already saturated and there was decent ponding on the roadways. On the way north, we stopped two times for mammatus pictures shortly after 8 pm. On the way into Wichita Falls, we were treated to a cool lightning display. We had a nice steak dinner and are staying at a Best Western in Wichita Falls.

Day 6 May 31, 2007

2007-06-01T03:13:00.000-04:00

In the morning, Ron, Sandra and I went to do some laundry and ate a decent breakfast in Amarillo. Sandra and I decided to go to Wall Mart so I could get a good pair of polarizing sunglasses. We didn't leave Amarillo until closer to noon. Today, our target was going to be near southwest Kansas. A dryline bulge was setting up in that area and the SPC issued a moderate risk.

When the first storm went up, the first tornado watch was issued. We saw nice TCU building up in the west, each one in a different stage. And further north of these cells, a larger "nuke" could be seen off in the distance. All of these growing storms were bubbling. It was pretty clear we had good lift today. A second tornado watch was issued for the Oklahoma panhandle for the upcoming storms. "Be afraid, be very afraid."

Going through Oklahoma, we went by a town called Cactus. It was obvious this small town got hit by a tornado a while back this season. We decided to take a drive in just down the road a little bit to see what all got damaged. Houses suffered structural damage, and had X marks spray painted on the front doors to indicate that the house was searched for people. A metal fence in front of one house was even bent. Trees were twisted, car windows were busted out, and a children's dome jungle gym was practically squashed. It's one of those sights that make you realize the true power of tornadoes, even if they are small.

We then went through the town of Hooker. This place had a "nice" welcome sign... "Home of the Horny Toads".

When we arrived closer to the storms which was over far eastern Colorado near Burton, it didn't look like much at first, but we could tell something was up... the anvil's edges were getting crisper looking and I saw signs of inflow. The road we took to getting near the storm was an interesting one... there were tons of pheasants everywhere. One almost hit the van's windshield. It looked like it was only a foot away, but it zig zagged itself out of the way. "HOLY COW DID YOU SEE THAT?!". Scott seemed to be pretty excited about that encounter. A little while later down the road, there was a small bird on the road and we were coming for it. It flew up in time, but the bird happened to fly in the wrong direction... in the windshield. SMACK! Thank goodness it didn't get wound up in the antennas and that no bird brains covered the windshield. Apparently there were even rabbits. Man this place was a zoo.

As we neared the storms, it was clear this thing was trying to organize itself. A lowering what looked like a developing wall cloud could be seen. We decided to intercept this storm that was located south of Stanton, Oklahoma. We saw the DOW truck and some mobile mesonet vehicles parked near a bend in the road (I think this was Project ROTATE). As we went down a dirt road (only do this when it's dry!) to get closer to the action, we saw nice low hanging mammatus clouds. All of a sudden, Ron then points out a possible landspout descending from the base. The Baron was now picking up rotation couplets on this storm. Several minutes later, the wall cloud started to get more organized. Then we saw it... a fairly decent sized funnel cloud! I grabbed the video camera and started taking video of it. We managed to pull off to the side of the road and get some images. Talk about some nice swirling action going on underneath the wall cloud! Unfortunately it was raining, and we couldn't stay too long so we had to head further south. It looked like this storm was taking breathers a few times... the wall cloud would really get together but then loosen up slightly. We managed to stop again for photo ops but had to get in the vehicles once more. We were playing tag with this storm, and didn't want to end up in the rain where we couldn't see this possible tornadogenesis. Several nice positive lightning strikes added to the scene. There was also chaser convergence. I couldn't believe the amount of chasers on one single road, although apparently there have been way worse cases other times. Lots of chasers were interested in this cyclic supercell, but everyone did really well traffic-wise.

Unfortunately we had to cut through the core of the storm to get south of it... that was the only road option we had. It got really hairy in there... there was plenty of nickel sized hail making loud banging noises on the van and lots of rain. We couldn't see around us at all! We finally managed to pull ourselves out of this mess. By now, a new wall cloud had formed near some really tiny town. We pulled off the road to take some images, and we could hear tornado sirens blaring loudly in the background. This wall cloud was REALLY spinning but it didn't drop a tornado! The motion alone was incredible. We were glad we got on this road in time because apparently some cops had closed access to the road we were on. We then saw another wall cloud forming to our north. We decided to head east at 7:20 pm. We cut through the core once again and were getting 1.5 inch hail. The wall cloud to our north was starting to fall apart, and there was a new one developing straight ahead of us. We stopped for a bit to get more pictures.

We got a road to take us south to get to the backside of this storm. We had to cut through the hail/rain core once more. We pulled to the side of the road to wait out the core and buffering winds for a bit. We were getting half inch hail. Scott went on the radio and said to Ron "Laura just volunteered to get a hail sample". Ok so Scott likes to volunteer me... I thought, I had half inch hail at home a few times so this would be no problem. So what did I do? I opened the door, stepped outside, got parts of my back pinged with one inch hail, grabbed two stones and went back inside the van. I showed them to Pam and Lee and they were amazed. The biggest stones were about one inch big.

We finally got out of the precip core. We saw another developing wall cloud with the rear flank starting to open itself up again. There was a brief funnel cloud at 7:42 pm, and a beaver tail was feeding into the wall cloud. The wall cloud was also sucking up moisture into it from the field at a good speed, but it started to break apart once more. There was also a nice glowing green precip core. It looked like at this stage of the game that there was a lack of inflow and backing southeast winds.

Continuing eastward, there was another smaller wall cloud that formed (surprise, surprise), although the rear flank was still trying to open itself up. Another brief funnel cloud protruded from the base slightly. Scott then noticed a column of brown colour underneath. A partial rainbow appeared. After all of these brief stops, a pile of dirt was building up inside my shoes and I had to go to the bathroom. We encountered the precip core again and finally got a road that headed south.

We encountered yet another developing wall cloud at 8:30. This storm was really trying hard to put something down! Ron noted that it was now trying to form a hook echo. A funnel cloud was trying to form, but just couldn't get its act together. We were now northwest of Guymon. We headed eastward once again. The storm was going through cyclic phases. Sometimes the rotation would look good and other times it appeared as if it was taking a breather.

The sun was setting now, and that meant it was going to get dark soon and storm would start to lose it's energy. Ron decided to call off the chase for the night and look for hotel rooms in Guymon. Unfortunately with the threat of tornadoes, a lot of people who were traveling in the area wanted to get bunkered down at the hotels. We couldn't find a room, so we managed to book something over in Liberal, Kansas. On our way to Liberal, we were treated to a great lightning display. We grabbed something quick to eat at McDonald's and are staying at a Super 8. Tomorrow it looks like we are headed to New Mexico.

Mike Walker's blog

2007-05-31T00:24:00.000-04:00

Here is a link to Mike Walker's blog:

http://2007-chase.blogspot.com/

He is one of the people on Ron's tour, and is writing daily summaries with some photos. I wish I could upload some pictures of my own, but I don't have the drivers installed, so the camera can't be recognized. I wish I had a card reader....

