April 30th

Missed the El Reno tornado by a few minutes.

Left fairly early and sat in Kingfisher for quite a while letting the atmosphere destabilize. The outflow from the morning convection was too cold to support tornadic storms, and the cold front was gradually shifting SEWD toward us, thus only a narrow area of instability. It sure was nice to have solid mid 60s dewpoints though! The other big problem of the day was decreasing mid to upper level flow, which typically makes for HP cells and screwed up storm structure.

Finally saw some good TCU farther SW thanks to my laptop connection, so we sent SW toward the cell in Caddo/Grady county. This cell had a very strong VIL core on it, but started raining into itself. About this time, guys on the radio simulcast were going bonkers about a tornado near El Reno. Granted, it was a nice little tornado, but not "violent" like they were saying. Drove up the turnpike only to see a dissipating wall cloud. Great instability profile on the OUN sounding at 00Z but the shear was lacking, otherwise it could have been quite a day.

March 12th Outbreak - A Chase in the truest sense of the word!

Short: VERY Close twice but no tornado

Long: I left my parents house with my wife at about 930am...would have been in time but about 40 miles out she got sick and I had to double back 40 miles and return her to my parents house to rest. Basically put me behind another hour or so. I proceeded straight East on highway 56. I could see development clearly to my East when in Marion, KS, but it seemed to take me an eternity to catch up. Luckily I had my GRlevel3 radar going and could see 1 really good cell SE of me moving NE toward Anderson county KS. It was nice to have the extrapolated storm tracks overlaid, and when combined with loops, you could really see this storm track turning right with time. At this point I was still behind the storm on I-35 SW of Ottawa, and my plan was to keep charging East on highway 68.

Finally got ahead of this storm in WRN MO, and I did my bullfighting move just SE of Harrisonville on highway 7. The updraft has a decent rain free base, but with time, and as I could see on radar, the earlier nice hook lifted up into the storm, and there was an outflow shaped appendage. The storm lacked intense motions at the base, so I decided to drop South the the storm my friends were failing to catch up with. This storm was in Bates county mo..so I blasted SE on highway 7 toward Clinton MO. Velocity couplet with this storm was on and off...and I noticed it has lots of outbound with RFD but little Inbound with inflow. The updraft base / developing meso passed directly over my head while in Clinton. At that point, I felt like maybe this storm didn't have warm enough inflow, it seemed a bit cool. There was a strong RFD though. I followed it E on 7 for a few miles, with storm to my North, and Moving farther away every minute. I hesitantly decided to call it off...I didn't want to navigate around truman lake on little no-name roads.

So back to Clinton, and I see the velocity couplet go bonkers!!! All of a sudden I realized there was a highway, 52, heading due NE. Could I catch it? I would have to go fast. I went fast, I got pulled over about halfway between Clinton and Windsor. I got out of it by explaining it was my intention to measure the RH inside the RFD. After that, the storm was already way ahead, and judging from the radar showing couplet on the highway, I didn't want to mess with trying to go around debris. Besides, the tornado might not last that much longer, and there are no roads parallelling it's track. Oh well, came close on two accounts, it was a good warm up chase, but disappointing not to see any tubes.

2/20/06 - Central Kansas (fiction)

Chase Partners: Corey Mead, Rich Thompson, Jared Guyer
Initial Target: Great Bend, KS

1400Z
We left Norman at 9am, and arrived at my parents house in Great Bend around 1:30 pm. It would serve as a good base with all the accomadations any chaser would need...food, shelter, internet, mother, father.

18:45Z
With a strong cap in place...there was plenty of time to fool around. First, we went to the city pool to cool off. It was already 86/76 and it was only getting hotter. They had just installed a nice waterpark with slide and even a big pirate head that fills up with water then dumps on you! It was a lot of fun, and the 75% sky obscuration from low clouds racing northward helped shield us from getting a sunburn. Convection was forecast to fire right over the area around 22-23Z...so there was no need to check data for a while.

20:00Z
Mom made us some burritos which filled our tummies full after a good hour of frolicing in the nice cool water. The danger now was that we would start to feel lazy, but the weather radio alarm alerted us to the PDS tornado watch now in place and upgrade to HIGH risk by SPC. Satellite imagery showed the outflow boundary which lied roughly along I-70 this morning had mixed out nicely with surface winds still backed a good 30 degrees. Visible imagery showed high based CU already forming over the OK panhandle as the upper shortwave trough continued to eject newd. As luck would have it, all parameters looked to be a "go" for long tracked violent tornadoes across the target zone. I told my parents to take any warnings seriously today.

20:45Z
We traveled west on K96 for a few miles, finally reaching the dryline near Rush Center. CU East of the dryline continued to grow, but you could tell the cap was holding...for now.

22:45:
Still waiting for the cap to break. SPC Mesoanalysis page shows MLCAPE bullseye up to 6000 with 0-1 srh values over 300 in the warm sector...rising to near 400 along the old outflow boundary. The RUC doesn't break out any precipitation until 03Z...but given strong heating we think cap will break.

22:48:
The cap broke. Large CB to the west and I tell you it looks like a time lapse. Only 10 miles away but better get to within updraft base view as things are going to change very fast!

03:00
Wow, what a chase. Followed a 1 mile wide wedge tornado, with perfect visibility and contrast NEWD to near Hastings, NE. It was on the ground the entire time, with periodic satellite tornadoes swirling around the meso. At one time, there were 6 tornadoes on the ground at a time. It will be hard to top this one, a chase for the ages.