MAY 27TH TEXAS: FOUR TORNADOES NEAR CANADIAN

July 04, 2015 by Brad in 2015

Initial supercell exploding 19 miles northwest of Canadian, Texas. Well-defined base forming to the left of the hail core.

2 thumbs up to this amazing wall cloud and funnel, northwest of Canadian, TX!

Awesome storm and well defined wall cloud with funnel extending over halfway to the ground.

Love this shot. Roughly the time another storm chaser reported a tornado. They were closer and saw a debris cloud at the ground...hence a tornado!

Another funnel forming northwest of Canadian a short while later as the wall cloud tightened back up.

Same funnel next to a rain/hail core. This never did touch down.

Lightning out of the base. Storm really twisting hard here with another wall cloud starting to develop as RFD punch develops clear slot on the southwest side of the storm.

Storm taking on a mothership appearance with large, circular base. Large, ragged wall cloud underneath at this point.

Tornado #2! Large cone/stovepipe tornado right in front of us, a few miles north of Canadian.

Closer shot of the tornado.

Tornado getting even larger with a big debris cloud. Clouds with the inflow were screaming into it right to left here.Tornado taking on a definite cone shape as it sits nearly stationary.

Tornado takes an elephant trunk shape as the cloud base begins to erode and the circulation starts the occlusion process.

Closer shot of the tornado from the previous image.

After the tornado dissipates, a new and fast rotating wall cloud develops just to the east of the occluded meso.

Wall cloud moves east to west (right to left), being pulled into the parent mesocyclone of the storm. The Silver Lining Tours crew looks on in amazement.

Tornado #3 just west of Canadian as we watch from the south side of town.

Lightning bolt out of the storm as it appears to become more outflow dominant.

Tornado #4! This circulation did condensate and touch down just northwest of town. This was the final attempt at producing a tornado. What a day and storm!

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 27, 2015 CHASE LOG: TEXAS

Written by Rich Hamel: (www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

We left Abilene at about 9:30 with the intent of targeting storms at a triple point set up on the Texas Panhandle. Our target for the day was Canadian, TX as the earlier model runs which had favored Kansas backed off that play significantly and favored the Texas Panhandle. We made good time and, after a quick lunch stop in Childress, were in Canadian by about 2 PM with nothing to do but wait, so we hung out at the Dairy Queen. At this point there were towers percolating on two distinct boundaries, one on the front just west of us and the other on the dry line, forming a triple point around Spearman.

After about an hour of waiting, the HRRR predicted monster was in its early stages of development and we left to chase it, heading about 5 miles out of town on Rt. 83 and pulling off on a side road to watch the storm grow. Our vantage point was perfect and soon the storm had classic structure with a vertical updraft (though it later tilted over hard), inflow bands, and a flanking line. It wasn’t long before it developed a nice wall cloud and not long after that dropped an elephant trunk funnel more than half way to the ground! It seemed like for sure the storm was ready to tornado, but after cycling through two additional larger funnels more than half way to the ground, the wall cloud dissipated and as the storm was slowly moving east, we had to as well. It turns out that the funnel did indeed contact the ground (from our vantage we couldn’t tell), tornado #1 for the day! But why is it that when you are in a perfect spot in terms of visibility, contrast, and everything else, they never put down a nice long tornado!!?

We headed back towards Canadian, stopping once more to view the storm as it cycled and generated a new wall cloud. The storm was barely moving, slowly drifting east, and was already becoming HP, so we had to see into the inflow notch to tell what was going on. We went northeast out of town on Rt. 60 and started experiencing significant amounts of chaser convergence, as well as a lot of other trucks that were stopped waiting for the storm to clear past the road which, as it turns out, took hours. We stopped and watched as the storm developed a lowering on the nose of the updraft in typical HP fashion and decided to head north to look into the notch. We weaved through heavy traffic and drove right up to the storm with the mesocyclone just a little in front of us and wild motion almost directly above the vans! Soon the meso was spinning away wildly just to our northeast and we got blasted by heavy RFD winds. We went even further north past the meso on the end of the hook to FM1920 where we watched another larger meso to our southwest move by. It looked like it could tornado right there, and the action was intense as we were pinned up against the front flank core by the meso, and once hail started falling we moved along with the meso to stay just ahead of the hail. As we did, the rotation to the right of the vans got stronger and stronger and soon a large cone shaped funnel lowered and contacted the ground. Tornado #2! This one was a big cone tornado at first heading straight at us about a mile away, then moving southeast, paralleling our direction as the storm dive bombed southeast, then later headed away from us as it curved around the meso. The cone grew in size and started to show a decent debris fan. One cool feature at this time was that you could look right up the clear slot and see up the whole updraft to the top of the storm. The tornado continued to intensify and grown into a larger cone until, after about 10 minutes the tornado roped out and that meso occluded, but no sooner had that happened then the next meso formed on the other side of the road from us and came towards us. We beat feet to get out of the way and stay ahead of the storm.

We traveled about a mile to get ahead of the new meso and watched as it crossed the road behind us, all the while throwing out funnels part of the way to the ground. We continued on south of the town, parking near a small airport. The storm began to look a little strung out, but still had wild motion under multiple lowerings as each took turns being the focus of attention. Soon to our west, the storm generated another tornado, this one an elephant trunk that turned into a multiple vortex, #3, then another multi-vortex which lasted a bit longer and looked almost stationary before getting swallowed by the rain core.. #4!! All the while the town’s tornado sirens were blaring.

Right after the 4th tornado, the storm belched out the strong, cold winds of outflow and a big precipitation core opened up under the updraft. The show was over for this storm.

After an Allsups break in Pampa, we proceeded towards Amarillo, intending to jump south towards Claude and another storm south of there in the Caprock Country but it was barely moving in the slow upper level winds: Unfortunately there was no road to get south on it, and even if we could, the roads in the canyons were slim and at the bottom of the valleys which made it hard to see anything. So we decided we couldn’t make it and gave up for the night, heading into town for dinner at the Big Texas steakhouse.

The night wasn’t quite done with us though as storms kept firing on the pinch point of a pair of boundaries south of town where our Claude storm had been, giving us quite a lightening show at the hotel.

What a great chase day! We only moved a total of about 10 miles over the course of the entire chase. Even an hour after we drove away from it, the Canadian storm, which was right over the town, was dumping water and hail amounting to over 4” of rainfall and causing flash flooding.

Mileage for the day was 399 miles.

MAY 26TH TEXAS: BRECKENRIDGE SUPERCELL & BRAD TORNADO

June 14, 2015 by Brad in 2015

Intensifying supercell with echo tops over 60,000 feet north of Breckenridge, TX. Wall cloud starting to develop.

Textbook wall cloud on the storm a short while later. Terrific structure of this storm!

Wall cloud wrapping up with large, circular base of the storm at this point.

Storm moving overhead. Wall cloud very disorganized as RFD winds wrap around the storm and inflow becomes choked off. Storm does reorganize later.

Wall cloud reorganizing north of Breckenridge, TX. Really cool white, back-lit wall cloud.

Another shot of the wall cloud as it starts to tighten up. About to cross highway 67 northeast of Breckenridge.

White wall cloud crossing the road in front of us. A lot of motion at this point.

Two action areas. The left one is the mature, white wall cloud that is becoming disorganized, while the right one is the new and rotating wall cloud with fast condensation into the base.

Tornado touching down north of Brad, TX as we watch from several miles to the east. Had to get well out ahead to view the storm as it moved across Possum Kingdom Lake.

A zoomed in and cut shot of the tornado from the previous image.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 26, 2015 CHASE LOG: TEXAS

Written by Rich Hamel: (www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

Day 8:

Today the plan was to play the intersection of the dry line with whatever leftover outflow boundaries from the previous day there were. There was plenty of CAPE available from southern Oklahoma down to I-10, but upper level flow was limited and the shear profile was not very good. The morning models showed two primary target areas: along a line from Wichita Falls, TX down to around Throckmorton, which was the area where the severe parameters appeared to be best, or just south of Abilene, where the models broke out an isolated storm in an area with very high updraft helicities. We initially targeted the Abilene area, but soon adjusted to a more central location that would allow us to play either target. We stopped in Cisco for lunch and to wait for initiation.

We hung out in Cisco for an hour or two before storms started to pop to our northwest over Newcastle. With the Abilene area still quiet, we decided to head north to intercept. As you’d expect in a high-shear environment, once the storms initiated the updrafts went up quick and soon we had targeted a storm forming just north of Breckenridge. We headed northeast out of town on Rt. 67 and stopped on FM 1800 near a correctional facility and watched the nicely structured classic supercell as it grew from its infancy, though we had to move at one point because the prison perimeter guard came out and told us we were too close to the prison! I guess three unmarked white vans sitting within view of the prison fences made the guards nervous! We watched from our new vantage point up the road for another 30 minutes or so as the storm matured, grew an inflow band, and quickly developed a nice blocky wall cloud that soon was rotating rapidly. The storm was also highly electrified and at one point we were forced back into the vans to reduce the lightning threat. The hail roar from the storm was loud and constant all throughout our time chasing it. Low level shear may have been a problem though and the wall cloud never tightened up, and we soon headed back to Rt. 67 to stay with the storm as it moved east. As we headed back south though, the storm had cycled its wall cloud and now looked like it could tornado right over the road, so we quickly zoomed back north right up to the mesocyclone which had wild cascading motion as it crossed right in front of us. Unfortunately, it couldn’t focus though and soon the meso jumped and the new area of focus was to the east, so we headed back south, then east, in pursuit.

Road options were fairly limited, so we had to follow Rt. 180 for about 16 miles east before we could turn north again at Brad, which put us well out ahead of the storm as it was not moving very quickly. In the meantime, the storm had merged with a cell north of it and cycled back up. We set up on Rt. 16 and waited for the storm to arrive. The storm was now morphing into a high-precipitation supercell and had 3 distinct hook echoes on the southern side as it approached. The storm was turning right hard and dive bombing southeast so we got clipped by the front flank core a little before the inflow notch because visible. As it did, a dark cone/elephant trunk funnel developed off in the distance! From our vantage several miles away we could not tell if it was on the ground or not, but later pictures from chasers who were closer confirmed that it was indeed a tornado! It was the 5th one of the trip, albeit a very brief one.