Day 5 May 30, 2007

2007-05-31T00:08:00.000-04:00

Today we actually got to sleep in, yay! We left Colby, Kansas around 10 am after Scott had went for the first oil change, then we went to get something at Starbuck's out of town. There was a gift shop nearby so we went to check it out. When I go to shops I usually look for tornado stuff to add to my collection. This time I happened to find a green Tornado Chaser t-shirt and matching coffee mug. Bonus!

We then continued south into the Texas panhandle. We were going to play the triple point today in central Texas. I had done one last check of the models, but I couldn't see much updraft potential in today's setup. We had to be down there for the next few days anyways, so it was worth a shot.

As we were going through Oklahoma's panhandle, there were a few feeding lots with tons of cattle... peeeewwwwiiieeee! You ain't smelled methane if you've never smelled a feeding lot. Holly cow, no pun intended, but it was strong enough to make you wanna almost cry. Other than that, we had a nice cumulus field for early in the day, so it looked kinda promising. We managed to see two dust devils on the way down. The last one we saw was kicking up some dust behind trees and a building, then it went invisible. It then threw some peice of something - looked almost like metal scrap - near the side of the interstate... and then the van felt this sudden gust of wind for a second. From now on, the van should be called the Dust Devil Intercept Vehicle. Nothing like a little excitement when travelling in a place "with a whole lotta nothin". We went for a quick break and I decided to eat a steak burrito shortly after 1 pm.

When we were in Dumas, Texas, we went for our main lunch at a Subway. I wasn't quite hungry, so I just got myself a chocolate milk, three peanut butter cookies and a bag of chips. We then went to Amarillo so that Mike could pick up his package that got shipped down. It is a sensor that opens his shutter in the daytime so he is able to take daytime lightning pictures. After that, Ron wanted to bring us to the Cadillac Ranch just south of town. This was quite different to say the least. Where else can you find ten colourful old cadillacs with their front ends buried in a bull's field? It made for some interesting photos. There really wasn't much else to do... the trough had already gone through and nothing has fired yet. The sky was completely clear with just a few small soft looking cumulus. The inversion wouldn't break today.

We decided to head back into town and eat dinner at the Big Texan. I got a chance to say hello to a chaser named Roger Hill. For dinner, I ordered the mountain oysters and a peach iced tea. I still wasn't hungry. That's the thing with these types of trips... you are in a vehicle all day getting no exercise, so you don't build up an appetite quickly. Scott really thinks that I am able to eat the 72 ounch steak, but I really don't think so. He said to me "You know how you were talking about omens? If you don't eat the 72 ounch steak, you won't get to see a big tube." Hahaha funny Scott. I hope that wasn't his cold medicine talking... I highly doubt I could finish a meal like that... if I did, I'd probably die, so I wouldn't get to see that big tube afterall!

Tonight we are staying at a Super 8 in Amarillo, and have plans to do some laundry in the morning. Tomorrow it looks like our target will be somewhere in the Oklahoma panhandle according to Professor Gravelle.

Day 4 May 29, 2007

2007-05-29T23:22:00.000-04:00

We were going to head south towards southeast Colorado today, departing from Murdo, South Dakota around 7 am. It was a pretty cool start to our day because a boundary had gone through the area. We took I83 south through Cherry county once again. Ron decided to change the target area a bit more north, in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. On our way down in central Nebraska, we saw a storm trying to get together. There was a tornado warning because a trained spotter had reported a small funnel cloud moving towards North Platte. We decided to play around with this storm for a little bit. We pulled off the interstate to take some images. The storm seemed pretty outflow dominant... cold winds were blowing away from the storm while a wall cloud wannabe was trying to gather. Realizing this storm wouldn't put on a great show, we decided to continue on our trek west into Colorado to play the triple point low.

A little later, a tornado watch box had been issued for southwestern Kansas. YAY! Temperatures were finally getting warmer and the southeast backing winds were increasing. We ate lunch in McCook, Kansas. A little further south, we decided to fill up on gas in some small place. Scott and Ron noticed some people from Oklahoma trying to get into their back trunk... apparently they had locked their keys in there. Without success, we had to leave and continue on. The Gravelle Positioning System showed some shortcuts to get to the target quicker.

We did one final stop. I looked at the Baron radar and saw a supercell near Denver. Mike then got a voice mail on his phone saying there were tornado warnings issued, and that roads in Denver had to be closed because there was 3 inches of hail accumulation. When we got closer to the storm, winds began to pick up. We saw a fairly decent sized multi-teired shelf cloud. It looks like our supercell had turned outflow dominant, but at least it was still cool to look at. We pulled off the interstate to take some images. Holy cow I must say I have never felt outflow this cold before. While I was taking video on my tripod, my hands were actually freezing. This felt like November temperatures back home! Given how outflow dominant the storm was and how cold it was, it was pretty clear that a tornado wasn't likely. The hail and rain core looked pretty heavy duty and it was coming for us, so we had to load the vehicles and shoot east back on the interstate. We pulled off once more to get another look at this thing. Tumbleweeds were flying all over the place, and one had got caught in the van's front grill. It looked like the storm wasn't going to do much of anything else at this point... they were starting to fall apart. It was time to head back into Kansas. I saw what looked like a small gustnado off in a field. Later on, we were treated to a nice lightning show. If it weren't for the driving rain and cold winds, I would have probably attempted to get lightning stills.

We ate dinner at a Pizza Hut and are staying at a Super 8 in Colby. Tomorrow we are going to head south of Amarillo, Texas.

Day 3 May 28, 2007

2007-05-29T01:11:00.000-04:00

Today was setting up for a mesoscale convective system in the Dakotas in the evening hours. I had downloaded models the night before and they seemed to suggest an isolated supercell or two ahead of the main convective cluster. SPC had put out a slight risk, with a 2 to 5 percent chance of tornadoes, as well as a risk for large hail. We were to head north into central South Dakota today. Ron and I really liked what we were seeing. There was convergence in the central Dakotas, with winds coming from the northwest colliding with southeast backing winds. The backing winds were quite strong today, gusting to about 20 knots. If the trough came in later, we would just set ourselves up for some lightning photography. Of course I don't mind since I am using my new Tamron lens for the first time chasing. Hopefully I will say goodbye to blurry lightning shots!

Going through Cherry county in Nebraska, we saw signs of horizontal vorticity. Some cumulus clouds were starting to curl and form transverse rolls. On the way north, we stopped at a scenic lookout. It was quite a nice view from on top of there. We ate a small lunch in Valentine and continued north. It was going to be a long haul after today's chase to get down south to the Oklahoma panhandle for tomorrow.

In Murdo, South Dakota we booked hotel rooms at a Super 8 and waited for the cap to break. I downloaded a sounding and it looked like the cap was reading about 4 degrees C... which is pretty strong. On satellite, it looked like some towers were starting to go up in the southwest. Ron said the models had the trough coming through later in the evening... it was probably going to be too slow for supercells forming prior to sunset. We waited for a couple of more hours. There was a full halo around the sun for quite a while. Southeast backing winds were clocking a good speed. I figured if there were storms, the inflow winds would increase even more from being sucked in. We ate dinner at a nearby diner, looked in the gift shop and decided to haul west towards Rapid City shortly after 7 pm.

