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.

MAY 20TH COLORADO: WALL CLOUDS, LIBERTY BELL SUPERCELL, AND INCREDIBLE LIGHTNING DISPLAYED MOTHERSHIP SUPERCELL AT DARK

June 21, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Wall cloud forming on the storm north of Byers, CO.

Wall cloud tightening up as it approaches. Rain curtains being wrapped around the south side.

Supercell with bolt of lightning over wind farm northeast of Strasburg, CO.

Another shot of the supercell as it takes on a terrific mothership appearance.

Storm over windmill to the north of Limon, CO.

Beautiful mothership over the open landscape of eastern Colorado. Great area to chase!

Great lighting for a photo opportunity near Flagler, CO. Supercell has terrific spiraled structure at this time.

Awesome storm structure near Siebert, CO as the sun was starting to set to the west and allow for great back light.

Mammatus on the northeast side of the supercell near Siebert, CO.

Another shot of the supercell with the light of the setting sun shining through the rain curtains.

Could take photo after photo of this amazing storm.

The core opening up around the backside of the storm right at sunset.

The lightning show was amazing near Burlington, CO during the evening. See more photos below:

One of my favorite shots ever taken. Might be framing this one I think!

Another great shot of the storm and lightning near Burlington, CO. Was on a 6 second shutter speed.

Beautiful mothership moving overhead!!

Incredible storm moving into Burlington, CO.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 20, 2014 CHASE LOG: COLORADO

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

An awesome chase day to start the tour! We left OKC early with the expectation of heading all the way up to Scott's Bluff, NE to play the frontal boundary on the Nebraska Panhandle. We stopped for lunch in Hays, KS and decided to continue to head west before deciding on our target as the HRRR model was now showing two distinct target areas: Nebraska as advertised, but now it also developed storms near Denver riding right along I-70 all the way into Kansas. We decided to continue to Burlington, CO before deciding, and once there chose the southern target as the models were now killing the activity up in Nebraska by 02-03Z but kept the Denver storms going all night. That, along with the fact that a Denver intercept was far easier, made the choice simple.

By the time we reached Limon for a quick pit stop, there was already a severe warned storm over Denver heading east-southeast right towards us. We set up in Byers as the storm approached from Bennett. As it got closer, it organized a broad, blocky wall cloud for a few moments, but it soon dissipated. Cold inflow was the rule of the day as it seemed to be streaming in from where we were at every stop, yet somehow it never appeared to choke off the storm. After the first wall cloud dissipated a second briefly formed, but as the storm neared our position and had large hail in it, we repositioned to Deer Trail for the second stop. Once there, we saw that the storm had become a huge HP hailer with a very broad base and a “nose down” wall cloud / tail cloud look. Soon the hail core encroached on us again and we drifted down to Agate. With the storm moving southeast now, we then had to bolt all the way to Limon to try and get north towards Last Chance and beat it to an east road.

As we headed north out of Limon and into the huge wind farm in that area we just had to stop and take some shots of the huge beast with the wind farm in the foreground. We stayed there for about 10 minutes, at which point our north road was cut off by a hail core sporting baseball sized stones, so we headed towards the interstate, but then decided to head east on County Road 3. We stayed just out ahead of the storm until finding great spot for a photo opportunity and stopped and observed again. With the storm to our northwest, there were definite signs of rotation developing and, then behind us to the southeast there was rapid motion and a “cinnamon swirl” vortex above us, spinning hard enough that we thought we might get a landspout. That eventually dissipated and we had to quickly run east and south as rain and hail began to fall in our location and we were worried about getting swamped on the dirt roads. We made one more stop north of Arriba to shoot the fantastically structured liberty bell updraft, then stopped at a rest area along the highway for a break, but you could see the “stack of plates” look just above us and the clouds curving into the storm above us, so we headed east again to stay in front of the storm.

We continued east to Vona and as the sun set were treated to the spectacular structure of the storm backlit by the orange sunset! The storm also had a nice array of mammatus clouds hanging off the front part of the anvil.

