. . .Atmospheric Setup. . .
It was another one of those tough decisions. Do we chase Monday
5/3 or chase Tuesday 5/4? Due to school commitments and all, Jay
and I could not chase both days. After looking at the latest data
on Monday morning, it became an easier choice: Tuesday. Convergence
along the dryline on Monday did not
look too impressive and also well south of the Kansas border.
Jay had commitments until early afternoon which eliminated an Oklahoma
target. It also appeared that the main mid/upper level energy would
not eject out of northeastern NM until later at night. Well to make
a long story short, Oklahoma had the worst tornado outbreak it's seen for
decades on Monday evening. With a long-tracked wedge tornado devastating
the southern and eastern suburbs of OKC, among many others. To quote
Homer Simpson, "DOH!" Tuesday was beginning to set up nice according to
the short range model outputs. Early Tuesday, a deep (985mb)
sfc low was positioned over west-central KS and a vigorous negatively-tilted
trough was punching through southeastern CO into the southwest portions
of KS. In the wake of morning convection in eastern KS, both the
ADAS and RUC were consistent on keeping a well-defined area of moisture
convergence along an occluding dryline. Out ahead of this, areas
of central KS were forecast to become very unstable with a surface parcel
averaging 72/60 across the region under very cool temperatures aloft (-16
to -18C at 500mb), with continued cold air advection at that level.
This yielded to surface based CAPE in the 2000-3000 J/kg range and LIs
to -8C. When I left for Jay's place, it appeared that an area from ICT
to PNC would be an ideal target. 16Z observations indicated the dryline
quickly advancing along the KS/OK border, while the sfc low remained almost
parked southwest of Hays, which meant we had an occluding situation going
on. Dewpoints were on the rise at HUT and SLN, into the low 60s,
and it quickly became apparent that a target farther north was necessary.
With that said, we targeted Salina by 2pm. Before we left, we saw
that SPC issued a MCD for out target area mentioning scattered supercells
and possible tornadoes. With cells already in Ellis Co. near Hays,
the outlook was looking encouraging.
. . .Out the Door. . .
Good chase days always seem to begin with raw, miserable, depressing
weather. This was no exception, as we headed west on I-70 with moderate
rain and temps in the mid 50s. We broke out of rain east of Junction
City where we stopped to fuel up, Rain-X the windshield, get a bite to
eat, and watch TWC. The sfc low was still out over west KS with south
or southeast winds 15-25mph across all of central KS. We noticed
impressive convective development on radar near Russell and also near Hutchinson.
This was a good sign of things to come, so we continued west planning an
intercept on the Hutchinson storm
. . .In Pursuit, part I. . .
We broke out of the gunge from the morning convection just west of
Junction City. At this time, we could pick out our storm to the southwest,
with an apparent overshooting top. The cell didn't appear to do much
for about the first 20 minutes we watched it, but as we were about 10 E
Salina, the storm just exploded. At this precise time, I received
a call from Evan Bookbinder telling us that supercells had exploded within
the last fifteen minutes, and that a TOR was issued for McPherson County
to our south. When we got to Salina, we headed south on I-135, then
west on K-140. Time 2:30. At this time, a nice rain free base
was visible to the southwest with occasional scud fingers. We got
as far west as about 3 E Brookville when we cut south to stay ahead of
the core. A very broad wall cloud had become established, with somewhat
intense rotation. The wall cloud was tilted positively, so the storm's
outflow was definitely affecting its tornadic potential. Nevertheless,
the elongated wall cloud managed to produce some quick funnels and strong
overall rotation. A second storm was now visible to our south-southwest.
We meandered east on Water Well Rd. monitoring the, now weakening, mesocyclone
near Brookville, and the storm to our
southeast in the vicinity of Lindsborg. As supercell #1 was losing
a battle against cold inflow, we continued east in pursuit of supercell
#2. This storm, we believe, was the one that produced a tornado near
Buhler some time back, and caused some minor damage. We opted to
come around this storm on the north side, since we could get east faster
on I-70 and then cut south once we got east of the core. Good plan,
poor execution..... A new TOR was issued for southern Dickinson Co. for
a radar indicated tornado southwest of Carlton. At Abilene we cut
south, with the rain core still to our southwest, we debated heading east
on CR-452 in Abilene. We opted to head south then cut east 6 miles
down the road, however. We thought we'd beat the precip core, but
unfortunately, our timing was quite a bit off. We had to get east.
It was time for me to put my navigational skills to work. I told
Jay our paved east route was less than a mile away. We saw an intersection,
and from the distance and with heavy rain falling, we agreed that this
must have been the paved route. We turned east, and found out too
late that we were dead wrong. The road started off as gravel, and
before we realized this was the wrong road, our gravel route turned into
a mud route. We hyrdoplaned/mudplaned to a stop and we were up to
hupcaps in muck. Here goes
the chase day, we thought. There was no way out of this mess.
Small hail started coming down,
and got as big as ¾" in diameter. Jay's trusty steed,
"Haildodger" got a couple of new battle scars.
. . .Stationary Chasing. . .
About 15 to 20 minutes later, the core passed to the northeast, and
it was time to get help. Jay took a hike in the mud to a house we
passed on along the road. We started clearing out at this location,
and all I could do was chase vicariously through the radio reports.
Thankfully, there were no recent tornado reports that I heard of.