On our way west, we saw parts of the Badlands to our south. Quite an interesting place from what I could see... pointy mountain-like rocks off in the distance. The storms that went up in southwest South Dakota were finally coming into view. We could also see an anvil that was about 100 miles away to the northwest. We noted one inflow band coming from the north and another inflow band coming from the east. This little storm was about to be an interesting one.

We had the air conditioner on in the van, so Scott went to put his jacket on. He managed to get one sleeve in ok, but when he went to put his left arm in, he looked pretty tangled up. His jacket was wrapping around the seatbelt. Scott went on the radio and said to Ron "Houston we have a problem". He mentioned he was stuck to the van and had to pull off the interstate to fix his jacket issue. When Ron pulled up beside us, Sandra's face was priceless. She had that had that confused odd look. And then there was Ben, of course, filming away at this hilarious scene. When you travel for long hours on the road with Scott, you are guaranteed at least one good laugh every day.

Anyways... back to heading west. We eventually got a good view of the storm and pulled off the interstate to take some images. The inflow winds at this location were really kicking, combining the speeds of the backing winds plus the storm drawing them in, like I had thought it would. We noticed scud gathering just to our north. It developed into a rotating wall cloud, but it seemed a bit disorganized. It would fall apart and pull itself back together again for a few times. It never amounted to anything more. I decided to bring out the lightning rod, my tripod, to get some good video, while I snapped some pictures of the storm, which was now turning out to be more of a multi-teired shelf cloud. It made for a pretty interesting scene for a while, but that meant it was picking up forward motion speed. We had to haul ourselves further east to get ahead before the rain came. We all piled into the vehicles and shot east on the interstate. We saw people taking shelter under the overpass we were on. Once we got ahead of the storm, we pulled off the interstate once again near an overpass. It was getting darker out now, so I tried my take at lightning photography. Something I've been wanting to try since I got my new lens! Unfortunately with all the winds, it was quite difficult to keep the camera from shaking ever so slightly. I am glad I was standing behind it all the time because, at one time, the wind actually went to push my tripod over! Most of the lightning was in-cloud, but I did manage to get one good photo of a strike.

The rain was nearing us once again. The wind was so strong that just one drop of rain actually stung a bit when it hit my face. We decided to call it a night and head back to Murdo to get a good night's rest. Tomorrow was going to be quite a long haul to get to the Oklahoma panhandle.

Day 2 May 27, 2007

2007-05-27T23:52:00.000-04:00

Today is Scott's birthday and all of us were in a good mood in the morning. Scott took some scotch mints and pretended they were hail... he put one under the windshield wiper and another one in the coil of one of the whip antennas... and then he dragged that mint up alongside of the antenna and popped it in his mouth! Nice breakfast, loaded with plenty of fiber! Of course Ben was around to film all of this.

I had downloaded some forecast models last night... it looks like we will be going on our first chase today in western Nebraska. SPC put out a slight risk for western Kansas and southwestern Nebraska. The indices seemed to be much better in Nebraska, so I chose that area as a target. In the morning, I asked Ron where he thought we were headed today and he said straight west, into western Nebraska. I thought that was pretty cool that both our targets matched perfectly. We could see some dryline storms today, but the risk of tornadoes seems pretty low... all the storm relative helicity seemed to be located in southcentral South Dakota.

A few days out, after Monday's potential setup, doesn't look so good for the rest of this week until the weekend... a ridge is going to be building into the plains. I guess we will have to do our sight seeing then, but that is okay... next week it looks like the ridge moves out and a couple shortwave troughs will be going through the southern plains.

In Council Bluffs, we ate a quick lunch at Dairy Queen. I had to have my brownie earthquake. We continued west on I80 to western Nebraska. Scott saw the Tornado Intercept Vehicle on the right side of the road, parked off the road.

On the way, Ron mentioned the Baron picked up rotation couplets on some storms that developed near North Platte. Mike loaded the SPC outlook page on his laptop... SPC had shifted their slight risk a bit more north into Nebraska. A tornado warning was also issued. As we neared the target just west of North Platte, there were two storms side-by-side... one to the south and one to the north. We could see the hard knuckles on the north storm and some mammatus from the south storm. Scud from the second storm was starting to curl from the outflow of the north storm. We then saw a wall cloud trying to form... it had a small inflow tail. We decided to get closer and took a road that went north. We pulled off the road and took some pictures and video. By now a new inflow tail formed, pointing in a different direction... from the south instead of the north. A small wall cloud that kicked up a bit of dust was all that could be had, but it made for some good pictures. The storm had lost its rotation according to the Baron.

After that storm fell apart, we debated about intercepting the southern storm but figured we would not see anything because we would have to go through the precip core. It looked like a garden variety storm anyways, so we decided to head back to North Platte. We saw the TIV once again... this time it was getting towed! We heard it was some mechanical issue with the TIV. We celebrated Scott's birthday by having a nice delicious dinner at Perkin's. I mentioned that the sun was setting and would make for nice mammatus pictures, so we went outside after placing our orders. The sky was filled with mammatus. Not really the hard classic looking mammatus; these were more wispy looking, but still beautiful looking. A partial bright rainbow appeared, adding final touches to the scene. I took some nice images.

Tonight we are staying at a Super 8 in North Platte, preparing for Monday's severe potential.

Day 1 May 26, 2007

2007-05-26T21:57:00.000-04:00

It was that time of year again... we were going to head to tornado alley. It was Ron Gravelle, Scott Keddie, Ben Fuller, Sandra Gravelle, Lee Keddie, Pam Gregory, Mike Walker, Dave Hopper, and myself. This was going to be Ron's biggest tour yet - two vehicles and nine people.

What a nice day to depart too... cold and wet. Ron decided to book hotel rooms in Davenport, Iowa because this was Memorial Day weekend. That meant the possibility of traffic and full hotels.

Of course we had to have our omens... the rain drops were actually rotating anti-clockwise on the passenger side window. Really weird but it was probably the only rotation we were going to see today.

I guess Ron wasn't kidding when he said he started calling Ben "Camelot". This guy always has a camera strapped around his shoulder, always taking stills or video. I had to make a face at him when he was filming Scott's van from Ron's car.

Near Chicago we encountered very heavy rain. A couple tornado warnings were issued for nearby counties due to a heavy line of storms. They were pretty low topped and didn't seem to look very impressive. We saw a lowering trying to get its act together but it didn't amount to much. On another storm west of Chicago, we saw an updraft area with rising scud.

Later on, a third developing storm was in view, showing a small inflow band that didn't last very long. Today's storms were not impressive but it was just a travel day anyways... and an introduction to the storms of tornado alley for Ron's new clients.

One of the lessons was how to pronounce towns correctly. Lee, Scott's wife, learned this lesson the hard way when we were in Iowa, nearing Peoria. She pronounced it as "Pee-or-ia" and Scott said, "That sounds like diarrhea." Since then, we kept making jokes.

Tonight we're staying at a Super 8 in Davenport and plan to depart at 8 am tomorrow to get into position for some chasing. So far, Ben has took about 8 hours worth of video. I think he should save some tape for the storms later.

Quick update...

2007-05-16T23:55:00.000-04:00

I guess I should update this blog once eh? Well my trip to Hawaii went very well and I got lots of photos... sometime when I get more time, I will post a summary of my Hawaii trip.