At that point it seemed like the storm was finally dying, but as the sun set, perhaps the low level jet kicked in because the storm re-intensified yet again into a tall soda can look. We made another stop in Bethune, then another in Burlington, and the structure at dusk just kept getting more and more amazing! By now the storm was highly electrified, but interestingly it was almost all cloud to cloud, with very few ground strokes. It was sort of eerie as the spinning updraft came almost right over us, then off to our southeast a huge bob of dirt flew up from the rear-flank downdraft, right around the time that they tornado warned the storm! It was obvious that the storm was way too high based to tornado though and we waited south of Burlington for the storm to zoom by, and then got back on the highway, retracing our steps 150 miles back to the hotel in Denver.

A day that greatly exceeded expectations! The HRRR model was dead on, as the Nebraska storms blew up, one went tornado warned, and then in about 2 hours they were gone, while the Denver storm raged right down I-70 into Kansas well into the evening as advertised.

962.6 miles for Day 1!

MAY 11TH NEBRASKA: EF3 AND EF2 TORNADOES, HP SUPERCELL, & LIGHTNING

May 18, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Enhanced shot of the supercell with large EF3 tornado in progress, looking west off Hwy 15 towards Beaver Crossing, NE.

Another shot of the supercell with tornado underneath. Can see left edge of the tornado fairly well in this shot.

Short while later as the tornado begins to become more rain-wrapped and storm really takes on high precipitation nature.

Different color scheme here as the tornado is now completely rain-wrapped. Low, well defined inflow tail into the storm on right.

Storm getting closer as beaver tail (inflow tail) continues to scrape the ground. This was north of I-80 near Seward.

Interesting features at this point near Malcolm, NE. A couple areas of rotation on leading edge of RFD that appeared to be funnels.

Funnel cloud attempting to form here, moving left to right. Also near Malcolm.

Video capture of the Raymond EF2 tornado, estimated at 300 yards wide. Taken off Hwy 77 looking west.

Very low LCL's at this point when the storm was extremely hp. Notice lowering near the center of the image in the background. This was a new action area that formed on the storm east of Ceresco.

Video capture of lightning when a large amount of cg's were taking place as the storm was approaching west Omaha.

Another video capture of the awesome lightning display.

Yet another capture!

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

Surface observations at 3:43 PM CDT. Notice backed surface winds into southeast Nebraska with dewpoints pooling in the upper 60s to 70F along and south of the warm front. Terrific low level shear and ample moisture for supercells, while west-southwest to east-northeast orientation of the warm front was perfect for this storm to root and track along the boundary.

Enhanced Storm Relative Helicity per mesoanalysis at 3 PM CDT. High sheared environment as storm develops near Hastings, NE.

Incredible Significant Tornado Parameter numbers in southeast Nebraska ahead of the developing tornadic supercell. Also high along the front into Iowa but this area never fired with storms after the morning/early afternoon convection.

May 11, 2014 CHASE LOG: NEBRASKA

I was rather undecided in regards to chasing on this day since I was leaving on a plane for work the next morning and knew that the best target area would be in eastern NE, making for a long haul back home and not much sleep. However, after reviewing the setup and seeing a warm front draped across IA and within 3-4 hours from home, Wes Hyduke and I decided to make a trip down towards Des Moines to chase storms that we expected to fire on the warm front during the late afternoon. We left Burnsville, MN at 11am. The atmosphere had another plan though as the warm front never fired after the morning convection laid down an outflow boundary that appeared to wash out where the warm front actually was. In addition, there may have been some subsidence and not enough time to destabilize behind the morning rain and storms as cloud cover stuck around just to the north of the remnant outflow boundary. There was also ridging in the mid levels of the atmosphere behind this initial wave. After dropping south to near Des Moines, we knew the play was going to be to blast west towards the NE target. Most of the computer models, especially the HRRR, were blowing up a massive beast of a storm right on the intersection of the warm and cold front in the vicinity of Hastings, NE and moving this storm right along the warm front where it could continue to ingest the warm, humid, unstable air south of the boundary and low level shear maintenance. This area was also under incredible Effective Storm Relative Helicity (ESRH) values of 400-600 m2/s2 and 2,000-3,000 j/kg of Mixed Layer CAPE with Bulk Shear values of 55-70 kts per mesoanalysis. Surface and 850mb winds were also backed from the southeast ahead of the storm and along/south of the warm front making for very high low level wind shear and strongly curved hodographs. Dewpoints were pooling in the upper 60s to near 70F in southeast NE where the storm would be ingesting its inflow air.

