| | May 20 - 3:00 PM ET | |
| | Woke up happy that people were nice enough to clean some before they left. Sort of a pre-chase party and cookout last night. Good times. Most of today has been spent ironing out all of this site stuff. Almost done though, should be easy to update from the road. I dont even think I was this excited when I bought my car, which if you know how I feel about my car, says a lot. 32 hours... | |
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| | May 22 - 4:00 AM ET | |
| | On the road. Just passed through Columbus, Ohio, which means we've burned about 400 miles in 6 hours. Good time if you ask me. Also on a high note, we were given a Mitsubishi Galant as our rental car, which is much bigger than an Impala and seems to have decent power. Still just big enough for all 4 of us and our gear, so we lucked out on that one. Chris has taken the driving so far, plan is to switch at sun-up and Neil will finish out this leg. The rest of us are trying to catch a couple hours shut-eye.
Mark is checking the 2 day convective now, appears things have slowed and we may not need to drive another 500 miles to Texas tomorrow morning. (Sorry Kat, we're gonna get down there at some point..) Current models place southeast KS pretty much in the middle of the best action for Wednesday. Fingers crossed. | |
| | | May 22 - 3:00 PM CT | |
| | Just arrived at the Hampton Inn in Shawnee, Kansas. Will update more later, but it feels really good to be out of the car. Around 1050 miles in 15 hours. Earlier reports are holding true, tonight might be interesting and tomorrow should be very exciting. Key words: significant tornadoes. | |
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| | May 23 - 8:00 AM CT | |
| | Good morning kids. First off I would like to thank the staff of Weather or Not in Shawnee, KS, for our generous accommodations and the wonderful meal we had last night. After the better part of 24 hours in a car, these beds were golden. Thanks for starting our trip off right!
On to the news... We are gearing up today to head towards the central Kansas / Oklahoma border. Last night's storms in West Central Kansas apparently sparked off a few tornadoes, which is a good indicator that today will be unstable as well. Ever since yesterday morning around 4:00 AM the forecast models have been getting more and more exciting for us, and as long as one or two variables hold up should make today a great chase day. Once we get down southwest of Wichita we will regroup, reanalyze the data, and then plot our course. Not sure where we will be tonight.
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| | May 23 - 2:00 PM CT | |
| | Just passed through Pratt, Kansas, which is about 10 miles east of Greensburg. The same Greensburg that was devastated by an F5 tornado earlier this year. Our earlier plans of hanging out in Pratt and re-analyzing have given way to on-the-road evaluations of the current models. We need to be in the panhandle of Oklahoma at best, preferably the northeast Texas panhandle in the next couple hours or we risk being out of position. Some really strong storms fired up just west of Pratt earlier, and we caught the southern-most edge of the storms as we rode in. Looked like decent storms with hail and lightning, but no upper level rotation. Turkey sandwiches in the Wal-Mart parking lot and a little stretch time. Hopefully I got some interesting pictures on the way out here.
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| | May 24 - 3:00 AM CT | |
| | Our first chase day is over. I think everyone was pleased with our results today, although we did not actually see any funnels touch ground. The storms had potential but for some reason they just didn’t deliver how we were hoping. To backtrack a little, we left Pratt and headed to Woodward, OK. That seemed the most likely place to stop and re-gather data to pick our attack strategy. After camping out at a Days Inn to ‘borrow’ their wi-fi for a bit, we decided to head towards the northernmost cell of the group, which was a supercell with a tornado warning already on it. We shot north for a while, posted up just east of it and watched for something to take shape. After about 20 minutes it became obvious this storm had lost some of its organization, so we moved south and farther west into the Texas panhandle to catch another supercell with tornado warnings. Things got a little dicey as we realized we might not be able to beat this one to the road we needed to head south on to get into Texas. Luckily we were able to get position to the south and east, along with about two dozen other chase vehicles and teams posting all along the main road. We stayed there for a good while, watching a particularly interesting wall cloud formation with lots of potential. Unfortunately it seemed that the best parts of the storm were wrapped in precipitation and any tornado activity was not visible from our position. We still tried to get a lot of pictures, and stuck around hoping something would form up if it started to backbuild. As we headed back north we got a tip on another supercell with warnings to the south west of us near Canadian, Texas. We cut a quick u-turn and booked it hard to get under the storm with hopes of catching it as it was backlit by the sunset. It was too dark to really see anything by the time we got there, so we pulled off and took lots of lightning pictures. Three supercell formations with tornado warnings associated and we intercepted all of them. The lightning pictures were especially rewarding, and thankfully Chris was watching the radar because the storm shifted east and we were a little too close to be safe. Night chasing is a very bad idea, and we were in a dangerous spot. Finally called it a night around 9:30 PM, and headed south towards Canadian to find some food and lodging. No surprise Canadian was completely shut down, so we pushed on to Miami, Pampa, Panhandle, and finally Amarillo before we actually found a place to stay. Tom Bodett left the light on for us... but only 2 towels. | |
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| | May 24 - 4:00 PM CT | |
| | Quick road update. We are now sitting in a Starbucks in Midland, Texas. Home of George W. Bush (or at least that's what the sign says). Anyway, outlook isn't too good for right now, things aren't firing up to the south as we had hoped. Plan is to give this another couple hours to develop and if nothing happens we will start on our trek to South Dakota. Got to cover about 900 miles in the next 20 hours or so. Weeee.