With the storm expanding and closing on our position we had to leave to get back out in front of it. We headed southeast from Brad and through Metcalf Gap, and terrain now was becoming an issue on top of the poor road network since we were now passing through a series of valleys surrounded by high terrain. We continued northeast on Rt. 180 then south on FM 919, eventually finding a good vantage point to watch the now monstrous HP storm come at us. The dark turquoise color meant big hail, and the storm was surging towards us, so we couldn’t stay long and soon once again lightning was pinging all around us. Since the storm was now HP and the rotation was completely engulfed in the core of the storm, there was no hope of seeing a tornado, even though we knew there likely was one in there (there was and the storm went on to produce one or two rain-wrapped tornadoes), so we decided to target a new storm which was finally developing down near Abilene. Just can’t take vans filled with guests into the hook area of an HP storm!

We headed down to Gordon and hopped on I-20 towards Baird, targeting a maturing, anchored storm near Ballinger, but the first order of business was to get out of the way of our original storm, which was now crossing the highway. We got clear of that storm and dropped south out of Baird, heading all the way south to Coleman before turning west towards Ballinger. Unfortunately, the storm was struggling after a split and dying. We decided to get south of the storm by punching through the slimmest part of the core on the south flank and did so, heading towards Paint Rock as big cloud-to-ground lightning bolts hit all around us: Another highly electrified storm, this has been a big year for lightning! Sadly other than torrential rain and high winds from the outflow, the storm was dying quickly and soon we turned around and gave up, heading up to Abilene for the night.

Another day, another fun chase of a great supercell, and another tornado, although it was a brief one.

Mileage for the day was 397.

MAY 24TH COLORADO & KANSAS: LAMAR TORNADO, FUNNELS & INTENSE SUPERCELLS

June 13, 2015 by Brad in 2015

Interesting feature in the distance underneath a developing supercell northwest of Springfield, Colorado. There appeared to be rotation but likely rising scud into the base of the storm. Sure looked like it could be a ground scraping wall cloud, but not close enough to discern what it could have been.

Storm structure starting to become even better northwest of Springfield, CO. RFD cut into this storm with clear slot developing. Another core coming up from the south and interacting with our storm.

Nice lightning bolt out of the storm. Inflow bands starting to look better organized as the storm gains strength.

Lightning strike out of the base of the storm as wall cloud begins to develop just to the left.

Wall cloud and developing tornado underneath. Looking west-southwest into the notch of this incredible storm!

Tornado! This was a confirmed tornado 6 miles south of Lamar, CO. Wall cloud completely wrapped up at this point to the north of the core. Massive hook on radar at this point with this storm.

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Zoomed in and contrast-enhanced view of the tornado south of Lamar.

Supercell taking on high-precipitation characteristics near Granada, CO. What a beast!

Incredible supercell structure and lightning south of Granada, CO. Notice the striated inflow bands wrapping around the entire mesocyclone of the storm.

A short while later as the storm was really wrapping up. Interesting notch and continued inflow to the northeast of the mesocyclone, but definitely a big hp mess at this point. Terrific structure though!

Shelf cloud about to move closer and overtake us. Very intense core with massive hail with this storm.

A look to the south at another developing supercell moving north and starting to interact with our storm.

Storm north of Liberal, KS that had an insanely low and rapid condensating inflow band. Action area to the left of this image had solid rotation. Storm failed to produce a tornado but did have a few funnels, as you can see in the video above.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 24, 2015 CHASE LOG: COLORADO & KANSAS

Written by Rich Hamel: (www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

Day 6: Wow, my favorite chase day since 2013! Waking up in the morning, I didn’t have high hopes, mostly because the previous day was pretty tame and the models looked only a little better to me, but as the morning runs came out, things improved. First order of business was to decide between a Texas Panhandle play down near Childress, or a “La Junta Low” setup just west of our starting point of Garden City, KS. Each model run progressively backed off the Childress play, but developed an isolated supercell out in front of a line of storms that developed and moved into Kansas. Turns out the model knew what it was talking about. We headed west…

We retraced our steps from the previous day in reverse and headed for Lamar. Right away, things were different than the previous few days: It was actually warm and sunny out! Well, in the 70’s at least. The day wasted no time getting going either, as by the time we stopped for gas in Lamar at about 1:30 Mountain time, storms were firing over the Raton Mesa and heading north-northeast towards us. We headed south out of Lamar towards Springfield as the storms intensified, and were presented with numerous options: one storm well to the west that looked the best near Trinidad, another just west of Pritchett, and a 3rd just west of Boise City, OK. In order to place ourselves in a position to intercept any of them, we headed to Pritchett, stopping just north of town, where we waited to see which storm would become dominant.

We weren’t there for long before the storm just to our north took off and started to develop a hook and soon we had to bolt back north to get back to it. We headed back towards Lamar and stopped at a rest area about halfway there to take some photos and watch the storm develop. There were actually two cells, and the one in front developed a lowering that was most of the way to the ground while the second one intensified. We headed farther north toward Lamar and by now the storm was a full blown rotating supercell with tremendous structure and that turquoise hue that tells you the hail inside means business. The storm was terrifically striated under a corkscrew updraft, with mammatus and a blocky lowering that was spinning wildly. The storm wrapped up hard and the wall cloud became partially obscured by rain, but soon a cone tornado peaked out (with a little help from contrast-enhancement) and persisted for a minute or two before getting engulfed in the rain again! Tornado #3 for the trip. We watched the storm for as long as we could before the hail core, with baseball-sized stones being reported (and we saw a car with its back window blown out as supporting evidence) threatened to cut our north option off, so we moved out into Lamar and then east towards Granada. The structure as we headed east on Rt. 50 was phenomenal! The storm was now a big striated HP supercell, right turning hard east towards us. We headed south on a dirt road out of Grenada and watched as the storm approached, with a long, linear looking laminar updraft and a wall cloud on the nose end. The rotation of the updraft above us was impressive and the storm was now too big to capture without a wide-angled lens. We were in danger of getting stuck on a muddy road as the storm closed on Grenada and soon the tornado sirens in the town were going off and we headed east on Rt. 50 again to Holly, and then south on Rt. 89.

South of Holly, the storm now had a long, linear base trailing off the supercell to the north as multiple cells were now brewing up and the system was becoming a line, but the structure at the north end now had a flying saucer look to it and was still spinning hard. We spend a good half hour watching the storm approach and take pictures, but soon the shelf cloud was practically on top of us and we had to blast south to get out of the way. Another 5 minutes and we would have been pummeled as we stayed there a bit too long. The south end of the line was now taking over anyway and was soon tornado warned, though there was not the slightest sign of rotation in the storm. We narrowly beat the line to Rt. 116, though at this point the line was so thin that you could actually see through to the other side. We headed east into Kansas to stay ahead of the storms.

As we headed east, we saw an atomic bomb of convection off to the southwest near Liberal, KS, with a mammoth overshooting top and big back sheared anvil. Once we saw that monster forming, we quickly forgot about the line behind us and bee-lined for the storm, which was already forming a hook. We zoomed through Johnson on Rt. 160 and could see off in the distance the lowered base of the storm that looked to already have a wall cloud developing on it. We had to make a decision: Do we keep going east to get out in front of it, but that would take a long time and while we were passing in front of the precipitation core we would not be able to see what was happening to the wall cloud, or do we head south towards Hugoton and approach the storm from behind, risking being forced to core punch to get to the storm. As we got to Ulysses, we chose the south option since it would get us to the storm quicker and in the worst case if it tornadoed we’d be able to see it, albeit from far away.

We blasted south along Rt. 25 and got a closer look at the explosive convection going on with the storm. This one was clearly a power house. There were now two distinct lowerings to the south, but then to our east under the updraft of a left-splitting cell there was wild rising motion and an area of white condensation on the group spinning like crazy! The rising motion was almost ridiculously fast, faster than I’ve seen in most tornadoes. The rotation on the group persisted for a minute or so before stopping. Most likely this was a brief anti-cyclonic tornado, but as we could not be sure, we’re not counting it. Meanwhile, off to our west, we had to keep an eye on the robust shelf cloud from the line of storms we’d left as there were a couple of distinct lowering in that line as well.

We headed east out of Hugoton on Rt. 51 and were soon coming right up to the two updrafts, one straight to our east and another to the southeast. The structure on the southern cell was fantastic, with a Liberty Bell updraft and a mammatus field under the big back sheared anvil. Both cells had mean looking lowerings and were spinning hard, and as we passed the rear flank of the northern cell just off to our north in the field, the motion was amazing! There looked like there were about 4 areas where we could get a tornado at any time. Time, however, was the problem as it was now getting towards dusk. We got to Rt. 83 and decided to try and get on the southern storm but as we passed by the northern mesocylone we had to stop as it quickly tightened and tried to produce less than half a mile from us! In the near dark it was spooky as the lowering produced several funnels that made it about halfway to the ground that seemed to be getting nearer and nearer to us while inflow screamed into the updraft almost over our heads. We then turned north on Rt. 83 and as the light faded we inched forward on the road with the rotating mesocyclones of the two storms on either side of the van.

Unfortunately at this point it was dark, we would have had to go south and around to get back to the southern storm and with 4 vans in the caravan, chasing at night was not an option. Not to mention we already had a 3 hour drive to Amarillo to look forward to. As we headed south, the storm then went on to produce a massive tornado that lasted over an hour (much of it in the fog!) and traveled nearly 40 miles as the night went on, UGH…Still, this was a GREAT chase day, with 3 storms that were better than any I chased last year. Tremendous structure, one and possibly two brief tornadoes, and some great, adrenaline pumping chase moments.

Total miles for the day: 582

MAY 23RD COLORADO: SUPERCELLS, TIME LAPSE, & GUSTNADOES

June 11, 2015 by Brad in 2015

First storm of the day with intense core near Ordway, Colorado.

Storm taking on supercell characteristics at this point, near Cheraw, CO. Terrific structure with large, lowered base underneath the updraft.

Tail cloud feeding into the storm base as the storm tries to form a wall cloud.

Gustnadoes forming underneath the action area of the hook wrapping around the southern part of the storm near La Junta, CO.

A closer look at some of the dirt being kicked up by possible gustnadoes and RFD winds near La Junta, CO.

Storm starting to form a shelf cloud and become outflow dominant near Las Animas, CO. But there is still some inflow left directly to the northwest where a notch is present in the storm. Very noticeable hook on radar at this point.

