JUNE 14TH MINNESOTA: NUMEROUS FUNNEL CLOUDS & 2 TORNADOES

June 30, 2016 by Brad in 2016

Longer version featuring highlights from the entire chase:

Wall cloud lowering on the first storm near Arco, Minnesota. This cell did not look like much on radar but was spinning like mad and had solid inflow!

First funnel cloud of the day on the storm near Arco, Minnesota. This storm produced several more funnels.

Another funnel that was rapidly rotating and condensing near Porter, Minnesota. This funnel was 3/4 of the way to the ground but we cannot confirm there was any touchdown in the field right in front of us. I believe we were on Highway 7 to the south of Porter at this time.

Another view as the storm moved just to our north and the wall cloud was really tightening up with a continuous funnel cloud. The wall cloud occluded soon after this as the funnel dissipated.

Took a little while but we eventually got on the next storm after the first one died. This wall cloud was forming with apparent inflow scud fingers near Big Stone Lake on the Minnesota/South Dakota border.

Another wall cloud quickly forming on the storm southeast of Beardsley, Minnesota.

Another funnel cloud quickly formed and dissipated on the storm. Very high sheared air feeding these storms at this point but not a lot of instability.

The most pronounced and lowest funnel cloud of the day that did not produce a tornado. Never could see if this touched down but it had to be close.

Hard spinning storm updraft and developing funnel cloud southeast of Beardsley and southwest of Barry, Minnesota. Strong inflow occurring at this point.

Funnel cloud forming out of the hard spinning and tightening wall cloud shortly after the previous photo. A textbook scenario of fast inflow to the right wrapping into the notch and rear flank downdraft winds cutting around the backside of wall cloud/updraft to eventually produce a beautiful tornado.

Rope funnel cloud starting to condense to the ground as the storm was moving north of our location.

Video still of tornado and white debris cloud.

Another video still showing stretching vorticity in action! Long, white rope tornado.

Another video still of the long tube.

MESOSCALE DISCUSSION:

TORNADO WATCH:

STORM REPORTS:

SPC Outlooks

MAY 8TH OKLAHOMA: TORNADO WARNED SUPERCELL & ROTATING WALL CLOUDS

May 29, 2016 by Brad in 2016

Developing storm in the foreground with beautiful crepuscular rays coming through the clouds.

First developing storm north of Woodward, Oklahoma.

Wall cloud/lowering on the storm as it was starting to get its act together near Freedom, Oklahoma.

Rotating wall cloud underneath the updraft of the storm west of Alva, Oklahoma.

Another view of the condensing, rotating wall cloud.

Strong updraft as the storm reaches its strongest point.

New wall cloud forming after the old one weakened and occluded.

iPhone shot of the wall cloud west of Alva, Oklahoma.

Doppler on Wheels (DOW) heading down the road to re position as the wall cloud we were watching weakened and dissipated.

Strongest rotation of the day on this wall cloud that was tightening up near Alva, Oklahoma. This likely would have produced a tornado at this point if the dewpoints were higher than the lower to middle 60s.

Condensing lowering on the wall cloud, possibly funnel. Very tilted updraft from left to right on this storm.

My position (blue crosshairs) relative to the hook echo north of Alva, Oklahoma.

MESOSCALE DISCUSSIONS:

TORNADO WATCH:

STORM REPORTS:

SPC OUTLOOKS:

MAY 7TH COLORADO: SUPERCELL & FUNNEL

May 29, 2016 by Brad in 2016

Supercell storm intensifying and still south of the warm front near Abarr, Colorado.

Wall cloud developing on the storm. Notice clear slot behind the wall cloud where the rear flank downdraft cut was occurring.

Another shot of the storm as it was getting closer. Sharp, flat base to the supercell at this point. Dissipating wall cloud on the far right.

Silver Lining Tour guests and crew enjoying the show underneath the mammatus clouds.

Large storm base really taking on a C shape as the RFD cut became larger.