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| | May 25 - 2:30 AM CT | |
| | So nothing developed in southwest Texas all day. Oh well, you win some you lose some. Left Midland around 6:30 pm and just arrived in Liberal, Kansas. Quite a trip, but we did get to stop in Lubbock Texas and get us some nice juicy steaks. Plan for tomorrow is to head up into western Nebraska, and hopefully catch something firing up in the afternoon. Here are the two pictures I took today, just so it wouldn’t feel left out. | |
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| | May 25 - 12:00 PM CT | |
| | So 3 cowboy hats and 1 ‘Buck Fever’ hunting cap later, we find ourselves headed to Colby, Kansas. Note: most of west Kansas smells like poop. The data we have points towards a likely chance of action right where Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado meet. Should be pulling into Colby around 1:30 or so, and then we hang out until something breaks loose. I will try to get a picture of us in our hats. Cracks me up.
P.S. Yes I know it looks like there was something on my lens. I was cleaning everything on that camera like every 10 minutes it seemed and the stuff wouldn't go away. During the down time yesterday I found that the issue was beneath the shutter, on the main plate. I was able to get most of it out of there so things should be better now.
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| | May 26 - 10:00 AM MT | |
| | Crashed out hard last night, everyone was pretty exhausted. So here’s the deal on yesterday... We sat around the Starbucks in Colby until we had almost given up on the day. Things were trying so hard to fire up to our west but they just couldn’t pull themselves together. Then around 6:30 a couple cells developed and started to look pretty promising so we hung in for a couple more radar scans to see which one looked like a good cell to chase. From Colby we headed west towards Goodland, Kansas, where several cells had formed but were all competing with each other and not allowing any of them to form up well. Took a right in Goodland and headed north where a nice supercell had formed and was drifting slowly east. We posted up pretty much directly in the storms path and were able to get some really nice shots of a well-formed LP supercell. There were a couple lowerings from the wall cloud that might have been funnels, but the base was too high to produce any tornadoes. While there we noticed on the radar that the Goodland cells had merged into a giant supercell that was dropping baseball-sized hail.
We jumped in the car and shot back south as fast as possible to try and get around the storm before it lost any of its structure. As we turned back east at Goodland, we lost our radar and ended up punching through the far north edge of a second cell’s hail core, which was producing about nickel to quarter sized hail on the interstate where we were. Luckily traffic wasn’t very heavy and Chris was able to maintain our speedy pace right through the hail core and we came out just north of the cell we were chasing. We were able to get around to the southeast of the storm and get some amazing pictures of what a lot of chasers are calling one of the best-structured HP supercells they have seen in years. It is hard to describe in words how spectacular this storm was, and the pictures really only do it about half justice. We were able to sit in our spot for a good 20 minutes or more while the storm crept east and passed just on our north. At one point the meso weakened slightly and passed almost directly overhead, letting us watch the rotation and eventual occlusion of the lower rotation as it was right on top of us. At that point we were starting to lose daylight so we struck out a little south and west to avoid a second cell hat was behind the first. Our hopes were to maybe position ourselves for the second cell as it seemed to be strengthening, but it started to die along with the daylight, and we instead headed for the nearest town for food and lodging. Pulled into Sharon Springs around 9:30 PM MT and found a 24 hour diner with a hotel attached. Finally got a good night’s sleep for everyone, and it appears we will be hanging out in Goodland for today’s action so no long drives today. So far we’ve gotten 5 supercells in 3 days, not bad. | |
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| | May 26 - 2:00 PM MT | |
| | Travel update. Nothing firing along the retreating warm front in the edge of Kansas, so we are booking out to Limon, Colorado. Things are most likely developing along the eastern side of the Colorado mountains. An hour to Limon.