In 9 days I will be departing for tornado alley once again, with Ron Gravelle and Scott Keddie. This time there will be nine of us going, making this Ron's biggest tour to date. We'll be departing early Saturday May 26th, for two weeks, and I will be helping out with navigating sometimes. I will do my best to keep this blog updated with daily summaries just like last year. If there is APRS tracking, I will post the link on my website.

I have a lot of good feelings about this trip... the 2007 season is already a much better season "tornado wise" than last year's. Here's hoping we will see more tornadoes!

August 2 chase summary

2006-08-22T20:22:00.000-04:00

I figured this day would be another day I got to miss out on the action due to work. I haven't chased in Ontario this year yet since I got back from chasing in tornado alley. A tornado warning was issued for Waterloo-Wellington in the early afternoon hours. A tornado was reported in Guelph while I was left high and dry, sweltering in the heat at work. After I got home I learned Dave Szozda, my uncle, went out on a quick chase after the Guelph storm and saw a wall cloud trying to organize. All of this was ahead of a cold front, which was expected to come inland in the evening hours.

I had to quickly charge my battery for the camera, figuring I may need it later. Dave and I chatted about the storms and decided to give it a try after the squall line that was stretching from Owen Sound to past Goderich. I checked the SPC meso analysis page, which indicated CAPE was 5000 J/kg with a lifted index of -7 around the Listowel area which became my target... which wasn't too bad at all. The cold front had plenty of hot humid air to mix in with as well. I realized we were cutting it close to sunset, but I had some hope. The season had about a month left, so I had to take what I could get.

We left at 8:00 pm on hwy 85 towards Listowel. We saw the sun setting the squall line clouds which made for interesting pictures. Once we got to Dorking I noticed a shelf cloud off in the distance. It was a bit hazy yet, but figured we would be in for a good photo opportunity once we neared it. We pulled onto sideroad 15, which is just slightly west of Dorking. The shelf cloud came in and we grabbed video and photos. The wind started to pick up, and cloud-to-ground strikes became more frequent. I attempted to grab daylight lightning pics but found it rather difficult. A nice strike would flash and overexposure the photo, so that is an area that I need to practice on. But some of the photos came out pretty interesting because the clouds were fast moving. The wind was starting to blow dust in the air, which hurt my legs, then the rain came

We started to drive ahead of the storm, but we decided to punch the line and wait out the rain, hoping the rain would stop and we would get some lightning photos from the backside of the storm. The pouring rain came down horizontaly. What a nice relief from the stupid heat we've been having! Several bright CGs struck nearby. Once the rain lightened up, we decided to try taking lightning photos from inside the van. Dave had forgot his tripod, so he had to find a way to sturdy his camera. After a few attempts and once the rain cleared, I threw the camera on the tripod to take proper lightning photos. This is very addicting. There were some nice strikes, but we also had incloud lightning which kinda made it a little more difficult. After a while, the lightning started dying down as the storm was headed eastward, so we called it quits.

We got back at my house in Waterloo at 10:15 pm, with a total chase distance of approx 90 km.

The Signs of Aging Suck

2006-07-18T21:19:00.000-04:00

Grey hair? Could it be? Is that really grey hair on the sides of my head when I look in the mirror? Wow... well not a surprise really. I knew the day would come sooner or later. Ok, so it's only a few. I discovered these grey hairs a few days ago on July 13th. Wow. The 13th. Who woulda known?! Well anyways, that just made me realize that I am approaching 30. I wish I could have stayed 25 forever. That was a perfect age. You could do all the crap that adults do, you had good memory, you acted young, you had the energy, and you had no grey hair (well... most people anyway unless you were my father who greyed in his teens). Those days are coming to the end in a few years for me. I've already got poor short term memory. I can remember stuff that happened long ago, but could I remember what I did 5 min ago? Sometimes not... today I was organizing the yogurt around in the fridge and I set one container on the floor to move it out of the way. Well it turns out I forgot to put the container BACK in the fridge. Luckily my ma spotted it before it had a chance to warm up and go bad. This short term memory crap can get frustrating at times, but as I get older, it won't get any better, so I just have to deal with it... I laugh at myself sometimes. I also can't seem to shake off those love handles or the extra weight off my thighs. Perhaps I should cut back on the sweets, dontcha think? :o)

Now excuse me while I go find my black hair colour....

Well I guess I should update once again... LOL

2006-07-10T22:29:00.000-04:00

Yikes I haven't updated for a month. I guess it's time for another update. Well I finally updated my website with several of my tornado alley photos and summaries. I have also put all my videos onto DVD with my uncle's DVD recorder for the tv. I gotta say that really saves a bunch of time instead of making the DVD on the computer. It takes forever to upload and edit videos on the computer, not to mention it uses lots of space. What is it about computers and rendering stuff I will never know.

But anyway... I thinking of buying a new camera lens for my Canon Digtal Rebel. I am looking at the Sigma 18-200 mm for the Rebel. The kit lens that came with my camera can be a joke to manual focus with, especially in low light situations. I mean... what kind of a SLR lens doesn't have infinity distance markings on it? Good grief. Well, I plan to pop into Henry's once and have a look at the 18-200 mm lens. It's $500 but I kinda like the thought of having the abilities of a telephoto and wide angle all in one lens instead of buying a bunch of lenses.

Oh yeah. One more step towards Hawaii. I bought my luggage last Friday! And it's Hawaiian print too, with hibiscus. Now my luggage should really stand out in the airport LOL. I can't wait till that trip, it's going to be very fun. Still several months to go though... how about now? Nope. Now? Nope. Now?

Ok I gotta save the good news for last so here it is. I got more work hours, so instead of working from 8 to 4 I work from 8 to 5 now. Plus I got a dollar raise which puts my hourly rate to $10! FINALLY!!! I was supposed to have one back in March but my former boss couldn't afford it. So since my production co worker left, I was beginning to feel underpaid from all the stuff I've been doing and I've been thinking about asking for a raise sometime after the new boss got settled in. Last week he said to me "I'd love to give you a raise, I appreciate all the hard work you've been doing for me. How does $10 sound?" I was estatic. So, with the 5 extra hours a week and my raise starting in August, I will be brining home more money. And then I can pay Rita back for the Hawaii trip sooner LOL (yes it's coming Rita, please be patient LOL).

Marathon drive back home

2006-06-11T12:54:00.000-04:00

JUNE 9 DAY 14

Today was the beginning of our marathon drive back home. Not something that all of us were looking forward to. We have a good foot to travel on the Streets & Trips map! “Oh dear” were Scott’s words. All of us woke up at 5 am MST. Ron and Scott grabbed some coffee from the hotel lobby. Apparently it was awful tasting. Ron tossed his out in the parking lot. Maybe it wasn’t even coffee?

We headed south to get to I90. There was a ton of ground level fog in the fields off to the east, which made for a nice picture.

On our way eastward on I90 in South Dakota, we decided to check out Mount Rushmore. We saw some TCU starting to build. It looked like another day of convection! Ron joked “If we’re lucky, we’ll get a lightning bolt hitting Mount Rushmore.” Then, 2 minutes later, once we entered the national monument, what happened? A lightning bolt hit one of the mountains ahead of us. Okay this is getting retarded, LOL. Ron was starting to scare himself from his precise forecasting. There just had to be a thunderstorm when we arrived. Just because. We took some pictures of Mount Rushmore then continued our trek eastward.