The storm near Vernon, Colorado as we began departing for Oklahoma City. This storm went on to produce several tornadoes that we missed due to having to be back in Oklahoma City that night.

MESOSCALE DISCUSSION:

TORNADO WATCH:

STORM REPORTS:

SPC OUTLOOKS:

May 6TH WYOMING: SUPERCELL TIME LAPSE

May 28, 2016 by Brad in 2016

Supercell storm rolling off the Laramie Range near Chugwater, Wyoming. You can see the feeder bands from all directions into this storm. Pulling in all the moisture that it can, considering dewpoints were only in the middle 40s.

Nicely structured mothership supercell over the foothills of the Laramie Range in Wyoming. You can see how this storm is rotating with the clouds twisting into the updraft.

Another shot of the supercell as it was starting to move out over the flatter Plains near and east of Chugwater. Storm starting to weaken some at this point.

Storm weakening but holding onto some good structure with well defined high-based inflow bands and storm base.

View of the storm as another core was starting to open up right in front of us. Was popping some cg lightning with this new core but could not capture any of the lightning in a photo.

STORM REPORTS:

SPC OUTLOOKS:

April 26TH KANSAS: SUPERCELL & ROTATING, TIGHT WALL CLOUD

May 27, 2016 by Brad in 2016

Initial wall cloud on the first tornado warned storm near Caldwell, Kansas.

Funnel on the first tornado warned storm just to the north of Caldwell, Kansas near the Oklahoma border. This funnel persisted for a few minutes before dissipating.

Rotating wall cloud tightening up into a funnel near Mayfield, Kansas. Nearly produced a tornado at this point!

Zoomed out view of the tightened up rotating wall cloud and funnel near Mayfield, Kansas. This area of focused rotation dissipated after the occlusion.

This scared dog jumped in the through the passenger door and into the driver's seat when we weren't looking, ha ha!! Poor guy...felt bad kicking him out in the rain but couldn't take him with.

Severe thunderstorm over the wheat fields of southern Kansas. Storm starting to become outflow dominant and form a shelf cloud at this point.

Shelf cloud and storm about to overtake us and a train near Wellington, Kansas.

Looking at the underside of the shelf cloud, whale's mouth, as it passed over near Wellington, Kansas. Visually striking blue/green/aqua colors under this shelf.

Wes Hyduke's panorama of the underside of the shelf cloud at the end of the day near Wellington, Kansas.

MESOSCALE DISCUSSIONS:

TORNADO WATCHES:

STORM REPORTS:

SPC OUTLOOKS:

MARCH 23RD MISSOURI & IOWA: SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS

April 04, 2016 by Brad in 2016

Inflow tail into the storm near Westboro, MO.

Caught a lightning strike in the intensifying storms near Westboro, MO.

Storm from above, now severe warned, dumping a hail core.

Ragged lowering at the base of the storm at the Hwy C and 59 intersection.

Rain/hail cores on severe warned storms east of Westboro, MO.

Storms becoming more organized and showing several feeder bands near Blanchard, IA.

Another shot of the severe warned storms just south of Blanchard, IA.

The southern storm in the line coming up at me with high base forming on the southeast side.

Mesoscale discussion issued during the early afternoon. Hilarious they put a 'wedge-shaped area' in the discussion!

Tornado watch issued at 3 PM for the area.

SPC OUTLOOKS:

STORM REPORTS:

MARCH 23, 2016 CHASE LOG: MISSOURI & IOWA

I decided to chase this day, mainly to kick off the rust from my last chase on July 12, 2015 and to see some decent thunderstorms after the long winter season. The set-up included a strong upper level trough going positive to negative tilt by later in the day, a 100 kt 500mb jet streak from Kansas into Iowa, and effective shear of 40-50 kts. At the surface, a surface low moved from near north-central Kansas to southeast Nebraska with a trailing dryline to the south and a near stationary warm front through the southern tier of counties in Iowa. The plan was to target storms that were expected to develop near and just south of the triple point by 21Z (4pm). The main concerns for the day were the dewpoints only projected to get into the 52-55F range and be relatively confined to a shallow layer with dry air aloft, and the other concern having to drive back through a blizzard on the northern end of this system in northern Iowa and southern Minnesota.