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| | May 26 -10:00 PM MT | |
| | Chasing is done for today. Sat around in the Limon McDonald’s for about 5 hours waiting for the only decent cell in the area to pull its act together, which it almost did. So we took off northwest to intercept, only to watch it come completely apart on radar as we headed up. The lightning was decent and frequent, and lasted about as long as it took me to get the tripod set up, at which point the lightning ceased and I took about 40 pictures of a rain band and crappy storm. I’ll save you the time and just not bother posting those. On an interesting sociological side note, apparently if you sit somewhere with a laptop in the Midwest people either stop to see what you are doing or scowl at you as if you just ate their last chocolate chip cookie. We even had one nice woman named Susie who offered to let us stay at her house if we couldn’t find lodging in Burlington. I find it interesting to compare people that we have encountered so far from the different areas and compare them to people from back east. Anyway, headed back to Limon for a bite to eat and then on to Burlington for a place to stay.
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| | May 27 -11:00 AM MT | |
| | Last night was quite a trip. We grabbed a bite in Limon at the South Street Bar and Grill. Garnered a couple stares walking into that joint. Good food though. Then we headed Back to Burlington and got a room at the Americas Best Value Inn. Luckily there was a place we could walk to and get a beer, called Route, that Susie had told us about. Saturday night at 11:30 is obviously not the hopping time in Burlington, because for almost a half hour we were the only people there. Eventually we left so the people could close up, but they mentioned another bar across the street we could try. The place was called Six Shooter Saloon, and looked a little worn on the outside. After mustering up enough courage to walk in, we were met with more stares (I guess we are really obviously out of place) and an interrogating bartender. Of course it didn’t help that I ordered a beer they didn’t have, which seemed to personally insult her, or that none of us had cash, thanks to Chris for asking before she poured. So we left, laughing about how awkward the situation was, and walked back to the room to crash out. Eventually we will find a place to walk into cowboy hats blazing and make our presence known..
As for storms, today we are headed out to either Julesburg, Colorado, or Ogallala, Nebraska. Outlook is a little better than yesterday, but mainly we are trying to get towards the North Dakota / South Dakota border for Monday. We will see if we can get lucky today.
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| | May 27 -6:30 PM MT | |
| | Frustration. Today’s word is frustration. We went north up to Julesburg and camped out for a short while at a Subway before setting of early to chase a couple storms that were looking promising. We figured we would still be close enough to Julesburg that we could get back if we needed to fairly quickly. Unfortunately, we chased a little farther south than we intended because the cells kept dying out on the north side. When we finally positioned on the meso we were chasing, a tornado warning was issued for a cell just north of Julesburg. We quickly packed up and tried to head north to get back to it, but the road situation in southwest Nebraska and northeast Colorado is epicly awful. By the time we got back into Colorado, the tornadic cell had almost completely evaporated despite moving southeast into more instability. So we turned around and backtracked again to try and catch a cell to the east of us that was starting to fire up really well. Again we were stymied by the road situation, and made a couple attempts to use county roads but had to turn back because they were too muddy. Then that cell died down as we were getting to it, so we just gave up and headed towards northwestern Nebraska. Forecast models show that area becoming ripe for activity a little later in the day, but so far nothing we have seen fire up today has followed any sort of logical progression. At any rate we will be closer to South Dakota, which is where we need to be for tomorrow.