A short while later as the shelf cloud was becoming more prominent and approaching our location. To the north, a funnel was reported in the notch to the south of Arlington, CO. Could not see it from this vantage point.

Shelf cloud approaching! Looking south from near Lamar, Colorado.

Northern view with shelf cloud approaching and intense storm core full of hail and very heavy rain.

STORM REPORTS:

SPC OUTLOOKS:

MAY 23, 2015 CHASE LOG: COLORADO

Written by Rich Hamel: (www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

Day 5:

Another day with multiple targets, though at least this time we were within easy striking distance of both. The models broke out storms near Denver and intensified them significantly as the “Denver Cyclone” brewed up, and also down near Pueblo, moving off the mountains and out onto the eastern Colorado plains. Since we were in Limon, we were able to sleep in a little and sat for a while, waiting for the storms to brew up. By Noon, both areas had initiation, but the storms down south looked better on radar, and were in a much better environment than the cold air up north, so we decided to target the storms to the south. We headed out of Limon straight south on Rt. 71 through Punkin Center, closing on the storms quickly as they were moving almost straight north to meet us. Though the target storm was masked by some small cores out in front of it, we could see the bases of several other storms in the area along a broad line of storms running north-south all along the mountains. You can see a LONG way out there.

As we closed on Ordway, we were facing 3 separate storms that were pulsing up and down, each alternately looking better than the others. We decided to get east in order to stay ahead of the line, and proceeded east on Rt. 96 through Sugar City. As we headed east, the base of the southernmost storm, which was our target, came into view with a big blocky wall cloud almost on the ground! Once we cleared the precipitation core, we headed south on Rt. 31 towards Cheraw. We stopped and watched as the first lowering passed by to our east, and a new cell came up from the south with another lowering as the line kept expanding to the south. There were a few times that areas along the line tried to tighten up but none ever did. Later, as we headed south, then east out of Cheraw on County Road HH, a funnel appeared under the southernmost cell in the line, and made it about three-quarters of the way to the ground before dissipating. We headed east until we intersected Rt. 194, stopping occasionally to watch the roiling motion along the line, where different segments of the line kept bubbling up and down in intensity but none over really took off.

Realizing that we were running out of roads to get north as the storms moved off to our northeast, we blasted east to Wiley, but by then the line was dying and another segment of storms was coming up from the south, so we stopped at the truck stop north of Lamar and waited for them to approach. We ended up waiting for nearly an hour as the line segments slowly closed in on our position, but they appeared to be weakening and we were about ready to call it a day when there was a report of a wall cloud on the line segment passing just to our west, so we zoomed west and intercepted the line again. There was some pretty strong rotation at points, but not enough to tornado, and as the shelf cloud got to us it was time to head east.

We stayed out in front of the line, stopping every now and then to let the squall line catch us, passing north of Lamar in Rt. 196 until we were forced to turn around as a semi had somehow gotten its front wheels stuck in the mud on the north side, and was broadside across the entire road with the rear wheels stuck in the mud on the south side. We headed back west about 5 miles then flew south, just barely touching the core before heading east on Rt. 50.

We continued along Rt. 50 to Holly and stopped again waiting for the new tail end storm to come up from the southwest, but it weakened as it approached and soon we decided to call it a day and headed to our hotel in Garden City, KS. A fun chase day but there never appeared to be enough instability to get the cells to severe parameters, nor was there enough shear to break the storms into discrete cells.

Total miles for the day were not bad: 295

MAY 22ND COLORADO: AMAZING MOTHERSHIP SUPERCELL & TIME-LAPSE

June 10, 2015 by Brad in 2015

First storm of the day northeast of Hugo, Colorado. Low topped but with strong core.

Line of storm bases attempting to build to the west of Hugo, Colorado.

Awesome structure on a developing supercell near Genoa, Colorado.

Storm with great structure but now starting to become outflow dominant with the development of a shelf cloud.

Wall cloud about to overtake us between Genoa and Arriba, Colorado off I-70.

Another view of the entire wall cloud and storm base about to move overhead. Terrific structure!

Awesome mothership supercell beaming up the town of Arriba, Colorado. Great lighting behind this storm for a shot like this.

Storm moving closer with light still shining through the back of the storm base.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 22, 2015 CHASE LOG: COLORADO

Written by Rich Hamel: (www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

Day 4:

The first order of the day was to decide between two targets: back down to Ft. Stockton, TX where there would be plenty of instability but a questionable wind profile, or up in Colorado on a warm front with a good amount of shear, but limited instability. By morning some of the models had enhanced the amount of CAPE that would be available for storms, so we chose the northern target and left Lubbock with a destination of Limon, Colorado. We made good time heading north, watching as storms started to fire along the warm front which was situated just north of I-70, and also in the mountains. By the time we reached Hugo (along with every other chaser who had selected the northern target) some individual cells along the front were looking more interesting, and we selected one just north of town to chase. Stopping north of town, the storm was off to the northeast and was of the low top variety, and produced 2-3 small wall clouds but none showed a great deal of rotation.

With that storm cycling down, we decided to move to get to a central location where we could react to whatever cell went off since there was also a mountain storm west of Pueblo that had potential but appeared to this point be anchored on the high terrain, and headed south and west on county road 2W, stopping a few miles south of Hugo to observe. The front was clearly visible in front of us with numerous small updrafts located just north of the front in the cold air. At one point, I think there were 4 wall clouds visible! None of them were rotating much if at all though, and with those storms north of the front, none of them were likely to. After about 30 minutes, a storm just north of us in Limon was looking more robust so we decided to go after it.

As we went through Limon, we caught the edge of the core and got some small hail, maybe with a few nickel sized stones, and headed east on Rt. 70. We stopped in Genoa and looked back and much to our surprise the storm, which was north of the boundary and looked awful on radar, had terrific structure: A well-defined wall cloud with inflow tail, and laminar striations indicating rotation. It was also freezing cold! The weather station in the van indicated a temperature of 55 degrees and a dew point of 50 degrees and with the cold inflow it must have felt like it was in the 40’s! I was beginning to wonder if it could snow from a supercell! Certainly the coldest temperatures I think I’ve ever chased in. We continued down I-70 in front of the storm, stopping again in Bovina to watch the storm structure as it got better and better, taking on a mothership look. By the time we stopped at the rest area near Arriba, the Sun was popping through behind the storm and the view was breathtaking. Just beautiful structure, and amazing considering how unimpressive the storm looked on radar, and in fact, it was never severe warned.

Finally the storm looked like it was dying while a couple of cells along I-70 east of us were riding the frontal boundary and looked like they might be strengthening. We headed down the highway, running through a few small cores, but by the time we got to Stratton the storms were all dying down and with it getting dark, we turned around and called it a night. There was one more good looking storm down near Pueblo, but we couldn’t get to it before dark.

Talk about making something out of nothing! The models overestimated the amount of instability that would make it into Colorado and that was the failure mechanism that prevented a big day. Not one of these storms in Colorado was ever even severe, warned but the structure of our little storm was a real treat.

MAY 20TH TEXAS: SUPERCELL TIME LAPSE & CLOUD-TO-GROUND LIGHTNING

June 10, 2015 by Brad in 2015

Roger Hill being interviewed by a French production crew, of all places in Grandfalls, TX.

First storm of the day going up and on the cold front before being undercut, just north of Fort Stockton, TX.

Cumulus towers developing southeast of our developing storm near Fort Stockton.

Back to our storm, inflow bands feeding into it as the storm interacts with the boundary.

Severe warned thunderstorm approaching the 3 vans of Silver Lining Tours in the Glass Mountains of southwest TX.

Intense rain and hail core with severe warned storm over the Glass Mountains to the south of Fort Stockton, TX.

Inflow tail from the right feeding the severe warned thunderstorm with intense rain/hail core.

My favorite shot of the day. Rain and hail core over the buttes in the Glass Mountains south of Fort Stockton and northwest of Sanderson, TX.

Don't see this in Minnesota! Blooming cactus across the desert high plains.

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

STORM REPORTS

MAY 20, 2015 CHASE LOG: TEXAS

Written by Rich Hamel: (www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

Day 2:

Starting in Abilene, we headed for west Texas in mist and fog, hoping to play storms along the sagging cold front in a high-instability, low shear environment. This was a marginal setup and we were mostly just looking for pulse-severe storms with good structure and some hail. The HRRR had two main target areas, one towards Pecos, TX and one south of Ft. Stockton. Either way, that meant heading west on I-20, so we trucked it down to Midland/Odessa, stopping quickly to grab lunch, then on to Monahans, where the Sun had finally come out. At that point we had to pick a target and we chose the southern of the two and headed down Rt. 18 to Ft. Stockton.

Once there, we sat and waited as towers popped up all around us, sheared over (not a good sign when you are supposed to have high instability and low shear) and died. Soon we could see the cold front approaching from the north, and knowing that it would undercut any activity that it passed, we started heading south towards Marathon to play with the storm bubbling along the Davis Mountains, but after getting about halfway there we noted a storm firing along the frontal boundary just north of Ft. Stockton and turned around to chase it. The storm had decent enough structure with a fairly broad base, and looked interesting for a time with several long inflow tails pulling air in from the north, but it looked “cold” and soon our location was getting hit with steady cool winds from the north… the front had passed and the storm, which we had hoped would anchor on the front, was now behind it and dying in the cold air. We’d mostly lost hope as we drifted back into Ft. Stockton, but another cell was getting stronger along the highway so we decided to go have a look.

The storm was right along I-10, so the first bit of fun was a fairly long core punch through the entire length of the front-flank core. We got heavy rain and a good bit of hail up to quarter size, and in fact called that in and got the storm severe warned. Needing to get out in front of the storm, we drove south out into the middle of nowhere along FM 2886 and stopped at several locations to observe. The storm was somewhat linear looking but there was a lot of interesting motion and as the storm rode the frontal boundary and moved south it intensified and began throwing out lots of smooth bolt cloud to ground lightening immediately in our area. Still moving, we stopped near the junction of Rt. 285 and watched the roiling motion on the front end of the shear line, and at one point the storm produced a ropey shear funnel than made it pretty close to the ground, and several times certain areas of the rotation looked like they were going to wrap up into something more substantial.