I left that morning and headed south on I-35 to I-80 west, then south on Hwy 148 to Corning and eventually making my way down Hwy 71 to Clarinda. I stopped here to take a look at the data and grab a bite to eat. Realizing that storms were likely to first fire in southeast Nebraska and build to the southeast, I headed further west to Shenandoah to wait for initiation, as the town was right on the boundary and wobbling between temperatures from near 60F to lower 70s. A tornado watch was issued at 3pm for the area, valid until 10pm that evening. I was honestly a bit surprised with the tornado watch being issues as I had thought a severe thunderstorm watch would be issued instead due the moisture quality issues into the area.

Storms first fired to the west right on the north and east side of the low. I waited for additional storms to begin forming to my south and, sure enough, cumulus towers started building about 30 minutes after the initial storms to my west. I traveled south on Hwy 59 and intercepted storms near the intersection of this road and Hwy C, just across the border near Westboro, Missouri. The storm updrafts were fairly chunky/fluffy going up and did not have that classic, hard look to them, but each storm developed a flat, smooth base and opened up some intense rain and hail cores. I intercepted 4 separate storms in this area over the next few hours, 3 of which became severe thunderstorm warned for mainly large hail but also damaging winds. Some of the storms did form some ragged lowerings and had some inflow feeder tails into them with some decent structure but, overall, I did not witness any areas of organized rotation and none ever came close to having any tornado potential. One particular storm that I followed from east of Westboro north towards Blanchard, Iowa had the best structure of the day with a couple inflow tails and intense cores. These storms congealed and moved north of the front, so I traveled east to stay out ahead of other storms coming up from the south. I intercepted one of these storms in Hopkins, Missouri where small hail was coming down so heavy that it was running down the streets in rivers with intense rainfall as well. Thereafter, I tried to get back out ahead of the storms, traveling east to I-35 and north through Des Moines and home, but managed to stay in the intense rainfall much of the way. Near Dows, Iowa the heavy rain began transitioning to thundersleet and freezing rain where numerous vehicles were in the ditch, including big rigs. After 10 miles of treacherous/slow driving, precipitation transitioned to very heavy snow and near white-out conditions. I slowly made my way north to Mason City and the roads did get a little better to the north of town as the plows had been out. I ended up eventually making it back to my parents place in southern Minnesota after hours of white knuckle driving. What a crazy day going from severe thunderstorms to a blizzard, and lower 70s air to upper 20s air!

JULY 12TH MINNESOTA: FUNNELS & 2 BRIEF TORNADOES

July 18, 2015 by Brad in 2015

A turbulent sky as elevated storms form north of the warm front over corn fields near Wendell, Minnesota.

A shelf cloud forming on the storm near Foxhome, Minnesota. Severe warned for mainly hail at this point.

The first tornado touching down in the distance east of Doran, Minnesota as we watched on highway 19.

Cropped shot of the photo from above, showing the tornado. Other chasers confirmed this indeed touched down.

Tornado lifted and formed a bowl shaped funnel in the middle of the wall cloud.

A few minutes later, this rope funnel appeared closer to our location on the lead storm. This was a a few miles north-northeast of Campbell. Thanks Tony for noticing this! We were transfixed on the previous funnel as it was still present at this time to the right.

Elongated funnel cloud north of Campbell, Minnesota.

Beautiful funnel cloud on the storm a short while later!

Funnel wrapped up into a rope as the rear-flank-downdraft outflow started to undercut.

Around the time that this touched down as a tornado. You can see this ground truth in the video.

Good structure on the high precipitation storm.

Intense storm near Barrett, Minnesota.