THE storm blew up on the boundary intersection near Hastings, NE between 19-20Z (2-3pm). The SPC upgraded the percent chance for a tornado within 25 miles to 15% at the 20Z outlook along a narrow corridor that this storm would track in along the boundary (see outlook image). Within an hour this storm was already producing tornadoes as we were still in western IA and approaching Omaha. We continued on I-80 west to exit 379 and dropped south on Hwy 15 or 280th St. After going south for 1.5 miles, we pulled off to watch an incredibly powerful supercell to our west. At this point, it was producing a large tornado to the south of York, NE and near Beaver Crossing, NE. I was not sure if we saw a tornado buried in the rain underneath this storm, but taking a look at the photos, it appears that the left edge of the tornado is shown before it became rain-wrapped upon approaching I-80. This is at the same time the reports of a large tornado were showing up from other spotters and chasers closer to the storm. As the storm neared, we followed north and back east on I-80 to exit 382 and then north on Hwy 238. The storm at this point was really starting to become high precipitation (HP) and dangerous to stay ahead of at a close distance. Upon getting on Hwy 34 and heading east, we stopped near Malcolm to take some photos and happened to notice the storm forming a wall cloud, which was hard to really get a glimpse of due to the hills and trees. Our path took us north on Hwy 79 and after 4 miles the view opened up to the west where we witnessed a large tornado to our west. This was near the small town of Raymond. We moved east on W Raymond Rd and zig-zagged up Hwy 77 towards Ceresco where the storm continued to produce a large tornado, as seen by other chaser photos and videos at that time. Even though there were still a few hours until sunset, it was pitch black at this time and street lights were on. We continued east on some gravel roads towards the western outskirts of Omaha, having to turn around at one point due to coming up on a muddy road with water running over it. This is where we were close to the storm and got into some strong winds, heavier rain, and small hail due to having to backtrack around these roads. Thankfully we had given ourselves plenty of time to get ahead of the storm and were not in immediate danger of being hit by the rain-wrapped tornado. Plus we did not want to get stuck on a muddy road in the middle of nowhere with a large tornado buried in the rain behind us! Upon reaching Ashland, we had to cross the Platte River on Hwy 6 and then jumped on I-80 to get ahead of the storm, but staying southeast, as we got towards Omaha. The storm started to gust out upon reaching Omaha after the fear that a large tornado would go through the city. They still had some very strong, damaging winds go through the city as the storm gusted out and became outflow dominant with and embedded circulation. The storm structure was amazing as we moved up I-80 through southwest Omaha! We had a good view of the massive supercell mesocylone as we got further ahead from the storm. The lightning was absolutely constant at this time. We got ahead of the storm on I-29 north and then east on I-680. The storm was starting to really bow out upon moving across the NE/IA border so we headed home to beat the storm close to sunset. We made it back home to Burnsville by 12:30pm and I was on a plane by 9am the next morning, heading to South Carolina. Certainly a long 48 hours with little sleep but definitely worth it!

MAY 8TH MINNESOTA: SUPERCELL THUNDERSTORM ON THE TRIPLE POINT

May 17, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Thunderstorm developing north of the cell we were going after near Luverne, MN

Supercell on the triple point near Hills, MN. Interesting lowering that had formed in the notch of the hook underneath the updraft.

Another view of the lowering a short while later. Hook of the storm wrapping around with the RFD to the left of the image.

Sub-severe thunderstorm later in the day near St. James, MN

Another shot of the thunderstorm near St. James, MN.

Looking northeast from the same spot in St. James towards Mankato, MN where additional thunderstorms were ongoing.

Neat towering cumulus formed behind us at sunset as we drove up Hwy 60 towards Mankato, MN.

Another shot of the storm being back-lit by the sun, looking west from near Lake Crystal.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 8, 2014 CHASE LOG: MINNESOTA

This was a rather highly anticipated Moderate Risk day across MN and IA that was expected to produce tornadoes, but ended up only producing 2 in south-central MN. The set-up included a small but vigorous 500 mb vorticity maximum moving quickly northeast into the Upper Midwest by late in the day. The upper trough was positive tilt the entire time with the southern piece of the trough shearing off in the Southern Plains. At the surface, a low pressure center was moving north-northeast through eastern NE towards far southwest MN, while a warm front became reinforced with early day convection across southern MN into northwest IA. The triple point was located in far southwest MN to the southeast of Sioux Falls by late in the day, while the eastern portion of the warm front lifted faster to the north through southeast MN.