Later on in South Dakota, a vehicle ahead of us got hit by a large bird. Their windshield was smashed from side to side. I am glad that it was not us. We ate at Al’s Oasis in Chamberlain and continued to head east. We saw a developing supercell north of Sioux City near I29. Ron wanted to take I29 down towards Omaha, NE to see what the supercell was doing. We had strong surface winds coming from the north. So strong that it was rattling the van and dust was blowing in the field. A severe thunderstorm watch had been issued for the area.

Around 7:30 pm CST, the storm was beginning to fall apart. It was trying to organized but as soon as it started to cross I29, it started losing its punch. We could see the flanking line of the storm.

We continued on our journey. Later at night, we started to follow an MCS into the Great Lakes region. At 5 am June 10th, we saw a shelf cloud from the MCS west of the Chicago area. A rather large MCS the size of South Dakota was slowly traveling southeast, drenching the Chicago area. Parts of I80 had some pooling water from the rain. It just rained and rained. We exited out of the big blob of rain in Michigan and became homebound.

In these last two weeks, I have had the time of my life. Would I do it again? YES!

STATS

Dates: May 27 to June 10 2006

Crew: Ron Gravelle (forecaster), Scott Keddie (driver), Laura Duchesne (sky reader)

Total trip distance: ~16,000 km

States chased: IL, SD, NE, KS, OK, IA, CO, NM, MT

Tornadoes: 5

Funnel clouds: 3

Wall clouds: 8

Largest hail: 2 inches

THANK YOU’S AND TESTIMONIAL

Many many huge thanks to Ron Gravelle for giving me this opportunity. And many many thanks to Scott Keddie for being the driver and also to his better half for letting us use the family van for 2 weeks. It was truly much appreciated. I just can’t thank them enough.

I’ve learned a lot about forecasting and reading the skies in tornado alley. Ron is truly an excellent friend and forecaster. He always got us into the target area on time to witness some of mother nature’s spectacles. His number one priority was for us to see good storms but to stay safe so we could get back home all in one piece. If we were not chasing, we were doing some sight seeing and eating. And yes, there was plenty of humor on this trip (Want some more chocolate cake, Ron?). I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.

If you are unable to go to tornado alley on your own and you want to do some real storm chasing, visit Ron’s website www.stormchasing.ca . He’s an honest guy and is not in it to make profit, especially if the weather pattern does not look promising. He will teach you some of his forecasting techniques, and he will try his best to make sure you see real storms. He will guarantee you will have a great time.

Montana Supercell

2006-06-11T12:53:00.001-04:00

JUNE 8 DAY 13

Today we were headed off to southeastern Montana. It was going to be quite a bit of a drive. Ron was certain that there would be a supercell near Billings, MT. CAPE was 3000 with a lifted index of -9. A triple point low was setting up in the target area.

On our way north, we saw the mountains off to the west. It was a nice view. We continued on northwest. We were getting into hilly country. Once we arrived in the town of Hardin, MT, we saw a developing storm to the west. We headed west towards Billings. Off in the distance, we could see a wall cloud forming around 2:50 pm MST. Then, once some hills cleared, we noticed a wedge-shaped feature coming down from the wall cloud. It had good solid sides, and was more than three quarters to the ground, with a fuzzy looking bottom. Ron is certain it was a tornado. It could have been a weak one. I guess that brings our tube count on this trip to 5. Not too bad for such a quiet storm season I must say! Baron did happen to pick up the brief rotation cuplet during this time.

The supercell’s structure wasn’t looking too bad. In fact at one point it almost looked like it was starting to corkscrew. We took some back roads to get closer to the wall cloud. We pulled over to snap some pictures and take video, then we continued on. The wall cloud then started to dissipate.

We wanted to get ahead of the storm again, but unfortunately Montana does not offer very many good road options, so we had to do a big loop around on some back roads with lots of big hills. We got into the RFD region. Ahead of us, one of the trees got blown down by the force of the winds. We had to be pretty careful around here with all the trees.

By now it was looking like the supercell was beginning to go linear. Ron expected the storm to head eastward and meet up with the converging winds coming from the east, which should make the storm more organized once again. The Baron was indicating that the storm’s height was 55,000 feet high. When we were on the back roads, it looked like the storm was becoming a bit more outflow dominant. We also saw some cattle, dogs and bunnies on the back road. Everything just seems to be on the road in Montana. We finally got back on the interstate to get ahead of the storm. I looked back, and noticed a small shelf cloud beginning to form. I was expecting the shelf cloud would get bigger.

At 6 pm, we went to get some ice cream at a Dairy Queen in Forsyth. We were hoping that the storm would head eastward and cross the interstate ahead of us. When we were done chewing and swallowing our grub, Ron looked at the Baron. Dang it! The storm was becoming a right mover. That kinda screwed up our plans. So, we headed back southwest to go back to Hardin and get a hotel for the night. Off to the west, a nice outflow boundary was setting up. TCU was forming along it at a good pace. We saw a partial rainbow in the rain curtains from the storm.

Once we got to the hotel in Hardin, I snapped some pics of the storm’s anvil off in the distance.

The stupid heat

2006-06-11T12:53:00.000-04:00

JUNE 7 DAY 12

Today seemed to be a little more promising. We would be playing the dryline from Wyoming into Nebraska. By lunch time, cumulus was already beginning to build along the dryline. We headed more north from Cheyenne and by around 4 pm, we decided to cut more eastward towards Mitchell, NE and head north. The dryline was advancing into central NE and a convergence zone was setting up in the area.

And son of a… was it ever hot! We saw a temperature sign in Mitchell that read 105 deg F. This was retarded heat. Gimme my ice cold water!

We headed more west and saw some towers building. We pulled off the road to wait around for a bit. Ron was expecting the cap to give away and the storms would explode. We waited. And waited. Unfortunately it was getting late in the afternoon and we had still a haul to do to get set up for the next day near Montana. Today was so hot that the heat rose and created an inversion layer, hence the storms would not explode.

Later on, we saw a really really long train. Scott measured one and it turned out to be about 2 km long. We thought that was retarded but then later on, we saw a much longer train. It had to have been about 5 km long. Now THAT was retarded. That was the longest train I ever saw in my life. We stayed in Gillette overnight.

Travel day

2006-06-11T12:52:00.000-04:00

JUNE 6 DAY 11

Today was a travel day into eastern Colorado. We headed towards the Denver area. On our way we saw several small dust devils in the fields.

We were hoping to get a LP supercell if we were lucky. Storms did happen to fire from Denver down towards Raton but they were not that severe and it was getting later on in the day. We preferred to head more north to get set up for the next day in Wyoming.

We stayed overnight in Cheyenne.

Tornadoes near Huron, South Dakota!

2006-06-05T23:53:00.000-04:00

JUNE 5 DAY 10

Today was promising to be an interesting one. Ron and I had good feelings in our gut. We left Sioux Falls and headed slightly west towards highway 81. The SPC had issued a moderate risk for southeast South Dakota, eastern Nebraska and northwest Kansas. There was plenty of ACCAS around, indicating that the atmosphere was pretty unstable. What was also a good thing was that the surface moisture had returned for the first time in several days, with a southerly surface flow.