MESOSCALE DISCUSSION:

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

JULY 12th, 2015 CHASE LOG: MINNESOTA

It’s not too often that a chase day turns out almost exactly like you thought it would…but this was one of those days! Our group consisting of myself, Wes Hyduke, and Tony Perkins left Burnsville, MN around 12:45pm, heading northwest on I-94 towards west-central Minnesota. My initial target for the day was Tenney.

Storm Setup: A surface low set up just west of the North Dakota/South Dakota/Minnesota border area by the early afternoon with a warm front draped to the east through central Minnesota, and a trough to the south of the low through eastern South Dakota. A mid-level trough was approaching the area from the west, while an extremely unstable environment was in place with dewpoints in the lower to middle 70s and 4,000-4,500 j/kg of MLCAPE. Bulk shear was on the order of 35-45 kts with lower bulk shear north and higher south. Ongoing, elevated convection reinforced the warm front ahead of the surface low into west-central Minnesota.

We traveled to Alexandria for gas and then northwest to Elbow Lake and parked at the intersection of Hwy 59 and Hwy 55 northwest of town. This was an excellent spot to go any direction with good roads. A mesoscale discussion (MD) was issued by the SPC from our location and areas north at 2:54 pm, while a more strongly worded MD was issued at 3:53pm from our location south through all of southwest MN and eastern SD. This new MD highlighted a supercell and tornado risk in this area. A Tornado Watch was issued a short while later.

Storms near Fergus Falls to our north quickly became tornado warned and we drifted towards them, all the while keeping in mind that new storms would likely form to the south of this initial cell. We caught up with a new southwest updraft near Foxhome. The storms to our northeast were tornado-warned but our storm was still developing and was severe-warned at the time. I wasn’t about to go running to the storms northeast of our area that appeared to be north of the warm front and in a more stable airmass, so we stayed put on our storm as new towers developed to the southwest. The storm we were on started to spew cold air and became very outflow dominant with a shelf cloud. We bailed this storm quickly and headed south towards another storm that was really starting to get its act together. Upon core punching a lead cell, we ended up south on Hwy 19 east of Doran. We still hadn’t got out of the rain before noticing a well-defined lowering in the distance that was starting to take on a bowl shape. Stopping to watch, a cone funnel appeared and condensed over halfway to the ground. We later heard that this did indeed touch down, to our watch at 5:05pm. As this funnel was starting to dissipate, Tony noticed a beautiful rope funnel just to our southwest on our lead cell! This was the highlight of the chase as the rope twisted and turned for several minutes, changing shapes and growing/shrinking throughout. As you can see in the video, this rope did touch down as it became undercut by the storm outflow as we watched northeast of Campbell. This was at 5:15pm.

The chase continued through Nashua, Wendell, and Elbow Lake to the east and then down towards Barrett and Hoffman. Upon the way, we saw some okay structure, well defined inflow bands, and some ragged lowerings that did not appear to be doing much. This was more of a monster hailer and wind-maker more than anything at this point. Upon chasing this storm east of Hoffman, we decided to call it a day as the storms were congealing into a line. Driving south on I-94, we stopped for dinner, barely making it out of Sauk Centre before getting cored by the severe line.

JUNE 24TH IOWA: TORNADO WARNED HIGH-PRECIPITATION SUPERCELLS

July 18, 2015 by Brad in 2015

Tornado warned supercell north of the warm front. A heavy bank of low clouds and fog underneath the updraft bases of these storms. An eerie scene driving into this to say the least, especially with it being tornado warned and all of the lightning/thunder this storm was producing.

This was the closest the storm came to producing a tornado from our vantage point. This was a large, rotating mesocyclone with a developing wall cloud. You can sense the scud being pulled around the backside of the meso and around to the left and then wrapping up into that white lowered area in the foreground. It was spinning hard!

View of the base south of Panora as we were trying to get out ahead with the storm dive-bombing southeast.