As the core closed on us, the lightning picked up again and we saw a couple of bolts hit squarely in the fields around us, and another hit a large tank at a gasification facility we went by! We played with the lightning for a bit then headed north, plowing through the core of the weakening line segment for the easy ride into our hotel in Ft. Stockton. All in all a pretty fun chase day. Our expectations weren’t high given the setup and we ended up with a nice storm with structure, hail, some motion, and a lot of lightning. Plus, the terrain in this area of Texas is really interesting, with lots of mesas, buttes, canyons, and cacti. Travel distance for the day was 424 miles.

MAY 19TH TEXAS & OKLAHOMA: TERRAL, OK TORNADO

June 03, 2015 by Brad in 2015

Initial storm had a low-hanging wall cloud in the distance that persisted for quite a while.

Supercell taking on good structure with solid inflow bands near Waurika, OK.

A short while later, the storm began to form a wall cloud with noticeable clear slot.

Sneaky 2nd tornado that formed northeast of our initial tornado near Terral, OK. Grainy image, I know.

Lightning out the side of the first tornado near Terral, Oklahoma.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 19, 2015 CHASE LOG: TEXAS & OKLAHOMA

Written by Rich Hamel: (www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

Day 1:

A long chase day, but in the end it was worth the wait! We started out from OKC with the intent of heading to Amarillo, TX. From there the plan was to drop south to either play storms we hoped would form on the dry line / outflow boundary intersection or to head all the way south to Midland or Ft. Stockton to play the storms the models all broke out there.

Put mildly, the atmosphere was a mess: It rained all the way west into Texas and ultimately we did not see the Sun once all day. Usually a recipe for a complete bust of a chase day, but not today! Once we made it to the Oklahoma / Texas border, our plans changed: The models were now downplaying the dryline option, but were now indicating a strong play along an instability axis running from around Childress down to Abilene. We headed south to Childress and stopped for lunch and evaluated.

As the models continued to push the action area east, we decided to head east out of Childress for Vernon, through sloppy rainstorms all the way. Arriving in Vernon, it looked like the day was pretty much over, with multiple elevated rain storms in the area and nothing looking decent. After the obligatory Braum's stop, we decided we'd head south towards Abilene and evaluate, giving us some chance to catch any storms that formed way south, or if the whole day busted we'd be closer to our hotel in. We headed south on US 283 but as we got away from town one of the elevated blobs had congealed into a nice storm with a developing hook. We blasted east on a FTM 1763 towards Harrold as the storm quickly went tornado warned and there were reports of a tornado in progress! The problem for us was that the storm was crossing the Red River into Oklahoma and we were on the backside of the hook echo, where we’d never be able to see anything!

We rushed to Burkburnett and across the river back into Oklahoma, then had to stair step north and east towards Randlett. By this time there was another storm coming up at us from Wichita Falls that looked better than the storm we were chasing, which was now looking like a high-precipitation blob and it was clear looking down the notch that the storm wasn't producing a tornado. We proceeded as far as Walters, then dropped southeast to Temple on Rt. 5, then all the way to Waurika, heading south as the storm moved along just to our west. We stopped just north of Terral as the hook passed to our west, a murky, rainy beast just like everything else today. The storm was incredibly electrified and we had to keep everyone in the vans as smooth lightning bolts crashed all around us with loud “Booms” every time (as opposed to the crackles you hear from branched lightning). This might have been the closest series of lightning impacts I've witnessed. In fact, even though we had everyone in the vans we still decided to move south to get out of the way.

A few miles later we stopped again as the mesocyclone passed just north of us. After it crossed the road, we looked back and could see the old occluded meso on the back side of the hook echo, and soon it produced a large cone tornado! The tornado widened out and lasted for a solid 2-3 minutes before becoming a multi-vortex tornado with 3 distinct vortices spinning around. The tornado then dissipated, but a few minutes later the storm produced another tornado, this time an elephant trunk east of the road, which lasted only a minute or so before lifting, and despite trying several more times did not appear to touch down again.

Cutoff by the river and the storm, we headed south on Rt. 81 back into Texas and east to Nocona, then north on Rt. 103 to Spanish Fort and along a dirt road to as close to the river as we could get. As we approached we could see a big lowering that produced a funnel about 1/2 way to the ground, but it never touched down. Eventually we had to settle for some nice structure shots of the striated updraft before giving up and targeting a whole series of storms coming up from the south, every one of which was tornado warned. It was getting dark though, and after traveling all the way to Bridgeport we decided to call it a night and head to Abilene, even as a nasty looking tornadic storm occurred just to our northwest and hit the towns of Vineyard and Runaway Bay hard.

A LONG, but ultimately successful chase day. I still can't believe that we never saw the Sun the entire day, meaning there was no ground heating, yet the atmosphere destabilized to produce a dozen or more separate tornadic storms. Unreal!

Mileage for the day was 696.

MAY 10TH SOUTH DAKOTA: LOW TOPPED SUPERCELLS & SOME GOOD STRUCTURE

May 15, 2015 by Brad in 2015

First lowering of the day forming underneath one of the stronger updrafts on a broken line of storms near Vermillion, SD.

Underneath a shelf cloud with a lot of undulations near Mayfield, SD.

2 separate mesocyclones on the storm interacting with the warm front near Chester, SD. The far meso was the one right on the boundary.

Another shot of the meso's. The far one had a lowering as it was interacting with the warm front.

Terrific structure with this storm.

As we approached the base, this bowl shaped lowering was showing rotation and there was a moment where condensation into this area was occurring rapidly. Closest any storm came all day to producing a tornado. This was just north of Chester, SD.

New cumulus towers going up ahead of the low on an occluding boundary.

Underneath the line of updrafts near Salem, SD. This was quite the scene with a lot of motion going on and possibly a few vorticity rolls at some of the cloud bases.

SPC MD issued at 10:24am CDT, highlighting the risk for tornadoes ahead of the triple point and on the warm front.

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

STORM REPORTS:

MAY 10, 2015 CHASE LOG: SOUTH DAKOTA

This chase was a rather frustrating one, but at least we saw some good storms! We left early (around 9am) in hope of getting to southeast South Dakota in time to see storms initiate around 2-3pm. During the 4 hour drive to the target area, a tornadic supercell developed just ahead of the low after only a few hours of heating, dropping a tornado from 10:30-11:00am in the morning! Unfortunately, the EF-2 tornado brought significant damage to the town of Delmont, SD. I could not believe a tornado could form that early as it did. This tornado formed ahead of a strong low pressure system that had been leading to widespread severe weather/tornadoes in the Central and Southern Plains over the past few days. This was mainly a shear driven event as even marginal instability was enough to lead to tornadoes. As you can see in the image above, the set-up consisted of a low pressure center lifting north into southeast SD along with a warm front, while a trailing dryline and cold front moved very slowly north-northeast.

A mesoscale discussion was issued by the Storm Prediction Center already by 10:24am, talking about issuing a tornado watch. This tornado watch soon followed suite at 10:45am until 9:00pm in the evening! A long day of chasing awaited us. We were on our first severe warned storm coming out of northeast NE to near Vermillion, SD shortly before 2pm. This storm had a decent lowering but never could get its act together and congealed into a cluster of severe storms with the main threats being large hail and high winds. At the same time, a new tornado warned storm developed northwest closer to the triple point near and north of Freeman, SD. This storm did not drop a tornado, but certainly looked the part for a while. After chasing new storms north to near I-90 west of Sioux Falls, one storm held promise as it approached the warm front near Chester, SD. This storm had two rotating mesocyclones, one that was very pronounced and had great structure to our north as you can see in the photos. The storm ended up weakening upon moving north of the warm front so we dropped south back to Sioux Falls to await round 2.

The next line of storms developed by late afternoon along the occluding low pressure system near Mitchell, SD. The storms were low topped and one became tornado warned that we were not on north of Mitchell that came close to producing a tornado. We were able to get on the southern storm near Spencer, SD and followed the storm north. This storm exhibited some strong inflow and a rotating wall cloud with condensation into the base. It was clear this storm was close to produce a tornado, but it appeared to weaken upon after its first cycle. We left this storm and dropped south as all storms prior had weakened after the first cycle and did not appear to do anything else. This was the exception in which the storm was reported to produce a brief tornado after we left it, but I have yet to see photos. Certainly could have as the storm intensified upon reaching the warm front and it was certainly a mistake to leave it when we did. A learning experience!

APRIL 24TH KANSAS: EMMERAM TORNADO & FUNNEL NEAR PARADISE

April 30, 2015 by Brad in 2015

Sunset photo near Ames, Iowa from the night before on our drive down to Kansas City.

Arriving on the storm to the northeast of Hays, Kansas as the original wall cloud that prompted the tornado warning had dissipated.

Driving north on Toulon Avenue trying to get ahead of the storm and developing wall cloud northeast of Hays, Kansas.

Looking west on Emmeram Road at a large wall cloud that was starting to rotate. Strong inflow band on the northeast side of the wall cloud feeding into this storm.

Tornado touching down near Emmeram, Kansas at 5:04 PM. This was down for around 1 minute before lifting. Wall cloud and associated mesocyclone had rapid rotation at this point as the vorticity tightened up to produce the tornado.

Another shot of the tornado.

Large wall cloud reforming north of Gorham, Kansas. Bowl shaped lowering underneath with rain curtains rotating around base as storm attempted for form another tornado.

Yet another wall cloud forming on the storm near Paradise, Kansas.

This was rear flank downdraft (RFD) winds around the backside of the storm kicking up dirt behind a new wall cloud.

Another well structured wall cloud near Paradise, Kansas. Notice multiple mid-level inflow bands.

New funnel and wall cloud on the storm near Sylvan Grove, Kansas.

View of the storm structure with funnel and wall cloud underneath near Sylvan Grove.

Supercell starting to merge with other storms but still have an organized inflow band on the northeast side.

View of the entire storm about 10 miles ahead near Lincoln, Kansas.

Let it approach us again near Lincoln, Kansas, but clearly starting to take on that more outflow dominant and shelf cloud look.

12Z HRRR did a good job in depicting this storm, developing on the triple point and becoming rather intense by 22Z, right at the time of the tornado.

13Z HRRR had highest forecast updraft helicity values with storm on the triple point. Nailed it!