On our way west, we decided to check out the aftermath of the Manchester F4 tornado that occured on June 24, 2004. It was almost the 2-year mark of this devastating storm that whipped out the entire town. When we arrived, I was speechless. There was an erie calm. Just 2 years ago, there was a town there. Now all that remains are twisted trees. Nothing is left. Nothing was rebuilt. The only thing new was the rail road crossing signs. A feeling of saddness overcame me. This was definately a reminder that we need to respect Mother Nature's raw power.

We grabbed some lunch at a Dairy Queen in the nearest town. We continued westward. Ron's first target was near Madisson, SD. His second choice was Neal, NE. The NWS in Sioux Falls put out a severe thunderstorm watch around 2 pm for the area we were going to be targeting.

A little while later, the Baron was showing a supercell that quickly developed near Wessington around 3:15. This was the first storm that had shear on it, and the only storm in South Dakota. It had 50k feet echo tops. I spotted a developing wall cloud, that was close to the ground. As we neared the storm we took a gravel road to get closer. Unfortunately there was a river and no bridge was there. So much for that option. So we took another road, and pulled over. The wall cloud was really beginning to crank. A multi vortex rain-wrapped tornado occured behind some trees, but it was very poor contrast. Finally, the NWS issued a tornado warning for Sanborn county. The Baron was showing a 126 mph shear cuplet on the storm.

We hauled southward because the wall cloud was catching up to us. When we were further south in a better position near Huron, we watched the wall cloud really beginning to crank around. The RFD had kicked in. Then we saw it. A tornado quickly spun up. Our first visible tornado! It did not last very long, and shortly after, another larger tornado formed. This one had more of a thick cone-shaped/stovepipe look. Two tornadoes within minutes from the same storm ain't too shabby at all! Although they did not last very long, we did get video and still pictures. They occured near highway 281 (and probably crossed it too).

After the tornadoes dissipated, the supercell's core was getting closer to us. We saw a bright green core which looked pretty wild. We decided to cut through the core... not something I recommend if you don't have a good eye, a good driver and a Baron Wx Worx system. The core was insane! We were literally in 0 visibility deluge, with winds, rain and half inch hail. I kept my eye out for any sudden changes in the direction of the wind.

Finally we arrived in the RFD/outflow area. We made it out of the core alive! A bunch of dust was getting kicked up and the outflow actually felt kind of nice since I was hot and sweaty before. Whew!

The storm was beginning to weaken and the threat of tornadoes seemed to dimminish. It eventually rained itself out. We left the storm to spend the night in Valentine, NE. We had a celebration steak and beer dinner at the Peppermill Steakhouse. Was it ever good! Our catch of the day was a pretty good one, considering we targeted outside of the SPC moderate risk area.

Tomorrow we are planning for eastern Colorado, but it won't be near as good as today's setup.

A Hope for Monday

2006-06-04T21:49:00.000-04:00

JUNE 4 DAY 9

Today we decided to cut east a bit more. Ron had decided to issue his own slight risk area for today’s storms in eastern South Dakota and western Iowa. SPC had a slight risk area for the Montana area, but that would screw us up for tomorrow’s setup in Nebraska if we were to target that area. We targeted the town of Aberdeen. On our way, we stopped to get gas. Ron pointed out to me a surface boundary to the north and another one to the east. He wanted to target where these two boundaries met. He figured these would fire in the afternoon sometime. We continued more eastward and noticed that the cumulus along these boundaries were getting bigger. Once we reached Aberdeen, we ate a KFC buffet lunch/dinner. By now it was almost late afternoon and we had to get ourselves in position for tomorrow. On our way to Sioux Falls, storms did happen to fire in Ron’s target area. The Baron was detecting 2 inch hail on one of the southern storms.

We stayed in Sioux Falls overnight and planned to target the Nebraska/Kansas border for a potential supercell setup, after Scott gets the van’s oil change done and to get it fixed because it has been making a weird clanking vibrating noise when he would do turns.

Tomorrow the surface moisture would finally make a return, after several days of elevated storms after the large haboob in eastern Colorado.

Elevated storms in South Dakota

2006-06-04T21:48:00.000-04:00

JUNE 3 DAY 8

We left North Platte to target central South Dakota. On our way north, we ran into Tim Marshall who was with Silver Lining Tours at a gas station in some very small town in Cherry county, which is literally in the middle of nowhere. Off to our northeast, some towers were building along a surface boundary so we decided to go for that. We headed northeast past Pierre, South Dakota. As we got closer to the storms, we could tell they were elevated. We watched a microburst occur, then decided to drive more north behind the storms. There really wasn’t any storm structure features going on, so we cut through the line of storms to get ahead of them to see if there was a decent shelf cloud. Unfortunately there really wasn’t much going on ahead of the storms either. It was getting pretty windy, and we saw a little bit of hail shafts.

We decided to call it quits for the day as seeing that this was all that would happen today. On our way back to Pierre, we saw a dust devil off in the distance, and several road runner birds near the road. At first, Ron and I thought Scott was actually going to hit one, but he slowed down so it could finish crossing the road. Off to our west, I noticed an outflow boundary forming. Thunderstorm cells were starting to grow fast along the outflow boundary, so by the time we reached Pierre, we had a small thunderstorm to our north, with some mammatus. In the motel parking lot, I attempted lightning photography but it was quite difficult with the in-cloud lightning and city lights. We had a severe thunderstorm watch until 4 am.

I got to see the Rockies!

2006-06-04T21:47:00.000-04:00

JUNE 2 DAY 7

Today was a down day. We decided to travel a bit more north through Denver. The Rockies were in full view, so it was a nice drive. We ate some Mexican lunch in Greeley. Ron’s face looked “kinda red” from the heat of the food.

We were hoping we would catch a cell or two that would produce some hail. We were in the 2% tornado risk area before the SPC even issued the 2%. Unfortunately it was already mid afternoon and nothing has popped up in the area yet, and we still had quite a haul to do to get to Nebraska for tomorrow.

On our way east, we saw the DOW 3 ahead of us by a couple cars on the same interstate as us heading in the same direction. Perhaps a good sign for tomorrow? We’ll see. As we headed more northwest, cumulus clouds were starting to build up. Ron could have sworn he saw a fairly good sized funnel cloud under the knuckles of a towering cumulus. There was a sign of wind shear in the area, as the clouds were tilting as they grew taller. By now we were starting to see some cells with small anvils. Since today was a travel day, we just continued east to North Platte, Nebraska to spend the night there.

There was a severe thunderstorm to our north around midnight. Ron said there was a TVS on the storm, and that if the sirens went off, to go in his room. Luckily, all I saw was lightning off in the distance and the storm had dissipated before it reached us.

Mammatus in New Mexico

2006-06-04T21:46:00.000-04:00

JUNE 1 DAY 6

The day started off beautifully. It wasn’t too hot or too cold. The atmosphere seemed to be a little capped today. We left Oakley, KS and headed west into Colorado near the New Mexico stateline.