White wall cloud to the north of Stuart on the tornado warned storm. There was not much rotation here with this feature.

Further west on the tail end storm near Anita. Notice the dark lowering in the distance. This was the hook echo on radar and showed signs of lowered bowl before being undercut by outflow.

Panoramic shot from my iPhone of the entire storm near Anita, IA. Inflow tail to the right, lowering in the distance to the left. Large base in the middle.

A ragged lowering on the storm near Fontanelle.

Lightning!

Supercell slowing down on the tail end near Fontanelle. Has okay structure here and still rather intense. Popping lightning quite a bit.

Intense core on the storm at sunset and popping cg lightning like crazy.

Very intense core on this storm...so we decided to drive through it! Ended up with nickel size hail as the storm appeared to weaken when we core-punched.

MESOSCALE DISCUSSIONS:

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

JUNE 24th, 2015 CHASE LOG: IOWA

I had been keeping an eye on this day for a while and knew there was going to be some tornado potential with the kind of set-up the models were showing days in advance. Myself, MaryLynn, and Allison Stupica left the Twin Cities early in the morning and took the kids down to my parents, then departed for Des Moines, Iowa.

Storm Setup: Convection (some severe) lingered along a stalled warm front through central Iowa much of the day. This pushed an outflow boundary into southwest Iowa where it was interacting with a stationary front right near the Iowa/Nebraska/Missouri border area. Dewpoints along this boundary were very high and in 70-74F range, while temperatures heated up into the upper 80s and low 90s, providing considerable buoyancy for storms if they could develop. Aloft, there was a speed max coming through Iowa late in the day with 40-45 kts of bulk shear, but some of this higher shear displaced just to the north.

The atmosphere sure took its time to destabilize and I believe the speed max moved in late. We waited around into the afternoon at a restaurant in southwest Des Moines and eventually moved west towards an area that had been highlighted for a conditional supercell and tornado risk in southwest Iowa per a mesoscale discussion issued at 2:23pm. As we were traveling west on Hwy 92 towards Greenfield and Fontanelle, we could see towers exploding to the north. These quickly became severe as storms formed on an outflow enforced warm front and not on the ouflow boundary draped to the southwest. We advanced north through Adair where we crossed I-80 and then further north to intercept a severe warned storm west of Guthrie Center. It was very ominous driving up to the storm base where clouds appeared to be on the ground, and there was almost what looked like a fog bank set up south of the storm with such a warm and humid airmass being ingested into it. A Tornado Watch was soon issued at 6:20pm as our storm became tornado warned and also the one to the east. We followed the rapidly developing supercell that was already taking on high precipitation characteristics to the east on Hwy 44 towards Panora. To the west of town, we stopped to watch and this is where it had a large, rotating mesocyclone and appeared ready to drop a tornado. The storm was still tornado warned and the meso was spinning hard with rapid condensation taking place for a few minutes. We traveled through Panora and south on P28 to escape the forward flank core and as the storm started to surge southeast. We stopped once we got back to I-80 as the eastern storm now became tornado warned. The tornado warned storm we were on was now dive-bombing southeast with a large, rotating mesocyclone and a lot of motion over the town of Stuart. Folks in Stuart were a little freaked out by this and there were a lot of people out of their homes and some erratic driving by the locals as we traveled through town.

A new, tail-end supercell had been developing as we chased our storm to near Stuart, and we decided to blast west towards this storm that already had a hook echo and was severe-warned. We had to blast through the RFD hook on our storm going west on I-80 to get to this cell and, as we did so, there was a lot of motion in the clouds, high winds, some hail and even some debris being lofted into the air. It was difficult to figure out what was going on, but it appeared to be swirling RFD winds coming around the hook and possibly a few weak gustnadoes that we drove through. We arrived on the next storm south of Anita on Hwy 148 and watched a lowering come at us to the northwest, but wash out as the outflow winds choked it off. Staying ahead of this storm toward Berea and Fontanelle, the storm slowed down and took on some decent structure with occasional cloud-to-ground lightning that led to some photogenic opportunities. We ended the chase here as the storm was high-precipitation and it was getting dark.

