Chase Day Three

First, I wanna wish a healthy and speedy recovery to Lynn from Ireland, who had a minor heart attack last night and was unable to join us chasing today, and will probably be out for the remainder of the tour.

So today was a fun chase day, albeit one that was disappointing given the potential that it had going in. We decided to play the dryline in central Kansas, and we were not to be disappointed. A tornado watch with very high probabilities was issued at around two in the afternoon for our area, and at around four our storm went up. After maybe a half hour of driving we were underneath the meso, where we found rapid rotation and PERHAPS a large wedge tornado wrapped in rain. Rain curtains were circulating around the meso, indicating possible tornadic circulation on the ground. We'll never know. We tried to stay ahead of the storm and in doing so were forced to travel over a dam with water about 100 feet below. Never in the six years that I have chased, including the chase of Hurricane Ike have I been so frightened. We were on top of the dam with inflow wind whipping us and a rapidly rotating mesocyclone directly above us, finally arriving on the other side after what seemed like an eternity. With a tornado imminent, we quickly turned around back across the dam and successfully made it to the other side. About three minutes after reaching the other side of the dam, the storm dropped what a myself and a few other tour guests saw as a very brief tornado. Although we won't know if it did in fact touch the ground, the funnel looked very close and was exactly where we had been not five minutes before. The storm continued to move and so did we, as we chased it further north and east. At one point, the rapidly rotating mesocyclone almost dropped a massive wedge tornado, and it may have in fact touched down, as an amateur report would indicate. We do think there was some debris on the ground, but again, we can't be sure.

At this point, the storm began to move into cold, stable air and we decided to blow it off and catch a storm coming north out of Great Bend, KS, in hopes that it would hit the warm front and interact with the boundary and go crazy. Unfortunately for us, as we approached it, it gave up the ghost and was dead within 15 minutes.

We thought we were done at this point, and stopped at a gas station on the way back to our hotel in Salina, KS. Not the case however, as a new storm was now rapidly rotating about 20 miles from our location. Unfortunately for us, as we got to it, it was little more than an elevated hail machine, albeit one with 120 knot gate to gate shear, which is more than tornadic. It wasn't to be however, and we blew it off and continued on to Salina.

All in all a fun but slightly disappointing day. The setup had incredible potential, but there was entirely too much forcing, which lead to a huge congealed mess of storms. Hopefully the next few days will give us a tornado, but that certainly remains to be seen. I do think that we saw at least one tornado today near the dam, and perhaps another a bit later, but that may be up for some discussion. Tomorrow looks pretty decent, here's to hoping...

Chase Day Two

Well, today was kinda difficult. We knew last night that one of two things was going to happen in western Oklahoma: sunny blue skies or violent tornadic supercells. This morning we were all ready to stay in eastern Colorado where we'd spent the night, until we saw on the high resolution short term models that a violent supercell was supposed to break out some time between 4-6 pm. We booked it down from Limon, CO to near Woodward, OK, roughly a 7 hour drive. Fearing that we weren't going to make it far enough south in time, we stopped briefly for lunch at McDonald's near WaKeeney, KS and then continued on our way.

We arrived in Woodward at around 5pm CDT and waited...and waited...and waited. Until finally we realized that storms in western OK were not to be today. A midlevel cold air intrusion prevented the area from destabilizing as well as it should've and every storm that tried to go up would hit that cool stable air and die. After waiting for roughly an hour, we were on our way to Wichita where we are staying the night.

Tomorrow looks very good, with tornadoes definitely a possibility. A strong 500mb jet stream, in conjunction with a strong >35kt low level jet and CAPE values up near 2000 J/kg should be great for supercell development, and mid 60's dewpoints along and west of the bulging dryline will (hopefully) aid in tornado development somewhere in south central KS.

More to come tomorrow.

So it begins

And so begins yet another year of chasing storms across the great plains of the United States. I got to Oklahoma City last Saturday, and we (Silver Lining Tours Tour 3) technically began to chase yesterday across the high plains of eastern Colorado. The pattern for our tour looks incredibly active, and today looks like the first really good chase day of the trip. While we did in fact see some tornadic storms yesterday (including a beautiful white funnel cloud about a third of the way to the ground), today is going to be the real big start to the tour. We are currently just south west of Greensburg, KS, heading somewhere near Watonga, OK, with the expectation of what should be monster supercells and possible tornadoes. I'm going to try to write up a post every morning analyzing our chase day and then every night with the results. Stay tuned!

FYI, for those interested in having a look back at last years blog of only my solo chase, go to http://goldychase2010.blogspot.com/.