A dark base soon developed to the immediate west, which looked pretty interesting,
but couldn't chase it. Soon after, I noticed a mid-level funnel cloud
develop to the south. This was neat! It formed and dissipated
in about 3 minutes or so and took on a serpentine look for a brief moment.
An impressive hail shaft was visible to the northeast in the wake of the
rain/hail core that was previously overhead. In the meantime, Jay
noticed (at the kind folks' house down the road who had called a neighbor
to bring a tractor to get us out since AAA wouldn't) what appeared to be
a wall cloud with some rotation on the cell that had just pelted them with
hail off to the north just E of Abilene. After being alone in the
car for about a half hour, some new, impressive storms were developing
to the southwest in northeastern Marion Co. Finally, Jay was coming
back, and as he was, I hear on the radio of a large tornado on the ground
southwest of Delavan. I could not believe this! Jay came back
with some good news, in that a local farmer nearby had a tractor to pull
us out. Our ordeal in the mud lasted nearly an hour and fifteen minutes
from about 4:00 to 5:15.
. . .In Pursuit, part II. . .
We were back on the road shortly thereafter, and it was time to make
up ground. Throwing off mud clods at an impressive rate, eastward
we went on CR-466 in eastern Dickinson Co. to catch up with the tornadic
supercell about 30 miles away. We finally got to Dwight in far northern
Morris Co. where we headed north. K-57 just north of Dwight was blocked
off due to power lines down on the road, so we lost even more valuable
time. Back to Dwight we went and continued east from there on K-4
then north on K 177. We were under some flanking towers at this time,
with the main cell updraft to our north near I-70. A couple of miles
south of I-70, Jay spotted John Moser parked alongside the highway monitoring
the storm. We stopped to share a few words and compare notes. He
saw a brief tornado near Herington with this storm. (Jay thinks he
might have seen this tornado briefly as we were headed east...impossible
to confirm) The radar indicated tornado was now along I-70 about
11 SW of Wamego. We were in terrible viewing position. We wanted
to continue east on I-70, but with some construction going on at that interchange,
we missed the onramp. So, we continued north to Manhattan, monitoring
some wicked cloud structure to our east in the vicinity of the meso, but
with poor contrast, we could not identify any one region of rotation.
At Manhattan we went east on US-24 and noticed we were now beneath a new
impressive updraft region. This sparked our interest. The apparent
tornado was now in the vicinity of Wamego about 12 miles east of us.
We continued to blast east to catch up. West of Wamego, we began to catch
up with the meso, which at that time was located east of Louisville.
Some interesting downburst type activity was noted at the southern edge
of the rain shaft, and we could finally pick out the wall cloud.
Rapid rotation was evident in this region, and at this time, smoke from
the Jeffrey Energy Center, to the southeast of the meso, was being drawn
up into the updraft region. Shortly thereafter, the bear's cage appeared
to fill in with precip quite rapidly. Rapid motion was still occurring
in this vicinity of to our northeast. This concentrated area of precip
soon thinned out fortunately. We were located near Belvue when a
large funnel suddenly developed to our north-northeast, approximately two
or so miles northwest of the Jeffrey E.C. For about a half minute,
a cone-shaped condensation funnel extending about 2/3 to the ground at
around 7:15. It quickly lost its definition as we left the town of
Belvue. From St. Marys we headed north on K-63 where we had a fantastic
panoramic view of both the primary supercell to our north and a developing
meso to our west-northwest. There was continued strong rotation in
the bear's cage region with occasional funnels. Jay called in to
the Topeka NWS to report strong rotation and funnels north of Emmett.
We were beginning to approach a developing area of precip, which was out
ahead of the newly developed storm to our west. We entered rain at
the junction of K-63 and K-16, with continued strong rotation in the wall
cloud to our northeast. We went east on K-16 and there was a brief
touchdown reported near Soldier, just 2 N of us. We were still in
rain when this report came out, then quickly broke out of it. We
then hear of a possible tornado near Belvue, which was to our southwest.
This was associated with the southern supercell, which at this time, had
a very impressive structure to it. Meanwhile, our northern meso was
still spinning with occasional brief funnels. We stopped along K-16
every once in awhile to film and take stills. As we headed into Holton,
the northern meso was looking awesome. Striated bands in the mid-levels
of the storm, with a very well defined circular pattern showed signs of
a very intense mesocyclone. It was approaching dusk, and with limited
daylight, we stopped along a side road north of Holton to watch our meso
spin away to the northeast and weaken. Great minds think alike, as
we pulled right up to where chaser Rick Schmidt was filming away.
We were at that location with Rick for about fifteen minutes or so as our
storm was beginning to die off in Brown County.
Overall, despite being stuck in the mud for over an hour, this turned out to be a very active chase day. We were on four supercells from 2:30 to 8:30, from Salina to Holton. We observed countless funnels, rotating wall clouds from two different mesos, and a brief tornado north of Belvue near the Jeffrey Energy Center. And, we got to see the good side of human nature with the nice folks who helped us get out of the mud...
As a side note, Jon Davies, Robert Herman, John Moser, Doug Butts, Tony Frey, George Frazier and Rick Schmidt among others were on these storms as well and several reported brief touchdowns.
. . .Stats. . .
Departure: 11:45am from Lawrence
Target: Salina, KS by 2:00
Total Mileage: 397
Arrival Home: 10:30pm
Hours in "chase mode": 2:15 to 4:00, 5:15 to 8:30 (~5hrs)
mscheid@kc.net
last updated: May
8, 1999
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