Our group consisting of me, Kyle Schanus and Joe Halverson left the Twin Cities around 9am and moved south and east to Fairmont, MN once again after being here the day before. We waited around and were met by a few others, while watching the warm front slowly lift to the north towards our location. Another round of elevated convection formed north of the warm front during the daytime hours and moved into eastern MN during the afternoon. The atmosphere quickly destabilized to the west of this convection as some clearing took place, allowing MLCAPE to increase to near 1,500 j/kg, which was less than forecast. Dewpoints climbed into the upper 60s with even a few 70F readings pooling just to the south of the warm front lifting up towards I-90 in central and southwest MN. 0-6km Bulk Shear increased to 40-70 kts across all of southern MN by late in the day, while impressive low level wind shear existed along the west-southwest to east-northeast oriented warm front.

My target area was on the triple point in southwest MN, but I knew we had to keep an eye on the St. James area along the warm front as the HRRR was breaking out a strong storm in this area. Both areas would have good tornado potential, the problem was to pick which one. We conferred and chose the triple point in southwest MN and quickly headed west on I-90 as a storm began to develop along the northeast NE/southeast SD border shortly before 2pm. A mesoscale discussion was issued at 12:23pm for all of southern MN in anticipation of boundary layer supercell development in the next few hours (http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/2014/md0524.html). A tornado watch was then issued at 1:50pm for the area (http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/watch/2014/ww0130.html). As we eyed the storm approaching the southwest MN border, another storm went up back to our east towards Jackson. We decided to continue on towards the storm on the triple point, instead of following the storm to our east, even though they were both in very good environments. The eastern storm ended up producing 2 tornadoes, one near St. James and the other near Madelia.

We went west on I-90, then south on Hwy 6 to intercept the storm near Hills, MN; the farthest southwest town in the state. We got on the storm near west of Hills off Cty Hwy 52 as it was producing a hook echo on radar. The storm was in a great environment and right on the triple point with low LCL’s, so it had very good potential to produce. In fact, two separate action areas formed, one on the nose of the hook and the other buried back in underneath the updraft. Both areas had slow rotation and condensation taking place, specifically the area underneath the updraft. There was a point that this storm was certainly going to produce a tornado as it was right on the warm front. However, the storm did not right turn and ended up north of the warm front where it was in more stable air. LCL’s were very low and wind shear was terrific north of the front, but it was just too stable to maintain the supercell intensity and it became a big hailer as we followed back north on Hwy 6 and then east on Hwy 8 to the north of Luverne. Knowing this storm was done and it was the only thing in southwest MN, we had to bust back east towards the St. James storm, knowing full well we would probably not make it to the storm. We did get on another storm, coincidentally near St. James towards evening, but it was nothing more than a sub-severe heavy thunderstorm. We ended up calling it quits on the chase and headed back north on Hwy 169 back home. However, another storm became tornado warned to the southwest of the Twin Cities and we intercepted this storm near Norwood Young America and followed it up Hwy 5 towards Victoria. There were several weak notches and radar detected areas of rotation along the leading edge of this line, but no confirmed tornadoes. The LCL’s were incredibly low with cloud bases seemingly on the ground and it was difficult to see being after sunset, even with quite a bit of lightning. It was really eerie following this storm into a populated area at dark and we soon ended the chase and headed home.

MAY 7TH MINNESOTA: BACK-LIT THUNDERSTORMS AND VORTICITY ROLL

May 16, 2014 by Brad in 2014

Rays of light shining through the developing thunderstorm over Fairmont, Minnesota.

Thunderstorm updraft starting to explode to the northeast of Fairmont, Minnesota.

Thunderstorm updrafts with anvil clouds overhead. Taken off Hwy 53 north of Granada, Minnesota.

Think the plane contrail symbolizes the storms updraft quite well!

New updraft on the storm near Amboy, Minnesota.

Good color as we are getting towards sunset with this storm. Small rain shaft underneath the cell.

Lucky enough to catch a bolt of lightning as I was taking photos of the storm at sunset! Really like this shot.