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| | May 28 -2:30 AM CT | |
| | Locked tightly in our room here in the Murdo, South Dakota Super 8... guess this probably needs a little explanation. While we were in Texas the other day, some chasers who that were out here last year acted as if they remembered Neil and Chris, using the exact words “You guys were hard to miss.” Exactly what Neil and Chris did to make them hard to miss to a couple guys they’ve met twice in two years, we can’t quite figure out. Since then it’s kind of been an inside joke that we are a “hard to miss” bunch. Well tonight it got a lot weirder. We were trying to make it all the way to Pierre, South Dakota, but decided to stop here in Murdo just because it was late and we were tired. I went in to the front desk and inquired about a room, and while I was getting the info on the place an old man just sitting behind the desk casually remarks “You got a car with four guys in it?” I confirmed that we were, indeed, a car of four guys, and then he hits me with this: “Yeah, some guy and his kid came through a little bit ago and mentioned you might be by here. Said you were in front of him, or behind him, something like that..” What?!? What guy and his kid? Who went into the Super 8 motel in Murdo, South Dakota, and told them that we were gonna swing by? This old man knew that we were storm chasing, and there was four of us in a car, and we were headed to North Dakota tomorrow. Now there is a grand possibility that this old man and the other chasers are just mistaking us for someone else, but still, it’s a little creepy right about now. Also interesting is that we have run into a couple guys from New Zealand who are chasers a few times now. Once outside of Limon, Colorado, then again in Julesburg, Colorado, and now they were checking in to the Super 8 here when we brought our bags in to head up to the room. If that old man had said anything along the lines of us being “hard to miss” I think we would have been booking it east as fast as we could go. Just strange. I think we are all sleeping light tonight.
So other than that tomorrow looks to be an excellent day for supercell activity, although the tornado outlook isn’t quite as good due to some weak low-level shear and high lcl’s. There is a slight chance for tornadoes around the North Dakota / South Dakota border still, but it will be especially important to intercept these storms with precision as they are supposed to be accompanied by very large and severe hail. Snapped a couple pics of a nice sunset today, which I will put up later, need some sleep right now. | |
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| | May 28 -3:00 PM CT | |
| | This update brought to you by the Lounge Lodging and Dining coalition for open wi-fi. Or mainly by their unsecured network. Either way, we’re sitting here in Mobridge, South Dakota at the moment, just chilling out till we decide if we need to move on into North Dakota for today. Variables are good still, not incredibly hopeful, but better than yesterday. We got behind one of the Center for Severe Weather Research’s “Doppler on Wheels” on the way up here. Usually a good sign if they are headed to the same area you are. Camera was in the trunk, though, so I couldn’t get a quick pic, but I linked them here so you can check it out. Its gonna be a few hours before anything fires up, so we might head over to Depot Coffee House here in Mobridge to hang out until we move.
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| | May 28 -9:00 PM CT | |
| | I think we are all a little bummed out. After yesterday we were really hoping for something nice today, and instead we drove all the way to Jamestown, North Dakota to sit in a McDonald’s and watch nothing happen. The only good thing about today is that northing was happening anywhere else either, so we weren’t just in a bad spot; it was just a bad day. Also, we didn’t go as far north as some of the other chase teams, who were targeting Devil’s Lake which was at least a couple hours north of us. Regardless, the fact that we drove so far north today and caught nothing, when we knew we were going to have to be in the Texas panhandle tomorrow, is slightly annoying. We’ve started the marathon drive for tonight, headed for Grand Island, Nebraska. Figure that’s a good chuck of the way down towards Texas we can take care of tonight. Sleep for a few hours and then get up and drive the rest of the way. Interestingly enough, we will go from a state bordering Canada to a state bordering Mexico in the next 24 hours.
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| | May 29 -10:00 AM CT | |
| | Long night. Took all four of us but we pulled into Grand Island, Nebraska around 4:00 this morning. Neil drove till he was exhausted, then Chris drove, then Mark drove, and then I stepped in and finished it up. So dark the only thing you can see is the 50 feet or so in front of the car, and watching out for deer the entire time. Mark is one for one on crazy bunny rabbits now, drilled that little fella at about 75 mph. Also, the front of our car is so covered in dead bugs that the flies are treating our front bumper like a buffet line. FYI: Laser wash is not capable of removing melted dead bugs from your car. Moving on, we just left headed for the Oklahoma panhandle after grabbing about 4 hours sleep. Expectations are kind of high, looks like it will be a good day, and we need it after the last couple. Chris keeps chanting "big hopes, big hopes"...
