Chasers: Mike Umscheid, Jon Smith, Jay Antle, Mike Phelps, Rick Schmidt, Jim Reed
. . .Atmospheric Setup. . .
The StormTrack picnic for May 15 was postponed a couple days in advance
due to the threat for severe storms in the plains. Saturday did not
turn out to be a major chase day for many people, as there were only two
regions that saw convective activity: North of Hays, KS and areas
of Northwest Texas. With it being a commitment free day, I was planning
for a big chase, should it turn out to be one. On Friday night, I
was chatting with Jay Antle, and we surmised that a region from Concordia
to Hastings would be a fair guess for a target, but hopefully nothing north
of I-80. A surface low was progged to form in the lee of the Rockies
over east central Colorado during the day Saturday, with a broad extension
into western KS. There were hints that possibly a second low would
develop in this region of northwestern KS. The day started off with
mesoscale boundaries everywhere following a major convective show in KS
the night before, across southern KS. The morning of the chase, it
was looking more like the convective initiation would occur in northern
KS, versus in Nebraska. When we left, there was a rather large stratocu
field in our potential target area of north-central KS/south-central NE.
The storms today would be mainly focused by extreme surface based instability,
with CAPE values exceeding 5000 J/kg in areas of central KS southeast of
the developing meso-low. Wind profiles were not fantastic, but directional
shear along the warm front would be more than sufficient for mesocyclone
formation and tornadoes.
. . .Out the Door. . .
I was chasing with Jon Smith today, and we were scheduled to meet up
with Jay Antle and Mike Phelps in Salina by 11:30am. Jon and I left
Overland Park at 8:45am in rainy conditions, from last night’s convection.
We arrived in SLN at 11:30am where we met up with Jay and Mike, along with
Rick Schmidt, who was chasing by himself. We all decided to do a
three car caravan. It was time to check the latest data. We
were somewhat disappointed to see SPC drop the MDT… but, then again, SLGT
days produce the best results. The 16z analysis put a meso low in
the vicinity of Jetmore, KS. The hires visible image showed the stratocu
deck decaying in the warm sector, and morphing into a small, compact cu
field around and just southeast of the low. The question was, how
far north will this meso low move? The gunge canopy in nebraska appeared
to be thick as a forest, so we surmised that this low would more than likely
initiate convection south of the KS border, possibly even as far south
as I-70. With this in mind, we headed west on I-70 to Hays.
As we were driving to Hays, Mike Phelps got a message that the VORTEX crew
was stationed out in Hays. This was hopefully a good sign.
We arrived in Hays around 1:45pm where we looked for the public library.
It took us a little bit, but we finally found the library in downtown.
We got on the internet at the library, and noticed that the stratocu deck
was really beginning to thin out nice, and deep diurnal heating was definitely
underway at our location. The latest surface analysis put the meso
low just west of us, as Hays was in a strong easterly component just south
of the warm front. We appeared to be in the best area of moisture
convergence, but still at least three hours from convective initiation.
We stopped at the nearby soda shop for about 45minutes to catch a refreshment
and chat while we waited to use the internet again at the library.
At 3:15pm we were met up by Jim Reed in the library parking lot.
We went in for more data at 3:30, and noticed that everything was still
on schedule. CAPE values at our location were now over 4000 J/kg
with Tds in the upper 60s approaching 70. The low was about 40-50
miles to our west by 21z. We were also happy to see the RUC and ADAS
both showing convective precip just south of the KS/NE border by 00z.
. . .In Pursuit. . .
Things were beginning to shape up nicely, and our now four car “armada”
headed north out of Hays at 4:15 on US-183. We stopped north of I-70
to monitor some newly developed, crisp towers to our west and northwest.
These initial towers were highly sheared and did not have much verticality.
We continued north between 4:45 and 5:00pm, then pulled off about 15 S
Plainville to monitor again. The updrafts were looking quite a bit
better, more vertical in nature and trailing updrafts were more persistant
to our northwest. Again, we continued north to Plainville, where
we decided to head east just a bit, in fear that these towers would gain
too much longitude on us. At K-18 intersection we continued east
5 miles to the Rd. X intersection. We stopped at this intersection
for about ten minutes to gather what was going on. We were monitoring
two suspect towers: one to our north-northwest we were watching since
we were north of Hays, and a newly developed tower to our west about fifteen
miles away (the soon-to-be Stockton meso). At this point, we were
in good position for the southern tower off to our west, however, our northern
area of tcu was still shooting up very impressive updrafts. It was
because of this, we all as a group pretty much decided to head north and
stay between the two suspect regions. With that said, we headed north
on Rd X at around 6:00pm. About twelve or so minutes later up the
road, it quickly became apparent what the dominant storm was. Our
storm to the WSW. We were already getting close to US-24 at the town
of Woodston when thoughts of heading back south engaged our minds.