Finally around 1 pm CST, a cumulus field was beginning to develop. Shortly after 2 pm MST, we went west towards La Junta. There were some storms starting to form to the south just slightly west of Raton, New Mexico. Off in the distance, I could see the storms and a couple anvils. We continued southwest towards Trinidad. The atmosphere was slowing becoming more unstable. The cells were growing and were stationary. A cumulus field could be seen ahead of the cells.

Around 4:50, a small supercell formed west of Raton, New Mexico. We decided to continue south west to target this storm. The scenery around here was amazing. We could see the mountains and rolling hills, with the supercell ahead of us. We saw a beaver tail trying to attach to the core of the storm. After a few minutes, the supercell started moving southwest, away from us. We went through Trinidad and the mountains were just beautiful. We continued south towards Raton. A flanking line was building and started to corkscrew in the updraft. We stopped in Raton at a Sonic to eat something. Just off to the west between some trees and mountains, I watched the LP supercell trying to organize its meso together, but it didn’t amount to much. We decided to head north of the interstate. Just outside of Trinidad, we saw some nice mammatus. On the way to Pueblo, Colorado, we saw a colourful sunset behind the mountains, with more cb’s forming. The scenery made for a pretty picture.

We stayed in Pueblo overnight and planned to head back to Nebraska the next day to get in position for the potential severe storm set up on Saturday.

Eastern CO Haboob

2006-06-01T01:07:00.000-04:00

MAY 31 DAY 5

Our target today was eastern Colorado. We left Amarillo just before 10 am, and headed north. On our way up, we saw lots of transverse rolls (low level horizontal vorticity), which was a pretty good sign for today’s setup. We also saw some ACCAS, and some vorticity in cumulus clouds. Around noon, we stopped at an Allsup’s in Dumas to fill up on gas, and have one of their famous burritos. There were lots of good signs of low level vorticity in the sky. We saw a pretty nice horseshoe vortex off to our east. The cumulus field was looking pretty nice. We continued north to Lamar, Colorado and ate some lunch at a pizza hut. As it got closer to 4 pm Mountain time, the Baron was showing a nice supercell over Limon. The storm was splitting and becoming a right mover. We continued northwest on I40. The supercell was headed right for us. The Baron was picking up strong shear on the storm, going at 103 mph (165 km/h). Closer to 5 pm, the shear had increased to 200 km/h. That was a pretty good sign. We could see a very dark sky off to the west. The sun beating down on the wheatfields made for a pretty nice contrast. As we neared the storm, we saw a brief funnel cloud forming just south of the main core. It dissipated, then scud started forming and rising to form a wall cloud. It was trying pretty hard, but it seemed it was lacking the low level moisture needed for the scud to form. We continued more west. The rain shafts made for a pretty nice picture. We pulled into a truck stop and took video of the strong outflow winds and rain curtains.

Afterwards, we went a little bit more south on a dirt road. We got out of the van and the cold outflow just hit us. Scott pointed out something white over the hill, so Ron and I went up on the hill. Cactus was poking into my legs. We reached the top and saw that the white thing was some scud that was trying to rotate. We decided to pull more west to get ahead of the storm before we got more into the rain core. At this point we were getting a bit disappointed. It appeared the storm was beginning to become outflow dominated. We saw lots of dust being kicked up in the fields. We also saw the odd dust devil form. At one point, zero visibility dust was crossing the interstate. We continued more eastwards and started to see parts of a beaver tail near the shelf cloud. Where the two met, there was a meso trying to get its act together. The rear flank downdraft started to punch through and it kicked up some more dust. By now, the storm was getting more organized. As we got more ahead of the storm, we saw the big shelf cloud. It was multi-tiered and just plain gorgeous. This thing was huge! There was tons of dust everywhere. We pulled off the interstate and grabbed some great images of a large wall cloud and the shelf cloud, with lots of “greenage” in behind. This thing was really trying to drop a tornado. The colours were pretty amazing. The outflow was also very strong. We continued to follow the storm eastward into Kansas before the rain core came to overtake us. It was starting to get dark out, so we called it a day. This was a very exciting storm chase!

We pulled into a gas station and met Steve Miller from Texas, and his friend. We stayed in Oakley, Kansas overnight.

Western Oklahoma Supercell

2006-06-01T01:05:00.000-04:00

MAY 30 DAY 4

Today started off to be a beautiful day in beautiful Kansas. We left Salina shortly after 7 am CST and had an early lunch in Wichita. We picked the northwest Oklahoma panhandle so far as our target. The RUC and NAM models were showing some pretty good parameters for today’s setup. The front has stalled, which was pretty promising and we had our outflow boundaries from last night’s activity. Since we had some time to kill, we decided to stop at the Twister Museum in Wakita, OK.

Afterwards, we headed west towards the OK panhandle. So far things were looking good. We could see small towers starting to go up on the dryline. The slow moving thunderstorm activity ahead of the dryline should produce an outflow boundary that will kick up the cu on the dryline. For the first time in my life, I was going to be seeing some real dryline supercells from start to finish. ACCAS formed ahead of the dryline, a sign of good instability. We watched a distant supercell over Kansas as we headed westward towards Woodward, OK. A stationary supercell was just starting to form near Woodward. It was only 2:40 pm and we were already in a good spot.

On our way down, we neared a railroad crossing. We thought a train was going to go through but we noticed that someone had broken off the crossing gate and it was laying right across the tracks, setting off the crossing lights and sound. Ron and Scott did a great job removing the gate off the railroad.

There were nice turkey towers firing up along the dryline. Storms started firing up in the Texas panhandle. We decided to head south towards the caprock. There was a smaller storm that formed ahead of the larger supercell. The larger supercell started to show mesos on the Baron, with a hook beginning to form. There was also a small v-notch. We decided to head towards Elk City and go west from there. This thing was indeed a slow moving, clocking a whopping 17 mph travel speed.

Shortly after 6, I noticed a small lowering to the north. As we got closer, the meso was visible. It was barrel shaped, and it was really trying to get its act together. A wall cloud became more organized and produced a brief funnel cloud. Unfortunately it wouldn’t reach the ground. The wall cloud dissipated and then a new one formed to the south of the core. There were also some pretty good staccato strikes. Afterwards, we decided to head towards Amarillo to spend the night. On our way westward, we got into the heavy rain core, with some good outflow winds. The storms were starting to bow out around 7:30. We saw a nice shelf cloud. All of a sudden, a truck ahead of us was having a hard time staying straight… the back end of the truck kept swaying in the wind. Just outside of Amarillo, the rain was clearing, with the sun setting in the west. This made for perfect double rainbow photo opportunities closer to 9 pm.

We had a nice meal at the Big Texan to finish off our day. Ron decided to show off and eat a huge freaking slab of chocolate cake. Oh boy was he hurtin’! Those bull’s balls were also pretty good. You should try some!

Nightime Kansas Fun

2006-06-01T01:03:00.000-04:00

MAY 29 DAY 3

We had two targets to choose from today. One in Iowa, and the other in northeast Kansas. The cap was much cooler today, increasing our chances of seeing something interesting. The first thunderstorm watch box had been issued near the Canadian border, Minnesota. We were guessing the convection will start north and work its way south in Texas later on. We headed towards Omaha, Nebraska to decide which route to take. A storm in Kansas City was producing a good outflow boundary. Already, a field of cumulus was forming in the convergence zone, in eastern Kansas.