Another shot of the sun setting underneath the base of the storm. Awesome color!

Another storm updraft to our north close to the same time as the sunset photo taken above. Notice the inflow tails into the storm. Still high-based north of the warm front.

One last shot of the storm at sunset before we headed home.

Video grab of the vorticity roll as we were driving under the storm in the vicinity of Mapleton.

Another shot of the incredible vorticity roll, or horizontal rotating column of air embedded in the storm's base.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 7, 2014 CHASE LOG: MINNESOTA

This chase was along a warm front through southern MN, while a surface low entered southwest portions of the state during the afternoon. Even though the upper trough was still well to the west and across the Rockies with some ridging in the Upper Midwest, there was ample wind shear and instability for supercell thunderstorms if updrafts could overtake the strong EML/cap. Bulk shear by late in the day was increasing to 40-50 kts with the 2,500 j/kg MLCAPE contour poking up into south-central MN per mesoanalysis. It appeared that most of the storms would remain elevated in nature to the north of the warm front and storm motion would be slow to the northeast, but any storm that would be able to root on the warm front would have the chance at producing a tornado, especially considering the high SRH values along and north of the front.

Our group consisted of me, Joe Halverson, and Kyle Schanus. We progressed towards Fairmont, MN during the afternoon. The area was ahead of the triple point to the west and along the warm front lifting up towards the I-90 corridor. At 2:28pm, SPC issued a mesoscale discussion regarding the potential for at least marginally severe hail with any vigorous storms that can develop (http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/2014/md0513.html). Thunderstorms began to develop ahead of the surface low around 5pm right in the vicinity of Fairmont and then become severe shortly after 6pm. A severe thunderstorm watch was then issued at 6:45pm for southern MN along the warm front (http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/watch/2014/ww0126.html). We watched the cumulus towers go up from the McDonald’s parking lot in Fairmont and then followed the storms east on I-90 and then north on Hwy 53 near Granada. We followed the storms northeast through Mapleton and then ended the chase shortly after sunset.

There was not a ton of excitement on this chase, but we did manage to see some photogenic storms (especially towards sunset), drive through some dime sized hail, and even see a vorticity roll just after sunset! See the video and screen capture to view this horizontal, rotating column of air. It was a neat and rare sight to see!

April 23rd TEXAS - SUPERCELL STORM OFF THE DRYLINE

April 25, 2014 by Brad in 2014

My location in the crosshairs as I was playing catch up to the impressive looking storm on radar. Even had an indication of a hook developing!

View of the supercell that I was going after on the right, and another storm that had developed to the north (on the left).

Getting closer to the storm east of Garden City, TX. Can notice a flanking line attempting to get going on the southwest side of the storm as I'm looking to the northeast.

Another view of the storm as I approached, upon heading north out of Sterling City, TX. Fairly large rain and hail core.

RFD clear slot cutting in on the left side of the image with some noticeable motion occurring at this time, where the clear slot intersected the storm's high base.

Flanking line bases of new storm updrafts developing to the southwest of the storm I'm following near Sterling City, TX.

Setting sun behind the storm with dark bases of new storm updrafts overhead.

Nice circular, bowl base on the storm as I caught up to it northeast of Sterling City, TX.

This might be one of the smallest hail shafts that I've ever seen! A small but intense tube of hail being ejected out of the south side of the storm's updraft.

Beautiful mesa rock formation in the distance being lit up by the setting sun. South of Silver, TX.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

APRIL 23, 2014 CHASE LOG: TEXAS

This was a spur of the moment chase after working in Midland, TX at the Web.com Tour as the on-site Meteorologist. I knew that storms would be firing on the dryline later in the day, about 30 miles east of Midland Country Club. I was able to leave work at 6pm and drive southeast from Midland on Hwy 158 through Garden City over to Sterling City. There was one storm that was holding together nicely that I was targeting. Even though the LCL’s were very high with dewpoints in the middle 50s and weak bulk shear, there was enough SB CAPE of near 2,000 j/kg to sustain a lower topped supercell storm that developed off the dryline and was only moving 15 mph to the east-northeast. Upon approaching the storm, it began to form a hook echo signature as the RFD was attempting to wrap around. No chance of a tornado though since it was so high based, but I was hoping to possibly see a funnel. I was able to catch up to this storm near Sterling City, taking Hwy 158 to the north and then east. At this point, it became severe warned right as the storm started to form a nice, cylindrical base. The hail core was clearly strengthening at this time, hence the reasoning for the severe warning per the NWS. It really had nice structure for a while before flanking line storms started to take over and rob the initial storm. Towards sunset, I followed north on a remote Hwy 2059 towards the town of Silver. Here is where I drove into a small hail core of dime size. This was one of the smallest hail chutes that I had ever seen, being thrown out the south side of the storm. Glad the hail was not large enough to damage my rental car! Upon reaching Silver, it was dark and I proceeded north to I-20 and back to Midland. A fun little chase after a day of work.