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

STORM REPORTS

APRIL 24, 2015 CHASE LOG: KANSAS

This was a chase that I had every intention of doing for several days leading up to it. This was the ‘next’ trough in-line to eject out of the Rockies and instability, shear and moisture appeared sufficient for severe thunderstorms and possibly tornadoes for an entire week in advance leading up to the 24th. Having the day off and no major plans, Wes Hyduke and I decided to make a run for it, staying in Overland Park, KS Thursday night and heading west on I-70 towards Russell, KS on Friday. The original intention was to chase storms off the dryline and south/southeast of the triple point near Wichita, but we awoke Friday morning to the main risk area shifting north towards the triple point in west-central KS. The models were not developing the dryline storms until later in the evening and it appeared the dewpoints would mix out with larger T/Td spreads as a result, along with some capping issues. The target shifted more towards Great Bend to Russell, just ahead of the surface low and along the warm front where the models, especially the HRRR, were blowing up a large supercell and riding it east along the front.

My concerns leading up to the day were the lack of bulk shear with a forecast 30-40 kts across this area, as well as the moisture returning out of Texas where strong convection was expected to occur throughout the day. However, bulk shear did increase to 40-50 kts for this event across central and north-central KS while dewpoints were able to creep up into the upper 50s and lower 60s. MLCAPE nosed northward to 500-1,500 j/kg near the triple point where the models continued to project the development of an intense supercell storm throughout the day. A surface low deepened to sub-998 mb as it approached southwest of Hays with surface winds backing somewhat and veering winds with height, leading to the supercell and tornado threat. Mid-level lapse rates increased to 8.0 C/km, promoting a concern for very large hail. A mesoscale discussion was issued at 2:14pm CT, highlighting these risk factors and much of western and central KS for the threats of damaging winds, large hail, and isolated tornadoes. A tornado watch then followed at 3:40pm CT for the same area.

Upon reaching Russell, we progressed south to meet up with some chaser friends in Hoisington. As soon as we got there, towers started developing to the west of La Crosse up towards just west of Hays, KS. The storm that the models had been projecting to explode on the triple point did just that right over Hays. We went back north and intercepted the storm northeast of Hays around 4:45pm. We then progressed north on Toulon Ave and then east on Emmeram Rd, parking on top of a hill to watch the developing wall cloud that was starting to spin at a good clip. Just as I was putting the video camera on a tripod, the storm produced a brief rope tornado right at 5pm a few miles west of our location. This lifted and another cone tornado formed at 5:04pm. This also was fairly brief but did last around a minute. There was a moment that I thought this would form into a larger, longer lasting tornado since the mesocyclone and associated wall cloud were spinning very fast at this point. However, the tornado could not last and wrapped up into the wall cloud. Upon moving further east, the storm continued to produce wall clouds with rising, condensation at times along with some rotation. We stair-stepped northeast on dirt roads, all the while staying in the notch of the storm and out ahead of the hook so we were able to see if anything touched down. However, it was difficult to determine if there were any rain-wrapped tornadoes as there were some additional reports. Near Paradise, the storm really tried to produce again and we witnessed a funnel shielded in the rain at that time. After the funnel occurred, new updrafts began forming out ahead and south, which led to some weakening near Lucas as we traveled east on Hwy 18. However, the storm seemed to reorganize near Sylvan Grove and produced another wall cloud and funnel. I believe there were a few reports of a rain wrapped tornado at this location as well, but we never saw this. Thereafter, we stayed out ahead of the storm until Lincoln where everything began to merge. At this point, we decided to end the chase and start heading east on I-70 towards Kansas City.

APRIL 1ST MINNESOTA & IOWA: FIRST CHASE OF THE YEAR

April 09, 2015 by Brad in 2015

First storm going up near Rock Rapids, IA. High based inflow band and base into low topped storm.

RFD punch on the back of the high based storm led to relative cloud-free area for a time.

Mammatus soon formed on the west side of the storm near Ellsworth, MN.

Rain shafts falling out of developing storms to the west of Fulda, MN.

Another shot of the beautiful scenery and rain shafts out of developing storms.

Lightning under shelf cloud approaching my parents house near Blooming Prairie, MN.

Another shot of the lit-up shelf cloud approaching from the west.

The lightning really helped me out with lighting up this great scene.

Edge of the shelf moving overhead as the rain starts to fall.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

As you can see below, CAPE was lacking, but a nose of instability was poking up into southwest Minnesota:

Dewpoints were also clearly lacking on this day, but severe weather would have been more common if they were to reach the 50s:

APRIL 1, 2015 CHASE LOG: MINNESOTA & IOWA

The first chase of the year tends to be a warm-up most of the time, and this was certainly the case with a marginal severe weather set-up. I knew going into this day that moisture would be lacking significantly and being a cold front situation, storms across the area were very unlikely to have any tornado potential, but I was hoping for at least a couple severe storms with decent structure to chase. Decided to head towards Worthington, MN as the cold front was approaching Sioux Falls, SD. Dewpoints were already under model guidance and only in the lower to middle 40s during the afternoon, but upper 40s dewpoints were advecting north into the area and pooled ahead of the front by the late afternoon when storms initiated. If low to mid 50s dewpoints would have made it further north, then more severe weather would have been likely.

The first strong storm initiated near Canton, SD and moved into northwest IA. I intercepted this cell near Rock Rapids, IA where it actually had some okay structure, with a high based inflow band and clear updraft with a core of 50 dbz on radar. This cell weakened shortly after my arrival but did produce some mammatus on the back side near Ellsworth, MN, just across the border. Thereafter, nothing appeared to be strengthening on any of the southern cells, so I progressed north towards Fulda, MN where some stronger, elevated storms were developing. I was hoping to be able to see at least some structure or drive into some hail, but these storms also did not pack much of a punch being in only low to mid 40s dewpoints. I bailed on the storms and progressed back to my parents where I was able to get some lightning shots as a shelf cloud moved overhead during the evening.

JULY 7TH MINNESOTA: SEVERE STORM THROUGH SOUTHERN TWIN CITIES

July 23, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Severe warned storm with developing wall cloud over Chaska, MN.

Wall cloud becoming fully mature as the storm moves closer to Shakopee High School.

Wall cloud starting to gust out a bit but still holding together.

Storm about to move through Shakopee, MN. Broad lowering that is becoming outflow dominant with core to the right.

Strong core here with 1 inch hail being reported at this time near Shakopee.

Another shot of the lowering and storm core as it was approaching.

My favorite shot of the day...small but intense updraft at the back of the storm over Burnsville, MN taken from Lac Lavon Park.

Wide shot of this updraft tube and associated storm taken looking southeast from Lac Lavon Park in Burnsville. This storm produced 1.75 inch hail in Burnsville.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

JUNE 29TH IOWA: MULTI-VORTEX TORNADO NEAR STANHOPE & FUNNEL

July 23, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Approaching the first severe warned storm of the day near Humboldt, Iowa.

First getting on the tornado warned storm near Stanhope. Nice base and low inflow tail with mid level inflow streaming into the updraft. Storm had a massive hook echo forming around this time.

Looking directly at the hook wrapping around the storm and forming into a mesocylone northeast of Stanhope at 7:21pm.

Forming a wall cloud a minute later.

Our position in the crosshairs relative to the hook echo at 7:22pm.

Mesocyclone starting to rapidly rotate and tighten up at 7:32pm.

Video still of the tornado 3.5 miles east of Stanhope a short time later.

After seeing the tornado near Stanhope, this funnel developed near Garden City, IA at 7:58pm.

Underneath the base of the storm near Garden City.

Heading home up I-35 after a fun and successful chase day.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

JUNE 29, 2014 CHASE LOG: IOWA

This was a chase day in which my gut feeling that not much was going to happen in the target area was completely wrong. Luckily I had a friend, Wes Hyduke, coaxing me into leaving after work and chasing this set-up in central IA. The reasons I did not have a good feeling about the day were because of morning and ongoing convection with quite a bit of cloud cover, as well as the outflow boundary/warm front well to the south near the Des Moines area, which appeared to be total displaced from the better 50-60 kts bulk shear to the north across MN. Surface winds feeding any storms that developed were weak, on the order of 10-15 kts at the most. The environmental conditions that this area DID have going for it were that the clouds thinned/cleared out through the afternoon, allowing for unstable conditions to develop in the vicinity of 3,000-3,500 j/kg of MLCAPE, dewpoints in the lower to middle 70s, bulk shear an ok 35-40 kts, and an outflow boundary from morning convection that was slowly receding back to the north towards the Ames, IA area. It really was a tough forecast and models did not appear to be handling the situation very well with several completely different solutions and missing a lot of current convection. All in all, I was on the fence about going but Wes saw the environment and assured me that at least some decent supercells would develop along and north of the outflow boundary.

We left the Twin Cities shortly after 2pm and traveled south on I-35 to Clear Lake, IA. Right as we were leaving, the Storm Prediction Center (SPC) issued a mesoscale discussion, outlying the increasing risk for severe thunderstorms across eastern NE and western/central IA as the afternoon progressed. They noted the decreasing cloud cover leading to destabilization as well as steep mid-level lapse rates greater than 7 C/km, and also the more backed surface winds across IA that may enhance the tornado potential. A Tornado Watch was soon issued for the area at 4:05pm, lasting until 11pm CDT.

After having an early dinner in Clear Lake, we traveled south on I-35 to the Hwy 3/Hampton exit as a thunderstorm was developing out towards Storm Lake. We went west on Hwy 3 and then north on Hwy 169 and then west to intercept the storm northwest of Humboldt. This storm had looked good for a moment and actually had a nice wall cloud on it as we caught up to it initially. This storm soon crapped out and weakened considerably as we followed east through Bode. Failing to get AT&T data, our only option was to head east and stay with the storm/get ahead and see how the radar looked when we got data. As we went back east on Hwy 3 with our weak and non-interesting storm, we were able to get data again near Clarion. Right away the radar lit up with a couple already severe warned storms that appeared to be right on the outflow boundary to our south. We pushed south on Hwy 69 and punched the leading severe warned storm near Hwy 20 east of Webster City. This is when the cell to the southwest became tornado warned with a nice hook echo forming. I decided to make a move to punch through the forward flank core on 270th St and then south to get ahead of the hook and in the notch of the storm near the intersection of Neely Ave and 330th St/D56.