We intercepted two small cells near Omaha on the way down, but they were dying off. A supercell was starting to develop in Iowa and it was only 2 pm. It appears that eastern Kansas will be our target so far for this afternoon as we had hoped that the activity would start in the north and work its way down south later in the day. We stopped in Lincoln for a pit stop to chew on some lunch. By now, a lunch of storms was firing in Minnesota, with the first thunderstorm watch box issued. There was also a line of storms in Kansas City. We figured those would generate an outflow boundary that would help initiate some storms in eastern Kansas and western Iowa. Unfortunately as time went on and we headed towards Des Moines, things were less promising. Our boundary had some cu on it but it just wouldn’t get any higher. It appeared that the Kansas City storm had drawn in all the moisture from the area into itself. When we arrived back in Lincoln, NE we stopped at a Phillips 66 gas station. A small storm was just to our south. I took some pics of sunset-lit mammatus. At this point, we decided to head south to Kansas to intercept a line of supercells to catch some lightning and get closer to tomorrow’s target. We went through the small storm. It had some good CGs but that was only the beginning. As we were heading south, the northern supercell on the line was showing some strong windshear on the Baron wx worx system. Several mesos had popped up. We figured a tornado had to be on the ground now. As we neared the storm in Kansas, lots of lightning was illuminating the supercell. I could tell this thing was huge. We decided to pull off the interstate to take some lightning pics. I got a few good ones. I couldn’t believe I was finally in beautiful Kansas watching a big storm. I breathed in the fresh air. I already felt a warm welcome to Tornado Alley. After, we decided to continue south. By now the storms were starting to turn into a bow echo. There were tons of nice anvil crawlers and nearby CGs. Unfortunately I had to “go” real bad. Here I was in the middle of nowhere at midnight in a severe storm and not a single pit stop was opened. So what do I do? Mark my territory on the side of the road. Welcome to real storm chasing, folks!

Somewhere between Beatrice and Salina, small hail covered the road. We arrived at a Motel 6 in Salina after 1 am to catch some much needed rest. We anticipate the storm’s outflow boundary will help tomorrow’s set up in the panhandle.

A capped day

2006-05-29T00:10:00.000-04:00

MAY 28 DAY 2

Today our target was central South Dakota. SPC had a 5% tornado risk. The models were showing a triple point low in North Dakota, and a dryline running from Nebraska to west Texas. CAPES were at around 5000 J/kg, with a lifted index of -8. The winds were also showing a promising setup, with the cold air coming from the northwest and the warm moisture coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. The NAM was also showing a moisture pocket and low CIHN over our target. Now it is us versus the cap.

We had dinner in Sioux Falls at a Subway. The cap still held pretty strong. And boy was it ever hot and windy. Ron and I checked out the models and decided to go west a bit further and wait for the cap to break because there was still a few daylight hours left.

Or… maybe not. The cap left us high and dry today unfortunately. We continued west and the cold front went through central South Dakota around 7pm. The cold front hardly generated any cumulus. We ended up in a town called Chamberlain. Nice scenic view of the river, but we only had to drive 10 mph. 10 mph for pete’s sakes. Locals wave at us. Are we in a damn parade now? So we pulled into a motel to find wifi but found nothing. I said to Ron “There is no such thing as high speed in this town.”. Well so much for that. We decided to call it a day and head back to Sioux Falls to stay for the night to prepare for tomorrow’s potential. Noticed some ACCAS along the cold front on the way back. Oh yeah, and only in South Dakota can you find two young guys with a dead dear in the back of their car.

Our First Day

2006-05-27T23:18:00.000-04:00

MAY 27 2006 DAY 1

So far our trip has started off with several “omens”. First it was a Chase Bank sign, then we saw a Chase Street sign, then we saw Chicago’s “Windy City” sign. Next, we realized we would be in good position to intercept a storm. Scott Keddie, Ron Gravelle and I have encountered a supercell near Paw Paw, Illinois at around 5 pm CST. A line of supercells were tracking into the Midwest, and the storm that we were after was the tail end Charlie. It had 50 thousand feet echo tops on it, and was producing 2 inch hail. It also had a meso. The NWS issued a tornado warning for La Salle county. We were in perfect position. We headed north to position ourselves at the back end of the storm. We saw what looked like a developing wall cloud just south of the precip core. Ron pointed to an area between some trees. A small rain wrapped tornado was there. I couldn’t really see it so I will have to watch my videos later to see if the camera picked it up. Scud was also rising off the ground. A classic wall cloud didn’t form, but the area under the meso had some rotation swirls in the base. Then the rear flank downdraft kicked up a dust foot.

Afterwards, we drove into the small town of Paw Paw and encountered 2 inch hail. This is the biggest I have seen so far, and let me tell you it was very loud. It actually did leave some shallow hail dents on the van! The precip core was intense zero visibility. We went through a large puddle. At this point I was afraid of flash flooding and hydroplaning. Unfortunately it seems that Ron had lost one of his stormchasing tours magnets from the deluge.

We stayed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa over night. This was a pretty good start to the trip and we haven’t even started trying to look for stuff yet.

4 more days to go...

2006-05-23T00:39:00.000-04:00

Right now it's the start of May 23rd... and I got 4 more days to go until I leave for my much needed tornado alley chase trip. I got almost everything all packed already, the trip is paid off except for food and other junk. I am excited, can't you tell? I've been wanting to do this for 9 fricking years. Yes, I said 9. Why the heck did it take me so long? Being in school never helped. I didn't have a fulltime job until late 2004. So now I finally got vacation time and money.

Ron Gravelle, Scott Keddie and I will be leaving this dang boring place on May 27th. Our first night will be in St. Louis, then we are headed off to Nebraska. Hopefully we will catch the next trough in time as it goes through. Should be interesting. Chase season is finally making a return after a very boring death ridge. But of course the GFS has been a roller coaster lately, so who knows. Models can say all they want, but Mother Nature has the final word.

I will try my best to post updates of our chases when I get a chance. But for now, it is almost 1 am, I still need to make my lunch and I am working tomorrow. And I know that this is going to be a long short week.

Cool Whip rocks, end of story

2006-05-21T17:23:00.000-04:00

Recently I've been a fan of Cool Whip... that delicious fluffy white whipped cream topping that comes in a container. We keep ours in the freezer so it stays longer... but once it's opened, it seems like it doesn't last very long. I've topped mango peices, crushed pineapple and coconut. I've even topped ice cream. I've mixed it in salads. It's like a guilty pleasure. Recently I made a Pistachio pudding salad. You gotta try it - it's got a great texture and taste, and is just heavenly.

Pistachio Salad

1 can (14 oz.) crushed pineapple
1 pkg (106 grams) instant pistachio pudding mix
1 500 ml container Cool Whip
1 cup plain yogurt

1. Put pineapple and juice in bowl.
2. Add dry pudding mix. Combine mixture with fork.
3. Stir in yogurt.
4. Gently fold in Cool Whip.
5. Chill for 2 to 3 hours.

I am going to be in Cool Whip withdrawl once I am storm chasing in the plains for 2 weeks!