Not knowing exactly how far the storm was to our west, and not wanting
to drive through downwind precip, we decided to head east a little bit
more before going south again, in thinking that the storm probably wasn’t
moving north very much due to the positioning of the anvil. It took
us an 8 mile drive east before we realized that this storm simply was not
moving much. We were beginning to monitor the VORTEX frequency and
found out that they were playing this storm south of Stockton, 16 miles
to our west. It was imperative that we get closer to the updraft
region. We wasted over 15 minutes by going east at Woodston instead
of west. While trying to get west as fast as we can, we hear of VORTEX
reporting a tornado with this storm. Dread. There were no warnings
that we heard of at this time, which was about 5 minutes before 7:00.
The storm’s updraft was still at or just west of US-183, surprisingly enough,
just southwest of Stockton, producing a “fairly large cone tornado” according
to the VORTEX messages. Low stratocu were all over the place with
the high dewpoints that were present, which made seeing any storm structure
from a distance next to impossible. Even from five miles east of
Stockton, we could not identify an updraft base, and the tornado was supposedly
8-12 miles WSW of our location while we were driving west on US-24 towards
Stockton. We reached the Stockton city limits at 7:08pm and finally
picked out the quite impressive wall cloud in the vicinity of where the
tornado would be. The cone tornado dissipated around 7:05pm.
Our armada was five minutes late for the show. Nevertheless, this
wall cloud remained ominous just southwest of town. We got to the
southwest outskirts of town to monitor the situation. Less than a
mile away from us to the west-northwest was the dissipating wall cloud,
which still had noticeable rotation when we first approached our location.
We were parked at this location for about six minutes or so, watching cloud
tags in the RFD cascade toward the surface just WNW of us, and monitoring
a new suspicious updraft region just south of us, which VORTEX was also
monitoring for possible new tornadogenesis. Time was about 7:16pm
when we left north again on US-183 to stay ahead of this new region.
We stopped again on 183 about 3 N Stockton to watch the main meso off to
our ESE dissipate, and the updraft area to our south in the vicinity of
Stockton. We could not discern any rotation in any feature, due to
poor contrast and the presence of low level stratocu. At this point,
we were confused as hell as to what exactly was going on. Well, what
was actually going on was that this storm, and all its flanking updrafts
were rapidly collapsing. Time was right around 7:30pm. With
no other storms even remotely close to us, this inevitably ended the chase
day. What a weird storm. We jogged back south, south of Stockton
where Aaron Blaser joined our armada, of now five vehicles. Aaron’s
account very much resembled ours, and he was even placed southeast of the
updraft. We made dinner plans at the Country Kitchen in Hays where
we were joined by even more chasers, including Cheryl Chang and Bill Reid.
None of the twelve or so chasers at our “dinner convergence” saw the tornado
that VORTEX reported on the ground for ten minutes.
. . .Wrap Up. . .
This was the most bizarre chase I’ve ever been on in awhile.
Dewoints surged into the 70-72F neighborhood in the vicinity of this meso,
which made for horrible viewing with low clouds everywhere. After
analyzing surface obs and hires satellite images, this lone mesocyclone
formed about 10-15 miles due east of the meso low right along the warm
front. This storm went from turkey tower, to tornado, to complete
collapse in about 90 minutes. The storm began to explode around 6:15
to 6:20, and produced the tornado from 6:55 to 7:05 according to VORTEX.
This was one of those chases where you had to be positioned perfectly to
get a high contrast view of the tornado, due to the terrible visibility,
and an unforgiving paved road network. In retrospect, there were
many navigational decisions we could have made that would have put us in
prime position, other than the ones we chose: ie, staying on K-18
east of Plainville (versus going north)… heading west instead of east initially
at Woodston… among others. It was definitely another learning experience!!
. . .Stats. . .
Departure: 8:45am from Overland Park
Target: Salina, KS by 11:30, then Hays by 1:45
Total Mileage: 655
Arrival Home: 2:10am
Hours in "chase mode": (from Plainville) 5:30pm to 7:45pm (2.25
hrs)
"chase mode" mileage: (from Plainville) 60mi.
mscheid@kc.net
last updated: May
18, 1999
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