When we got to this intersection, you could visually see the reflectivity ball coming around the south side of the hook that we could see on radar. There was some rotation right in the notch on the north end of this ball of rain with a lowering tucked away closer to the main core to our northwest. Soon, rotation began to increase with a mesocyclone becoming more apparent in this hook echo. We noticed a surge of rear flank downdraft (RFD) winds coming around the west side of the hook and around the mesocyclone and I figured something was going to happen here soon. At this point, it was getting close to us so we moved east down the road to Nelson Ave, passing the Stanhope Fire Dept on the way. Right as we stopped, I noticed a vorticy kicking up dirt underneath the meso and THERE WAS THE TORNADO! We watched as vortices condensed, kicked up dirt aggressively, and spun back up into the low cloud base. This happened several times with a few vortices at once on occasion for about 2 minutes at this location, 3.5 miles east of Stanhope. We continued to move east with the storm on 330th/D56 towards Jewell as vortices continued to kick up debris clouds underneath the meso. It was interesting as this storm had right-turned and the tornado and storm were traveling east-southeast, rooted right on the outflow boundary from the earlier convection. We got ahead of the meso on Hwy 69 south of Jewell as a large funnel cloud formed once again but did not touch down. We then traveled east through Randall and crossed back over the interstate on 380th St/D65 and then got ahead of the storm in the small town of Garden City. Just north of town, the storm produced another low funnel that may have touched down but not quite sure as we could not confirm. After traveling east again over Hwy 65, we stopped again to take photos of the storm that appeared to be cycling at the time and not looking as great. All of a sudden the darn gas light comes on and we realized we were almost running out of gas! At this point, there was nothing we could do. We had to go back to Hubbard to get gas or we were going to run out. There was no way we could get back in front of the storm before sunset so we decided to end the chase day here. Unfortunately, the storm produced another and more photogenic tornado further east near Conrad that we would have been all over if it was not for the gas issue. Oh well, a great chase day that was rather unexpected for me going into it.

JUNE 14TH NEBRASKA: TORNADO WARNED STORMS

July 19, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Lucky for me to catch this lightning shot since I was shooting out the car window at the time.

Mammatus on the storm south of Fullerton, Nebraska. Scenic and wide open area for this storm to form in.

Base of the left split storm as it was starting to break off to the north near Fullerton.

The southern supercell as it was starting to form a wall cloud south of Genoa, Nebraska. This storm became tornado warned a short while after this was taken.

Wall cloud on the tornado warned storm near Silver Creek, Nebraska. Intense core on the right.

Wall cloud becoming better organized with solid inflow at this point. Storm merger taking place and starting to look messy on radar.

Short while later as an area of rotation attempted to become more focused, but soon fell apart.

Blurry photo but this was a funnel cloud on the storm near Monroe, Nebraska. Finger hanging down from the storm in the center of the image.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

JUNE 11TH MINNESOTA: SHELF CLOUDS & GUSTNADO

July 19, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Lowering on the storm over Ortonville, Minnesota. Actually was trying to form a wall cloud here!

Still inflow into the storm as noted by the tail with a weak bowl shaped lowering under the storm. Starting to form a shelf cloud on the southern end.

Shelf cloud fully developed on this storm near Appleton, Minnesota.

Nice looking shelf cloud about to overtake us with some gusty winds.

A different storm with actually some decent structure near Kerkhoven, MN! Lowering underneath that held together for a while.

Another shot of this storm as it was approaching my location. Lowering underneath is becoming more ragged.

Cool roll cloud that developed out ahead of the storm as outflow was starting to really take over.

Another view as the roll cloud was moving over with the storm base to the left where it still appeared to have some inflow. This base to the left is what eventually formed the gustnado near Pennock.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

JUNE 11, 2014 CHASE LOG: MINNESOTA

Making the best out of a marginal situation is what this day was all about. I awoke in the morning to a Slight Risk for severe weather and a 5% tornado risk across west-central and northwest MN. I had been watching for this potential chase for days leading up to the event, but it never looked like a slam dunk for severe weather and especially for tornadoes. The main issues for the day were the weak low and especially mid-level lapse rates as well as dewpoints only in the upper 50s to lower 60s. MLCAPE was only expected to get into the 500-1,000 j/kg range at the most, so instability was also rather low and confined to a narrow corridor ahead of the cold front. The surface set-up included a low pressure center east of Aberdeen across northeast SD and a stationary front to the east-northeast through “The Hump” are of western MN and into north-central portions of the state. A trailing cold front slowly advanced eastward through eastern SD and into southwest MN. Bulk shear was not bad but not great, and on the order of 40 kts later in the day as the upper trough approached. The plan was to play the triple point area near and just southeast of the low in the vicinity of Hoffman, MN and hope that supercell and tornado potential would be maximized here.

I left my parent’s place in southern MN by 9am and headed northwest towards Alexandria. Here is where I met up with a few other chasers and waited for things to become clearer. This area was right on the stationary front while an area of low pressure was moving towards from northeast SD. Storms began to form near the low and along the cold front by mid-afternoon and looked very weak on radar. SPC issued a mesoscale discussion for the area at 3:36pm, basically saying that a low risk for severe weather existed and there would only be a low probability of a watch issuance. They even downgraded the 5% tornado to a 2% for the 2000Z update. Shortly thereafter, one storm caught my eye that was near Webster, SD that was intensifying and had a 40k foot echo top. This storm was near the triple point and looked to be the best of the many that were starting to fire around it. I made my way down from Alexandria through Morris and west on Hwy 28 to Graceville, MN. I then went south on Hwy 75 to intercept the storm in Ortonville. The storm did have a lowering on it as it crossed the river towards us to the north of Ortonville, but this looked non-threatening and the storm was not warned at the time. I was able to stay ahead of the storm on Cty Rd 10 for quite a while, stopping to take photos and video at times as the storm was looking interesting but with more shelf-like, outflow features as the storm started to move past maturity.

A new storm began to form to the south near Appleton and I moved south on Hwy 59 to Hwy 12 to intercept this storm. Again, this cell never was severe warned but did have several lowered areas underneath the base and had nice structure at times. Upon reaching Kerkhoven, I followed to the northeast on Hwy 6 and the road turned into Cty Hwy 13. At the intersection of 13 and Cty Hwy 7, I was able to get out ahead enough to set up the tripod and take some video as well as a number of photos. The storm had good structure for a while, while the northern end began to gust out upon reaching me. I was about to let the storm core me, when I noticed a dirt plume to the south. This was where the storm appeared to have a hook appendage on radar and still had inflow/outflow balance. There was an action area above that looked like a ragged mesocyclone with a lot of turbulent undulations. I followed south on Cty Hwy 7 back to Hwy 12 and then east through Pennock. Here is where the dirt plume really looked like a large gustnado. There was also a lot of dirt being blown back to the east on the south side of the storm where an RFD may have been in place, then curling back ahead and into the storm with the inflow. It certainly looked interesting and Melanie Metz has a nice photo of what looks like a funnel and dirt being kicked up underneath shortly before the dirt plume got larger. I followed through Willmar where dirt was still being kicked up and when it really looked like a gustnado. Another formed to the northeast of Willmar as I continued to the east on Hwy 12. It soon was too dark to see much and the storm began to weaken, so I progressed back home for the night. A nice chase considering there were no severe warnings and it was such a marginal type of day!

MAY 26TH TEXAS: INTENSE SUPERCELLS & 3 WEAK TORNADOES

July 17, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Tornado warned storm with rotating wall cloud near Lenorah, TX. This produced a defined dirt swirl right underneath the action area for the first tornado of the day, albeit very weak.

Sharp inflow 'beaver' tail into the storm as wall cloud began to lose some definition near Lenorah, TX.

Our second tornado warned storm of the day. Awesome looking supercell with great structure, wall cloud, and intense core southeast of Stanton, TX and northwest of Garden City, TX.

Looking left as the rear flank downdraft was coming around the south side of the storm and kicking up a dust plume.

Really nice looking supercell with wall cloud underneath the vault updraft region of the storm near Garden City, TX.

Zoomed in view of the wall cloud underneath this storm. There was solid rotation going on with this feature, as you can see in the video at the time.

Beast of a supercell with inflow bands coming in from all directions and wall cloud near Garden City, TX.

I like this shot. Supercell moving right at us an oil pump continues to work on. Symbol of West Texas.

Fast rotating wall cloud at this point, with focused dirt swirl underneath. What looks like a funnel reaching down as well. Second weak tornado of the day.

Typical Texas tank of a supercell storm. Nice striations indicating a rotating storm and inflow bands coming in from many directions. This was looking northwest from near Water Valley, TX.

Another shot of this storm as it started to get closer. Notice large wall cloud underneath.

Closer view of the wall cloud underneath this intense storm. Not many people wanting to drive up the road into this thing!

Wall cloud starting to gust out as it approached us. Reports of baseball size hail with this storm at this time.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 26 2014 CHASE LOG: TEXAS

Written by Rich Hamel: (www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

Finally a real adrenaline pumping chase day! The plan was to find the dryline intersection with the outflow boundary from the previous day’s storms and wait. We drove from Hobbs, NM to Big Spring, TX and had lunch. By the time we’d finished up lunch, a line of storms was firing to our northwest near Seminole, so we headed out of town to intercept the best looking cell with the plan being to chase that cell, then as storms fired down the line drop to the tail end storm, repeat, and repeat again. We didn’t have long before we intercepted the first storm as it went severe and was soon tornado warned near Patricia around 3 PM. We stopped and observed a big wall cloud low to the ground and within a minute or two there was a persistent dirt swirl on the ground with cascading motion above, tornado number one for the day! That tornado lasted only a minute or two, and the storm was right turning hard so we had to get ready to leave. We observed the rear flank downdraft winds plowing dirt into the sky and had to beat feet to get out of the way, running south down Rt. 137 towards Lenorah. We got plastered by flying dirt and strong cross winds as we blasted south, and a large spin up (probably a gustnado but can’t rule out a shearline tornado) formed just west of my van as we headed away.

The storm had quickly become a high-precipitation monster, making visibility into the notch area very difficult, and by now the chaser hordes had arrived, hundreds and hundreds of vehicles worth. This was by far the most difficult portion of the day, finding ways to safely navigate all of the traffic pulling in and out of every decent viewing position while trying to keep our four vehicles together.

