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.
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.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home