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| | May 30 -11:00 AM CT | |
| | What a coincidence, back on Pancake Street in Liberal, Kansas. Yesterday was quite an interesting day, once again proving to us the awesome convenience of broadband internet in the car. On the way down we shifted our target farther north to southwestern Kansas as the models had changed and it looked as if the cap might not break farther down into Oklahoma. As the day progressed and we continued west through Kansas we switched targets again, moving north still to west central Kansas. It looked like the best place to be for how things were coming together in the region, so we camped out in Scott City and waited for something to happen. A few hours later, we were still waiting and wondering why nothing was firing in the area, when Chris noticed there seemed to be a weak short wave that was preventing anything from firing in western Kansas. Colorado, however, was definitely seeing some action just east of the Rockies so we gave up on the Kansas deal and headed west to try and intercept a couple cells back near Limon, Colorado. Headed out there we noticed about 3 cells pop up right near the cell we were going after, and then all four began to merge in chaotic fashion. We rolled in and set up just in time to see a rotating wall get completely occluded but the RFD from one of the cells, then another rotating wall that came so very close to producing a tornado before it was broken up as well. At this point we were pretty much directly between the two strongest cells of the group, and the winds were gusting to 36 mph along the road we were on. As we looked towards where one of the cells was building, Mark spotted something that we think was either a well formed funnel or an actual tornado. We were pretty far away, but I was able to snap a couple shots with the telephoto lens and it looks pretty interesting to me. It is hard to describe how awesome it was to be between those two cells, with the lower shelf of one so close I felt like it was going to blow right into us. And the temperture drop was amazing, must have been 50 degrees or so with wind of 30 mph, we were freezing when we got back in the car.
Once it became apparent those cells were not going to produce, we decided to head southwest and catch a particularly nasty cell that was just south of Pueblo, Colorado and moving east. Encountered a little hail right off the bat, maybe dime sized at best but very heavy, that we ran out of not too long after it started. By the time we got to the Pueblo cell it was starting to weaken, but still producing very strong lightning and looking very ominous. Pulled up south of the town of Fowler and tried to get some lightning shots, but again as soon as we got the cameras out the frequency of strikes went to nothing. By that time it was dark enough to call it a day, so we grabbed a bite to eat in La Junta and then blasted southeast to Liberal. Today we are targeting somewhere north of Abilene, Texas.
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| | May 30 -6:00 PM MT | |
| | Interesting day so far. Started out heading south for the Abilene area, but reviewing the models left us making a sharp left turn into New Mexico. Well, that and whatever punched a hole in our left rear tire because it went down shortly after entering Texas. Annoying, but a quick donut swap and trip back to Perryton had us fitted with a new wheel and we were back on our way. It just doesn’t seem like the cap is gonna break in Texas, so we are hedging our bets on an area of high shear in northeast New Mexico. This will also keep us from having to leave Texas and haul 6 hours back up to Kansas for tomorrow, which considering our last few nights is a greatly appreciated circumstance. Walked into the Dairy Queen here in Clayton and garnered stares from the entire place. I don’t know if its because we look different or if there just aren’t that many people rolling into Diary Queen with laptops to camp out for a few hours. Either way, see what our chances are today and then we will still be in position for tomorrow.
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| | May 30 -11:00 PM CT | |
| | Headed back to Liberal for the night, Neil and I are in need of a laundromat. Today was nothing special storm wise, we hung out in New Mexico and caught a couple cells that formed and weakened pretty quick, got some neat pictures maybe but nothing too exciting. We did, however, travel down the most desolate road so far this trip. Highway 425 headed to Oklahoma from Folsom to Boise City runs through some beautiful New Mexico high county, the scenery is flat out unbelievable, and for a stretch of 20 miles or so the road isn’t even paved. We saw maybe 4 other cars the entire time, an hour and a half at least, and rode through one gathering of weathered buildings called Kenton. It is something you really can't begin to comprehend until you see it; descriptions just aren’t enough to convey the remoteness of the areas we have passed through. Something to see. Tomorrow is looking up, and we get to sleep in, so overall a semi-relaxing day for us after an eventful start.
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| | May 31 -2:00 PM CT | |
| | You can’t beat sleep. Got almost 8 hours last night, first time in a while. Luckily the Gateway Inn was not a hole, considering it was about the only hotel with a vacancy in Liberal. Today has a really good chance for strong storms, the only problem is figuring out which way we want to go. Everything from northwestern Kansas to south of the Texas panhandle is considered a likely area for storms, so we have to try and evaluate the conditional factors for each little area to see which one will most likely produce a tornado. Even then we are still just giving it an educated guess, and the weather doesn’t exactly have a good track record of doing what we expect of it. At this point we are headed south to Stratford, Texas, since it is right inside the state line and should give us the ability to head either north or south if we need to. The variables are there, now we just need them to interact.