By 4 PM, the storm was totally HP and any tornado that was in there was completely rain wrapped (in fact there were reports of a rain wrapped tornado crossing I-20 near Coahoma later), so we decided to drop to the next storm in line which was now becoming quite severe. We passed through Big Spring again and headed west on I-20 to intercept. At this point the storm had a tremendous radar return with a “scorpion tail” hook echo on radar indicating rapid rotation. As we charged towards the storm, we couldn’t see the updraft through the massive precipitation core that was racing towards the highway with baseball sized hail, so we got off the highway and headed south on Rt. 33 to get around the core and beat the storm to Garden City. We stopped for a minute to view the storm and had a neat vantage with our new storm our west, and our old storm chugging away to the northeast. We immediately saw another big dirt bob in the distance to our west but concluded that this was again RFD winds plowing around the south side of the storm. We continued south, now once again swamped in the convoy of chasers that had finally abandoned the northern storm.

We leapfrogged through the chaser-gaggle, heading east on rt. 158 at Garden City as the storm grew to peak intensity, with 3-4” hail and a massive hook echo still on radar. It was also getting HP quickly and ingesting an incredible amount of dirt from the dry fields in the area so it was getting difficult to see into the inflow notch. We finally got ourselves way out ahead of the storm and found a south pull off to set up and watch as the storm came right down the highway after us. The storm now had a big wall cloud and was rotating like crazy.

We stayed at that location for about 15 minutes as the storm closed in quickly, with RFD dirt plumes, gustnadoes, and all kinds of flying dirt in the air. Soon it was time to get out of the way, so we headed back to the end of the road when Roger started yelling to stop and sure enough, to our west there was a weak tornado occurring, wrapped up in rain. We waited very briefly as it closed on us and seemed to dissipate, then everyone in my van starting yelling and I turned to see a tornado forming less than 100 yards from the van! We hit the gas and got out of there as the tornado blasted through the field south of us then quickly dissipated.

Our next issue was that we were now getting into the Mosquite region of Texas, with lots of trees and big ridges on either side of the road so it was difficult to see. There were a variety of reports of a rain wrapped tornado, so we stayed well ahead of the storm. At one point we stopped for a few minutes and may have gotten a look at a small cone tornado off the distance but can’t confirm. After a brief stop south on 163 south of Sterling City, we headed down Rt. 87 southeast towards Water Valley. On the way we were able to see a short duration rope tornado coming from the storm, though I didn’t see it as I had to keep my eyes on the road (the downside of driving on chase days sometimes).

Northwest of Water Valley we stopped at a rest area, turned the vans around, and waited for the beast of a supercell to come right to us. The structure was incredible! The storm had little tornado potential by now but was packing huge hail. We watched for about 30 minutes as the storm came to us and passed just to the north. Meanwhile, right behind that storm was another tornado warned storm, so once our previous storm moved out of the way we headed back up Rt. 87 to take a look, but at this point it was getting dark and the storm seemed to be getting seeded by the water cooled air blowing out of our previous storm, so we decided to call it a day and head into San Angelo for dinner. We did have a little moment of excitement there as just as we finished eating dinner it became obvious that if we didn’t get clear in about 10 minutes, the storm we’d left was about to pummel the town (and us) with tennis ball hail! We scrambled to get in the vans and blasted northeast of town, just getting clipped by the edge of the core as we got away. The rest of the right up to Abilene was uneventful.

Fantastic chase day with 2 great storms, 3 brief tornadoes (and maybe glimpses of 2 more) and not that much driving: only 460 miles for a 7 day total of 3523 miles.

MAY 25TH NEW MEXICO: TERRIFIC SUPERCELL STORM STRUCTURE

July 15, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Looking right up the first storm updraft as it was developing near Eunice, NM. This cell soon weakened and we bailed on it.

Our storm of the day exploding near Carlsbad, NM. The third straight day we have chased a supercell near Carlsbad!

Storm was starting to mature, moving right at us to the east of Carlsbad.

Another shot of the storm with an oil pump and storage containers to the left. Decent inflow bands into this storm and spread out anvil above.

Storm fully mature with beautiful, spiraled updraft and great structure to the west of Hobbs, NM.

Another shot with the setting sun providing some nice backlighting for photos.

A short while later as the severe warned storm held on to the great structure and intense core.

Storm starting to move very close at sunset. Backwards C shape to the base, indicating there is likely a rear flank downdraft cutting in behind this storm.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 25, 2014 CHASE LOG: NEW MEXICO

Written by Rich Hamel: (www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

This has started to become the “New Mexico Tour”! We left Lubbock with two distinctly different targets for the day: South near Ft. Stockton where the outflow boundaries from the previous night’s convection intersected the dry line, or up near Roswell, NW where the models developed storms out of the mountains late in the day based on upslope flow and residual instability. With the two targets so far apart, we were going to have to commit to one or the other relatively early.

We headed south down to Midland, TX and stopped for lunch at the mall there. At the time, there was a single anchored tornado-warned supercell way down near Marathon, TX spinning away, but we decided it was too far to get to and ignored it. Still not sure if storms would fire in west Texas, we drifted west towards Monahans, by which time conditions were looking more and more favorable in the Carlsbad / Hobbs area yet again so we headed northwest through Kermit, TX and back into NM, stopping at the Allsups in Eunice to assess the situation, then heading west of town to wait for storms to develop. In the distance, we could see that the HRRR was correct about the Roswell target, with 3 cells exploding with rock-hard convection 90 miles north of us, two of which had big overshooting tops over the anvil clouds. We hung around in the gas fields (it’s amazing how much of southeastern NM and west TX are utterly dominated by the gas and oil industry, the whole region, for hundreds of square miles, smells like heavy oil from all the pumps and drilling) until a cell fired right over us. We headed north a bit to get out of the rain, and the storm seemed to be getting its act together with convection rolling over directly above us.

After a few more radar scans though, the storm was clearly not going to make it and we decided to blast north to try and get to the Roswell storms. We headed up Rt.18 through Hobbs and then up towards Lovington and watch as finally the storm that HRRR was predicting to develop over Carlsbad began to materialize, and soon the echo tops were heading for 40,000 feet. We were in easy intercept position so we aborted going after the Roswell storms and headed west out of Lovington, then south on 283 through the gas and cattle fields to get out in front of the storm, which was now right turning directly at us. As we got just east of the storm, it opened up a big hail core and split, with the left cell slowly dying off and the right mover intensifying rapidly with clear evidence of rotation on radar. After a couple of stops to observe the developing storm, we dropped south to Rt. 180 and drove right up to the base of the southernmost cell (after it had split again) between Carlsbad and Hobbs, and were treated to a beautiful structure-fest near sunset as the storm had a classic supercell look, with a corkscrew rain-free updraft, big precipitation core off the northeast, and numerous inflow bands flowing into the storm. The storm was a bit high-based, but at mid-levels it was spinning like crazy. The colors at sunset were spectacular, with the orange of the sunset behind the storm and the ice-blue base of the updraft, with white barber pole looking convection twisting up to the anvil.

After about 30 minutes of watching the beautiful storm, we headed east alongside it to try and get out in front more a more distant look of the structure, but darkness was falling and we eventually decided to go for lightning instead. This was one thing the storm lacked: it was not very electrified. We made a couple of lightning stops along Rt. 180, but the storm was weakening and we soon decided to call it a night. Luckily, our hotel for the evening was in Hobbs, so we were only about 10 minutes away!!

Another fun chase day. 399 miles for a 6 day total of 3062.

MAY 24TH NEW MEXICO: SUNSET SUPERCELL & POWER FLASHES

July 10, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Supercell when we first got on it northwest of Carlsbad, NM. Notice all of the inflow stingers into the storm! Only one out there.

Wall cloud forming on the storm at 8:54pm MT.

Fully mature wall cloud, likely gusting out on the left but holding together on the right with a bowl shaped lowering.

Look closely: Very low bowl lowering on the right-center of the wall cloud. Close to this point, we observed power flashes from the right side of the wall cloud/mesocylcone. May have been a tornado, but not confirmed.

Another shot of the storm and more of the very good structure.

View of the wall cloud, lowering, and storm structure at 9:04pm...right near sunset. Still a big cone shaped lowering in the center.

Awesome mothership after sunset! The storm really was starting to gust out here and losing the wall cloud, but taking on amazing structure with strong outflow winds.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 24, 2014 CHASE LOG: SOUTHEAST NEW MEXICO

Written by Rich Hamel: (http://www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

A long, slow motion kind of day that looked like it was going to be a bust but ended with a bang! We left Lubbock in heavy rain around noon after doing a Weather 101 class, with Ft. Stockton as our target to play storms as they came north and hit the outflow boundary that had been surging southward from the overnight convection. The first issue we could see was that the boundary had already surged past I-20, though it was forecast to retrograde as the day progressed.

Elevated storms were already underway as we got to Odessa and we passed just to the north of a big left-moving hail storm as we headed west. We were posed with a number of different options: Head northwest to Carlsbad, NM into the area with the best overall conditions and where HRRR was predicting large isolated supercells just before dusk, or head to Ft. Stockton to intercept the tail end of the elevated storms that had gone severe, or target an area more to the southwest. We deferred the decision and headed to Monahans and waited….. then we repositioned to Pecos and waited…. and watched as one of the storms to the east went tornado warned and looked nasty on radar, with a big hook echo wrapping into the outflow boundary.

So, we waited some more since we had no chance of getting to the eastern storms and nothing much was happening in the west, though HRRR still had two big tail end supercells at the end of what later was forecast as a big linear complex. With nothing doing east, we decided to head to Carlsbad, NM again so we’d be in position if the model did verify, and if not, it was progress back towards the hotel.

As we crossed into New Mexico again, things were just starting to percolate, so we stopped in Carlsbad and….. waited again. Finally KABOOM!! A whole series of storms fired along the mountains, and, just as HRRR predicted, there were two big supercells at the tail end just to our west. With darkness falling we first headed south towards the tail end storm, but once we got a glimpse of the cell just to our west we decided we had to target that one and u-turned and headed north out of Carlsbad. As we headed up Rt. 285 we could see the huge base of the storm to our west with scud rapidly rising into the base, a developing wall cloud and numerous inflow “stingers” feeding into the storm. After hundreds of miles of maneuvering through west Texas and southeast New Mexico, we ended up on the exact same road we’d watched the storm of the day on the day before! What are the odds of that? This time though, the storm was a monster classic supercell that meant business and was coming directly at us. As dusk set in, the storm developed a big low hanging wall cloud and then we observed several power flashes right in the front region of the wall cloud, though it was impossible in the failing light to see if it was a tornado that was causing the damage.