JUNE 20TH IOWA: HIGH-PRECIPITATION SUPERCELL & INCREDIBLE MAMMATUS

July 18, 2015 by Brad in 2015

This was the closest that the storm came to producing a tornado. Low wall cloud wrapping up on the east side of the storm updraft base. This was just east of Eddyville, IA on G77 at the high school.

Awesome mammatus display east of Garwin, IA, looking south off Hwy 229.

The mammatus got even better a short while later near Traer, IA.Incredible mammatus field over Iowa farmland at sunset near Buckingham, Iowa!

Panoramic cell phone shot of the entire mammatus field laid out in front of us.

MESOSCALE DISCUSSION:

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

JUNE 20th, 2015 CHASE LOG: IOWA

This was one of those chases that had a lot of potential, but didn’t quite live up to the hype. For a few days in advance, myself and others were chatting that this could be a solid tornado day. We stayed at MaryLynn’s parent’s house the night before and then left early Saturday morning to Deer Creek Speedway where my parents were going to watch Gage. Wes and Debby Hyduke met us at Deer Creek close to 10am and we quickly departed for west-central Iowa down Hwy 63 towards Waterloo.

Storm Setup: Morning convection cleared the area very fast, allowing for destabilization to occur with 3,000-4,000 j/kg of MLCAPE. A surface low developed near Des Moines, while a stationary front was positioned to the northeast and a cold front moved across south-central Iowa. Even though some of the low level shear was veered and led to lower 0-1km storm relative helicities, the 0-3km SRH values were near 250 m2/s2. This was still quite supportive for rotating supercells and tornadoes.

A mesoscale discussion was issued at 3:10pm, while a Tornado Watch followed at 3:50pm for southeast Iowa, northern Missouri, and western Illinois. We progressed south on Hwy 63 to the southern side of Waterloo to fill up for gas and grab food, then repositioned further south towards Tama. The thinking was that we were right at the crossroads of a good road network and directly ahead of the surface low/triple point and south of the stationary front. Storm initiation occurred shortly before 4pm directly to our west-northwest. We waited for this storm to approach us as it was still in the developing stages, but did head about 5 miles to the west to check things out as it got closer. The base of the storm was not very well defined and appeared rather ragged, but was low to the ground. The storm was starting to produce a lot of lightning as it moved near and appeared to be strengthening. At the same time, another storm had formed to the south and looked to be right on the triple point or just to the southeast. This was the storm we wanted to be on as it quickly became severe warned shortly after initiation.

We traveled down to I-80 and west to exit 179, south on Hwy T38, and west on Hwy 102 to Pella where we intercepted the storm. From here, we followed the severe storm that was producing big hail southeast on Hwy 163, barely escaping the hail core on the east side of Pella. We got back on Hwy 63 and were able to get out ahead enough to stop a few times as we approached Eddyville. Through the duration, the storm had some interesting lowerings and attempted a few times to produce wall clouds with decent inflow banding going on. We exited at Eddyville and got just east of town on Hwy G77. This is when the storm started to tighten up the wall cloud and the closest that it came to producing a tornado. There were indications here that it produced a funnel cloud and this was reported by other chasers, but too hard to discern from our location. After this intense moment, we had to drive through the forward flank core to get to our south option and back towards Hwy 63. This is where we encountered some very intense rain and some smaller hail with roughly 40 mph winds. Wes had a good time driving out of that! Thereafter, the storm started to gust out upon reaching Ottumwa, taking on linear characteristics, and had a nice shelf cloud before we decided to call off the chase.

On the way back home, we encountered some of the most amazing mammatus that I’ve ever seen and were able to stop a few times to take photos. The colors and visibility of the mammatus field were incredible at sunset and definitely the highlight of the whole chase!

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: