Chasers:  Mike Umscheid, Jon Smith, Jay Antle, Rob Mitchell, Mitch Daszewski

. . .Atmospheric Setup. . .
It was Memorial Day, so there was bound to be some sort of tornadic supercell event somewhere in the plains.  A very potent mid level shortwave was forecast to move across the Rocky Mountains through the day.  At 00z, this feature would be located over south-central WY with a vorticity max of 24 units and a cold pool of –20C.  The question of the day was where exactly to play.  We had two targets in mind:  Northeast CO, where the best mid/upper level energy was, or play the OK/TX panhandles where the best instability and CAPE would be located.  We knew that tornadic supercells would be a good bet in both places.  After a dire debate, we all decided to go for the panhandles, since it seemed more of a sure bet for tornado prospects.  At mid morning, there was a mesolow located over the central TX Panhandle.  It would be just east of this mesolow where we decided to target: somewhere just northeast of Borger.

. . .Out the Door. . .
We left the Super 8 in Dodge City after 11:00am and stopped at a Super 8 in Liberal where we got some much needed data.  The mesolow was now located northeast of AMA, and losing its definition somewhat.  We continued south toward this area.  We arrived at a chaser convergence at the Texaco in Perryton sometime after 3:00, where we met up with Mike Phelps, Matt Crowther, and Betsy Abrams, among others.  The general consensus was that we were in somewhat of a good area.  The problem was, there were no TCU development in the vicinity of the mesolow.  The best Cu field was west and northwest of us.  With no other Cu development to the south, we decided to head north a little bit.  We stopped along US83 near the OK/TX Panhandle border where we monitored the progress of a group of developing TCU about 50 miles to the north-northwest.  At 4:30, these group of towers were rapidly developing into intense convection.  Northward we headed in pursuit.

. . .In Pursuit. . .
Between 4:40 and 4:50pm, intense convective explosion occurred with this newly developed storm.  At Liberal our armada continued northeast on US54 to near Kismet where we pulled off to monitor the situation.  We noticed an impressive beaver’s tail feature in the updraft region of the storm extending a good distance to the south and east.  The storm, at this time, is still in its embryonic stages of development, located southeast of Sublette.  Time about 5:30.  We continued to Kismet and headed south and east on county routes in extreme western Meade County.  We pulled off a couple times to watch the progress of the storm.  At 5:55, a landspout quickly developed to our northwest, and everyone scurried to get their camcorders.  What a scene.  There was poor contrast, and it dissipated rather quickly.  Shortly after 6:00, we continued east again, at this time about 7 S Plains.  We passed Meade State Park about 6:15 or so, where the lake was packed with visitors, being Memorial Day.  Meanwhile, a rotating wall cloud was quickly organizing a couple miles to the northeast.  At 6:20, this wall cloud developed vigorous rotation, looking off to the north.  At 6:30 we headed north on SR23 where we approached a large chaser convergence about 5 S Meade.  The wall cloud continued to rotate like mad, and kicking up dust every once in awhile near the bear’s cage.  At this point, I thought this was insane, so Jon Smith, Rob, Mitch, and I decided to leave the zoo scene, and head south to try to keep ahead of this thing.  Time about 6:35.

We continued south and east on this paved route through southeastern Meade County.  At 6:50, we stopped along Rd. EE about 5 W Englewood to monitor a bunch of lowered regions to our north and northwest.  At this time, the rest of our original armada (including Jay Antle, Mike Phelps, and Matt Crowther) passed us.  We continued east and northeast at Englewood, not thinking this was a wise idea.  At Acres, we headed east on a dirt route, with the storm really going to town just north and northeast of us.  Precip core was not that far north of us by the time we approached our north/south option, 6 S Ashland.  The road network at this point was pretty bad.  Time was shortly before 7:25pm, and looking off to the northeast was an awesome mesocyclone.  If we could just get east.  The large Sitka tornado formed about 7:30pm southwest of town.  We had no option but to go south all the way into Oklahoma, where we would finally find our next decent east/west option, which was Rd. 30.  At 7:35 we cringed when we heard on the radio “At 7:35, a large tornado was located southwest of Sitka.”  We were still heading east on Rd. 30, just south of the KS/OK border, near Willard, or about 12 miles south-southwest of where the tornado was reported to be.  Sigh.  All we could see was precip core in that direction.  We headed a little bit north, to the KS/OK border on Rd. 198 and stopped to watch things.  At this location, a new wall cloud rapidly commenced to our north.  A Comanche County Sheriff soon pulled up to our location.  He saw the Sitka tornado, and he said quoting “that first one came down quick as shit.” (referring to the large Sitka tornado)