We continued to watch the storm as it closed on our location and developed a big beaver tail inflow band, took on awesome spaceship like structure, and was throwing lightning bolts everywhere, but it was now also clearly becoming a high-precipitation storm with baseball sized hail reported. As the storm was almost on top of us, it was time to move and intercept the southern storm before it crossed the road. We headed back south towards Carlsbad and then Loving, while the storm became a behemoth to our west with a perfect eagle-claw radar return, a 75 dbz core (amongst the strongest cores I’ve seen on radar, VIL’s maxed out, 3-4” diameter hail, and on radar 3 maxed out velocity markers)! Clearly not a storm we had any interest of getting run over by! We continued southeast out of Loving and stopped to get a view, but sadly it was now completely dark and we were too close to the front flank core to get a good look at the structure. We watched lightning flying around the anvil for a few minutes, and then it was time to get out ahead of the cores and start the 4 hour trip to Lubbock.

A great finale to the day! Mileage for the day was 525 for a tour total of 2663.

MAY 23RD NEW MEXICO: AWESOME SUPERCELL & TIME LAPSE

July 07, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Hanging out with my alien buddy in Roswell, New Mexico the afternoon of the chase while awaiting initiation.

First getting on the storm near Hope, NM. Had a lowering and nice structure from the start.

Storm looking even better as it approaches us. Nice inflow tail and twisting shape of the updraft.

Another shot, looking vertical up the twisting updraft with mammatus underneath the anvil.

Bailed on an insanely rocky and windy gravel road to escape the hail core with this storm. Looks like it may be producing a microburst at this point.

Another shot with the sun beams shining through the clouds.

Awesome structured storm with beautiful backlighting south of Carlsbad, NM.

Incredible mothership! Wish we could have gotten this shot over Roswell. What a storm!

Sun getting low in the sky and shining through the clouds and rain to the right of the twisting storm updraft.

Really good color on the storm as the sun was setting. Plenty of rising motion into the base at this point.

Final shot of the day as the storm was nearing and about to collide with a severe left moving storm flying up from the south.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 23, 2014 CHASE LOG: SOUTHEAST NEW MEXICO

Written by Rich Hamel: (http://www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

We started the morning in Amarillo under torrential rain from the storms that had been continuing overnight. The flash flooding on the frontage roads of I-40 was amazing! Once we navigated our way through that, we headed southwest through Clovis, NM to Roswell, where we stopped for lunch and shopping at the tacky UFO shops. Our target was the area east of the Capitan Mountains where an outflow boundary from the previous day’s storms intersected the oncoming warm front. There were already storms forming in the mountains, but we had to wait for them to develop and come off the hills.

After lunch, we decided to reposition to Artesia to the south. Things were still progressing slowly, but we had our eyes on two cells well off to the southwest over the Guadalupe Mountains. With plenty of time to kill, we headed west towards Hope, NM and stopped at a rest area as the storms pulsed up and down. After about 45 minutes, the cells we were observing, which had looked like they were dying about 30 minutes earlier, suddenly took off and the chase was on! We headed south on County Road 12 and soon were in the middle of nowhere on the New Mexican plains northwest of Carlsbad. We found a good vantage and watched the development of the supercell to our west for a good 45 minutes.

By this time there were additional cells blowing up around us, including a left moving supercell to the south across the Texas border that was tornado warned and heading towards us. While it looked like that cell was being interfered with by other cells, we wanted to get into a position to intercept it if we chose, and to do that we had to get south and east quickly in order to avoid the core of the storm we’d been watching as it was just about to cross the road. Unfortunately, it turned out our road option quickly became unpaved! It was called Rock Daisy Road, and while I didn’t see any daisies, it was basically made of rocks, and we were now 18 miles from pavement with big hail following right behind us! We were mostly able to stay out of the hail, but the road was horrible and I was worried about blowing a tire, not to mention that the dirt being kicked up by the other vehicles reduced visibility to near zero!

We eventually got well clear of the storm and parked the vans at an oil collection tank (this is really oil and gas country, with wells everywhere and the whole area for miles reeks of oil and signs that say “If you smell H2S, leave the area immediately!”, as if I knew what H2S smells like! We watched the storms from this vantage for a while but soon we had quarter sized hail dropping around us and it was time to get back in the vans and out to the pavement. We headed south on 285 towards Carlsbad then southwest on Rt. 137, stopping to watch the second storm behind the one we originally chased as it came towards us and intensified. Meanwhile, the tornado warned storm from the south was also clearly visible, having plowed through a bunch of smaller cells and survived. The structure of the storm to our west was fantastic! It had that spinning soda can look, and as the Sun set, was backlit nicely.

We watched that storm for another 30 minutes before the storms to the south began to interfere with it and it started to deteriorate, and with 3 hours to the hotel in Lubbock, it was time to go. As we stopped in Artesia to grab dinner before the long ride, we did get a nice mammatus display from the cluster of cells that the formerly tornado warned cells had become. We then drove to Lubbock with a nice lightning show going on around us, finally getting to the hotel around midnight.

Another good chase day! 518 miles for a tour total of 2138.

MAY 22ND TEXAS PANHANDLE: GUSTNADO, POSSIBLE LANDSPOUT

July 04, 2014 by Brad in 2014

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 22, 2014 CHASE LOG: TEXAS PANHANDLE

Written by Rich Hamel: (http://www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

Mostly a re-positioning day with a little chasing mixed in, and maybe even a nice surprise at the end. We left Denver with the idea of chasing the north side of the Raton Mesa, but by the time we were down there the small mountain storms to the west had already messed up the atmosphere, so we continued south towards our stop for the night in Amarillo, TX. We stopped in Dalhart, TX briefly to assess the line of storms to our west, but they all looked like junk, so we continued south. As we got into Hartley and approached the line of storms, we diverted east on Rt. 87 towards Dumas to take a look at the flying dirt kicked up by the gust front ahead of the line. After a few minutes, the line caught us and produced a large, persistent gustnado off to our west. Taking a look later at contrast enhanced pictures, I think this may have actually been a landspout tornado. It was under an area marked as rotating (and with a TVS) on radar, has a tall columnar look at least half way to cloud base, was long lasting and did not get shoved out by the front flank downdraft like a gustnado would have been, and occurred right at the point of a cell merger in progress. The only thing missing was a definitive funnel at cloud base. Hmmmm….

After that we headed back to Hartley and south to check out a new cell coming north, but it was nothing more than a rainmaker and we continued on, going through cell after cell as we got into Amarillo, where there was significant flash flooding.

All in all, not a successful chase day… or was it?? Either way, it was 444 miles for the day, putting us at 1619 for the tour.

MAY 21ST COLORADO: TORNADO NEAR DIA AND SUPERCELL TIME LAPSE

July 02, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Supercell over Denver that was dropping very large hail at the time over the city.

Closer view of the storm mesocyclone as it rolled off the foothills and right over Denver.

Another shot as the storm was moving closer.

Intense hail core in this storm as it moved over the eastern suburbs of Denver. Caused a lot of damage with a noticeable hail swath even the next day.

Moving up towards our position a few miles south of Denver International Airport.

View of the entire storm, wall cloud, and the beginning of the tornado south of DIA.

Zoomed in view of the initial touchdown of the tornado south of DIA.

Appears the tornado grew larger upon becoming rain-wrapped but cannot be completely sure it was an intense core or tornado.

Silver Lining Tours enjoying the beauty of the storm.

Terrific mothership with possible rain-wrapped tornado in the core north of Watkins and near Front Range Airport.

Short while later with bowl lowering on the right side of the core.

Wanted to post this storm core photo because this is NOT a tornado. Was reported as one and totally false. Intense rain/hail core.

Another wall cloud forming on the storm north of Strasburg, CO.

A zoomed out view of the wall cloud and storm north of Strasburg, CO as the day was coming to an end.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 21, 2014 CHASE LOG: COLORADO

Written by Rich Hamel: (http://www.bostonstormchaser.com/)

Another great chase day, and for the most part we were within 40 miles of our hotel the whole time. After sleeping in at our hotel near Denver airport, we met late and headed out for lunch as storms were already bubbling up in the foothills of the Rockies. By the time we got the group back together, one of those storms was already severe just south of Denver, so we headed towards Bennett to get set up, initially targeting a cell off to the south. We quickly elected to change targets to the storm near Denver, hopping back on I-70 towards Denver. We soon were driving directly towards a big, low hanging wall cloud and the chase was on by 2 PM local time, only a few miles from our hotel! We got off the highway just south southeast of Denver International Airport and made our first stop as the storm was already showing significant rotation and had that greenish glow of a storm with large hail. We began stair stepping on the roads to the east of the airport and soon the storm was tornado warned and had now developed a long tail cloud out of the wall cloud area. We repositioned one more time and when we stopped and set up the storm was now showing violent rotation and quickly produced a brief elephant trunk tornado! The tornado quickly changed to a multi-vortex tornado then got swallowed by the massive precipitation core. From that point we were never able to clearly see it again, but now there were several reports of a tornado along Tower Road (where our hotel was!) so we knew it was in there. The precipitation core kept getting larger and larger as we continued stair stepping northeast in front of the big high-precipitation storm. We let the core get right up to us a couple of times then pulled away to get a better view of the structure, all the while weaving in and out of the hundreds of storm chasers who were on the storm. When we got to Rt. 36 east of Byers, we were in a full blown traffic jam, mostly precipitated by the Doppler on Wheels crews crawling along the road. At this point the storm had cycled down, but by about 5 PM it was cycling back up and was again tornado warned so we headed north on county roads northwest of Last Chance to get in front of the updraft again. This unfortunately proved impossible as multiple cells were opening up all around us, turning the roads to mud and making any chance of seeing anything impossible. We aborted our chase and had a wild, muddy ride east trying to get back to the pavement, finally succeeding north of Last Chance. As we got back on Rt. 36 heading back to Byers, the fields off to our north were covered with hail. After stopping at a restaurant for dinner we returned to the hotel, curious to see if there was any damage. It turns out they had gotten EIGHT INCHES of hail! It was 6 hours after the storm, and hail was still piled everywhere. The trees were absolutely shredded and there were numerous cars pock-marked by the dime and quarter sized hail. There were rabbits everywhere loving the “instant salad” created by the hail shredding the trees, and the neon sign at the diner we stopped at for breakfast was shattered. All in all, another fun chase day, and we didn’t have to drive 962 miles to do it! The miles do rack up though, and by the time we’d finished we’d done another 213 miles, for a total of 1175 for the first two days of the trip.