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| | June 1 -1:30 PM CT | |
| | Excitement! Adventure! Heartbreak! All that and more in this morning’s update...
Pardon the melodrama, today’s update will be a lengthy one, try to bear with me. So we are hanging out in the Dairy Queen in Stratford, Texas, waiting for something to shape up so we could go chase it. While there, we decide to go ahead and book a room, since every night we start calling and go through about five hotels before we find an open room. Luckily the Econo Lodge in Canadian had a room so we booked it and felt good about our advanced thinking. After a while some cells popped up in eastern New Mexico that began to shape up nicely as they moved towards the Oklahoma panhandle. We watched it for a few scans and then decided to head out and see how it would shape up, figuring we could always turn back if it started to die out. Fortunately for us, the cells we were chasing all merged into one giant monster of a supercell. We positioned ourselves to the southeast of the storm and began taking pictures, but realized that the hail core was wrapping itself around from the west, which would completely obscure our view. So eastward we went, trying desperately to get far enough east to see in front of the hail core and still get some backlight from the sun, all while trying not to run into the forward hail bands to the northeast of the storm. We passed tons of chasers while repositioning, must have been 50 other vehicles out on this one cell. Every time we set up it looked like the storm was about to produce a tornado, but just didn’t quite get all the way. At one point we were traveling back south and thought we saw a large wedge tornado on the ground, but we can’t confirm because we didn’t really have a good vantage point and our pictures we all from a moving car against almost no contrast. Oh well.
While outside of Guymon, Oklahoma, we were almost certain there was a tornado down inside the cell, but the hail core and failing light were making it very difficult to tell. We could hear the tornado sirens from the towns, and Doppler on Wheels was running around all over the place trying to get a decent position for analysis. As it started to get dark we were having a harder and harder time distinguishing any features in the storm, and so we just watched from our spot on some county road. The wind was relatively calm where we were, and then picked up to like 30 mph. At first we thought it was the outflow from the cell, but quickly we realized it was the wrong spot for that, and radar confirmed that there we were not in the outflow. Instead, the cell was forming a hook directly over our heads, and the clouds above us definitely started to rotate. Needless to say we left that spot in a hurry, and as we were escaping a funnel appeared almost directly over where we had been standing. Close call. With no more light, and a ferocious line of storms directly between us and our hotel in Canadian, we headed back to Guymon to gas up and get something to eat. Sadly our favorite Guymon restaurant, Friends & Amigos 24 Hour Mexican and Breakfast (Home of the 99 cent breakfast) was packed out with chasers and locals, so we headed on towards Canadian and figured we would get something to eat there.
Now when you are tired from being in a car for hours on end each day, and from not getting a whole lot of sleep at night, and from generally being more concerned with finding and intercepting storms than your own well being it is not too hard to believe you will make some mistakes. There is no Econo Lodge in Canadian, Texas, or any town even remotely near there. Somehow, when we Googled up hotels in Canadian, it listed the Econo Lodge for Purcell, Oklahoma, nearly 400 miles away. At around 1:00 AM, it is pretty hard to find a hotel in Canadian. Or Guymon, or Pampa, or Miami, or Borger, or White Deer, or Panhandle, or pretty much any place. We did find a room in Groom, Texas, which was another Google misdirection and at that point the situation had crossed from ridiculous to unbelievable. We were eventually saved by the Airport Plaza Hotel in Amarillo. The only hotel in Amarillo with an available room. Nice place, it used to be the Ritz, with an emphasis on ‘used to be’. Kind of annoying to be driving until 3:00 AM when you thought you were going to be done at midnight, and to pay for a room in Purcell that we didn’t use, but overall it wasn’t too bad because the place was decent and it ultimately made our drive today shorter since we are headed back to Lubbock as of now. Today looks good, and we are hoping to polish off the relative success of this trip with a nice well-contrasted tornado. Time will tell. Also, I will get the pictures up later today, hard to see them very well in the car.