We had our best view of the storm at this particular location.  About 7:55, the wall cloud was really wrapping up, coming halfway to the ground.  At some points, it was rotating fast enough to be almost labeled as a funnel.  Soon after, we noticed dust really getting kicked up in the bear’s cage.  The contrast on the ground was bad, due to the baseballs falling in the distance, so we could not discern any rotation at the ground.  This could have very well been a tornado looking to our north-northeast, probably just east of Comanche.  As this feature moved east, contrast got poor again, and we had to head even further south, all the way to US64 in far northeastern Harper Co. before going east again.  We didn’t stop again until we went north on SR34 and encroached upon the mother of all chaser convergences.  I’m just wondering who wasn’t at this convergence.  Cars were lined up for a good mile and a half stretch along this route in far northwestern Woods Co.  Time was about 8:30.  There were quite a few suspicious areas to watch to the north.  A couple of rotating wall clouds were producing a few brief funnels from time to time.  We also monitored another newly developed base to our west, near the setting sun.  We were watching things from this nice little mound, which we had all to ourselves, until another chaser came up to us.  This chaser was actually our local Kansas City TV Meteorologist Gary Lezak (who is actually on a station change hiatus, from FOX to NBC).  We shared a few words, and he actually saw the Sitka tornado and was kind enough to show us his video.  He was looking due west from US183, fleeing to the south when this tornado developed.  It was his first tornado.  Congrats Gary!  Anyway, I still couldn’t believe we missed the tornado, and still couldn’t believe how many chasers there were in one location!

The now infamous Meade storm was becoming outflow dominant, and here came the rain core.  Massive chaser flee soon commenced, and it was a fight to get south on SR34.  It was almost like leaving a football game.  Time 8:45.  We pretty much called it a chase day at this point, and headed back west on US64.  We soon noticed a nice area of dust ahead moving from north to south.  We approached this area, and things soon got rather hairy.  The north to south moving dust was blowing about 65-75mph and at the same time, we noticed dust to our south moving up toward us to the northwest!  We had somehow driven ourselves into a new bear’s cage.  I was freaked out for about 45 seconds not knowing what was going on.  We pulled up behind a car to just sit and let this thing pass us by.  The car in front of us was Jay Antle, no doubt.  We did notice a little spin up in the dust just to our southwest, and Jay noticed some dust moving up!  Quite interesting indeed.  Time about 9:15.  We pulled off on a south road where Jay, Jon, Mitch, Rob and I shared our thoughts of the day in 50mph dust.  We headed back west to SR34 and went north from there where we got some awesome CG shots to our north.  Thus ended a crazy chase day.  We lodged at the Super 8 in Pratt, KS.

. . .Wrap Up. . .
This was Day 3 of the chase trip, and our second chase day of the trip.  The previous day, we were in Meade County as well, watching some marginal severe storms.  The Meade supercell produced one short lived tornado, but attained a vastly rotating wall cloud for most of its life.  The next day, we visited with Larry Ruthi at the NWS-DDC office, and he showed us some impressive 88D scans of the storm.  This storm maintained an incredible hook for a good portion of its life in Meade, Clark, and Comanche County, but only tornadoed for five minutes of it.

. . .Stats. . .
Departure:  11:30 from Dodge City, KS
Target:  Northeast TX Panhandle by mid-afternoon
Total Mileage:  427
Hours in "chase mode":  4:45 to 9:30 (4.75hrs)
"chase mode" mileage:  165 miles

mscheid@kc.net
last updated:  June 9, 1999

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