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| | June 2 -3:30 PM CT | |
| | So close. So very, very close. Yesterday was a banner day; we sat around at the Flying J in Lubbock for a few hours, waiting for things to initiate. Around 6 or so we had a couple options: some cells to our southwest that were starting to fire and looked promising in the early stages, and a mess of merging cells in eastern New Mexico that were getting their act together and potentially moving into the Texas panhandle with better instability and moisture. We decided to go southwest, figuring at any rate we would still be able to cut northwest and intercept the New Mexico storm if ours fell apart. We were treated instead to a beautifully formed supercell all by its lonesome and with wonderful contrast. We shot south and west ass hard as we could, trying to get around the dust cloud that the RFD was kicking up so we could get some nice pictures. This thing was sure to produce, all the factors were right and we looked to be the only chasers on it. As we got along side it we noticed a distinct finger coming out of the wall with what might have been a debris cloud under it. We ended up having to stop and retreat on our westward push because we were going to punch directly through the hail core which was reportedly producing baseball-sized hail. A few quick pictures and several mosquito bites later, we headed back east and south because once again, we were chasing an HP supercell that insisted on wrapping itself in precipitation. Continuing the 'get out, snap pictures, reposition' dance for an hour or so, we eventually ran out of light and the cell ran out of steam. Another storm just a hair shy of producing a tornado right in front of us. The New Mexico cell had also died out by that time, turning into a squall line and sweeping through Lubbock just before we got there. Nighttime is a nervous time to be driving directly into a squall line, because save for the constant lightning and our trusty radar there is no way to see what the storm is doing. Back in Lubbock, we wandered down to the Texas Tech University area and found a place where the Friday night college crowd would provide some entertainment. When we got back to our hotel, we found that an NWS employee had spotted a 50-yard tornado on the ground for 10-15 minutes in the cell we were chasing. What a hit; after comparing photos and timestamps, the best we can figure is we rolled up just as it was going back up into the clouds, and that finger we saw was the dying end of a decent tornado. Had we been 10 minutes earlier we would have been the only chasers with photos of that tornado. So close. So very, very close.
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| | June 3 -3:00 AM CT | |
| | Sorry for the sparseness of updates and pictures right now. Things have been pretty crazy what with the end of our chasing and trying to get everything sorted out with the 24+ hour drive to get home. I will definitely push out an update with lots of details sometime later today, but I can tell you that this little story eventually had a happy ending. Today we saw a definite tornado; brief and weak, but a tornado nonetheless. What better way to end the trip than seeing a tornado and then being able to call it in and see the radar pop up an EAS tornado warning mentioning 'tornado chasers'. The night has continued to be exciting as we had to outrun the original storm, and then two cells that formed on either side of us and began dropping tennis ball sized hail as it closed in on where we had been. We got out of that mess, and now we are trying to punch through and outrun a squall line east of Amarillo. It is possible the storms know we are getting away and this is their last ditch effort to destroy our car. Just a theory.
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| | June 4 -3:30 AM CT | |
| | Alright, folks, here is what Paul Harvey would call 'the rest of the story'...
Saturday night was exciting. We spent most of the day sitting in a Dairy Queen in Lamesa, Texas, trying to decide how long we were going to wait around before we started driving back towards the east coast. Things just weren’t firing off where we needed them to and it was getting later and later as we sat there. Eventually, a cell formed north of Lubbock, where we had spent the night, and started to shape up nicely. We decided to go after it, since it was our only option and even if it didn’t pan out we would be closer to I-40 anyway. As we got closer to it the thing exploded, and a tornado warning was placed on it for a spotted tornado on the ground. We were still a little ways away but we pushed on trying to get in position to catch this thing while it was going strong. Around Bath, Texas, we set up and started taking pictures of the large wall clouds the cell was producing. Sitting just east of its direct path, we figured this thing had to produce. The clouds were so low and the rotation was there, it was only a matter of minutes before we got some nicely contrasted pictures of a decent tornado. The only issue was, had a tornado actually dropped, it would have destroyed the town of Bath. As much as the four of us want to see a nice big tornado, the last thing we want is to get one at the expense of a town full of people. Despite several lowerings that almost formed up, nothing dropped while we were sitting there. Impending rain and hail forced us to relocate quickly, and we decided to move south and east to try and get some more contrast in the clouds. We raced down a while and eventually pulled up a few miles south of the storm and set up the cameras. While we were looking due north, Mark and Neil noticed something to our west that seemed promising. As we watched a small rope tornado formed and we all tried to get as many pictures as possible. We can finally say without doubt that we saw an actual tornado.
Now here is where the night gets really interesting. When you are directly south of a south-moving supercell that is producing large hail and tornados, it is usually prudent to continue moving so as not to be overtaken by the storm. Mind you, cells moving at 20 mph or so are fairly easy to elude; it’s the cells that pop up around you that are harder to predict. We were doing well with our plan of moving south, taking pictures, then moving south again. Even got some really nice lightning shots from about 10 miles south of the storm, only a couple times were we close enough for it to be a little sketchy. Then we decided to pack it up and go home, and headed south towards Lubbock to gas up and head east. As we shot down the road, we noticed a large cell building to our east, and then one building to our west. They were building so quickly that we watched in awe as they turned into major storms. The awe shortly wore off as we realized we needed to get south and then turn east or else we were going to get rolled by these cells and then the original supercell if we didn’t make tracks in a hurry. As we would find out later, we missed being right in the middle of tennis-ball sized hail and a reported tornado by maybe 10 minutes or less. The fun continued when we made it to Amarillo, as a squall line was pushing east right over I-40. We punched through at least two or three small hail cores, blinding rain, and some really ominous lowerings in the clouds before we were finally free of everything and in western Oklahoma. From that point, it was just driving until we couldn’t stand it anymore. That landed us in Jackson, Tennessee, where we grabbed a hotel room and slept for a while, and now we are back on the road. Should be into DC around noon today.
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| | June 5 -12:00 PM ET | |
| | I guess this is the chase blog’s version of a theatrical ‘post-mortem’. (No worries, everyone is still live and basically well) We arrived in Fairfax around 3:00 PM on Monday, rolling the car over to about 8600 miles, no small task for only two weeks worth of driving. The last leg was pretty straightforward, no car trouble or crazy weather to escape; just chugging along familiar roads that now seemed odd with all their trees and houses and traffic. I’m sure it will take everyone a couple days at least to shake off the haze of driving 1,700 miles in the past 40 hours. I dropped my stuff of at my house, grabbed a shower, and headed to work while Neil and Chris and Mark continued on up to Gaithersburg to unpack the car and get it cleaned up so they could turn it in. Not sure how that all went, but I can only imagine the faces of the people at Avis when they saw the odometer. Still haven’t unpacked things, just enough to get me to sleep and up this morning. It felt great to sleep in my own bed again; some things you just can’t replicate when you are on the road.
We laughed yesterday at how we were going to have to re-adjust to the real world back here in the DC area. After some thought, we wondered if we actually left the real world behind as we drove farther and farther east. Different worlds, it seems; where the similarities are not quite as vast as the differences. Good food though, man did we eat cheap and well pretty much the entire time. I can definitely handle being stared at for a while if they are going to serve us a full meal for $6.00. Oh, and I should probably put some closure on the story of the odd encounters. So after the experience at the Super 8 in South Dakota, we pretty much kept up the running gag of calling ourselves the ‘hard to miss’ boys and assuming that everywhere we went they would already know we were coming because the mysterious ‘man and his son’ had warned them. As much as we laughed it off, we had to admit that there were a large number of coincidental happenings throughout our trip. Aside from Neil and Chris being told they were hard to miss, and then having the old man in the Super 8 say they were expecting us, we saw several people numerous times on this trip in complete opposite areas of the Midwest. The especially odd thing was this girl we saw twice sitting in a PT Cruiser with New Hampshire plates in the middle of these giant storms, just reading a book. Who drives to the Midwest to sit in the path of severe weather and read a book at a gas station? In reality it was probably all random occurrence, but it kept us entertained wondering at what point we would run into the ‘man and his son’ and be killed by some storm chasing conspiracy. And yes, we did spend a lot of time in the car...
As for the success of our trip, we intercepted 11 supercells and saw one full tornado. A couple things we think were tornadoes, and tons of rotating wall clouds and funnel clouds that came ever so close to producing a tornado. From the way Chris and Neil were talking, and what some of the other chasers were saying, it seems like the storms we saw were some of the most impressively structured cells in a long time. As Chris would say, we saw “some beasts”, and they “really meant business“. I am happy with the pictures I was able to get, out of the 1000 or so that I took 170 were good enough to make it here on the site. I need to get Neil’s pictures up here as well and maybe when we pull the video I can toss it up here too. If anyone wants a high-res image of something I put online just send me an email and I will get that over to you as quick as I can. After an amazing trip that I would do again in a heartbeat, I bid adieu. Thanks for the support and the well wishes.
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