2013 STORM CHASING HIGHLIGHTS VIDEO

March 20, 2014 by Brad in 2013

YEAR SUMMARY

2013 started off slow, so slow in fact that I did not have a 'real' chase until May 20th! On that day, I flew into Oklahoma City from Greenville, South Carolina, where I was finishing up working for a PGA Tour tournament. The atmosphere was already ripe for severe weather, a day after a strong EF4 tornado hit Shawnee, Oklahoma. I met up with Roger Hill and Silver Lining Tours to be a guide for a 10 day tour, and we decided to pick up what guests were already in town and do an unscheduled chase. We first got on the storm that would eventually produce the deadly Moore, Oklahoma EF5, but did not want to chase a tornadic storm through the city, so elected to chase supercells down the dryline into southern Oklahoma and just across the border into Texas towards evening. We did see a weak tornado that day but missed the Moore tornado. After hearing of the destruction, many of my family members and friends were attempting to contact me, even my work travel agency contacted my office to see if I was ok since they knew that I flew in around midday to OKC. What a crazy way to start the tour.

Thereafter, we had kind of a bust day in northeast Texas on the 21st, then set up in the Panhandle for chase on the 23rd. After an awesome steak dinner at the Big Texan restaurant on the 22nd, we chased a large, dirty supercell storm the day after. May 24th took us to northeast Colorado and western Nebraska with a low precipitation (LP) storm and tornado warned supercell. May 25th and 26th were back to back phenomenal storm structure kind of days, some of the best or possibly the best that I have ever seen! Photogenic, slow-moving storms made for quite the show near Rapid City, South Dakota on May 25th, while incredible, tilted updrafts into strong supercell storms made for a great site and awesome photogenic opportunities on May 26th in central Nebraska. The video above features some nice time lapse footage from these days. May 27th featured severe storms, one that nearly produced a tornado.

May 28th in Kansas was a site to behold as a storm erupted on a boundary in north-central Kansas, sat in one spot due to weak steering flow aloft, and produced a large, violent EF4 tornado that was nearly stationary for almost an hour! This incredible tornado was one of the Tornadoes of the Year and one of the best I have ever seen. We had the privilege of watching this tornado develop, change shapes, and morph from an elephant trunk, to stovepipe, then wedge, right in front of us while not having to move at all. In fact, we were able to sit with our cameras on tripods and watch the entire supercell and tornado evolution...it was amazing, especially since this tornado did not injure anyone and did not destroy any homes. We had one down day before we chased again on May 30th in Oklahoma, chasing storms on a dryline and a massive high precipitation (HP) beast at sunset.

May 31st was the only time that I had ever chased where I thought I might be in real danger. This was a day after the final chase day of the tour, so I rented a car and chased with some friends. We set up shop in El Reno, Oklahoma and watched potent supercells develop on the dryline just to the west of Oklahoma City. Towards the end of the highlights video, you can see the wedge tornado from the southern-most supercell appear on the horizon underneath the storm, and then start to move directly at us. Thereafter, the second part of the video featured the tornado as it moved to our north and grew to as much as 2.6 miles wide, taking a left turn back north towards the interstate and increasing in speed. We got out of the way of this large, EF3 tornado but did have the rotating mesocylcone/tornado-warned storm right behind it move over us as we attempted to cross the Canadian River on the southwest side of the Oklahoma City metro area through very heavy traffic. At this point, the meso moved overhead and the winds switched around to the west and RFD hammered us. We dodged the third tornado warned storm and finally got around the backside of the training thunderstorms that produced intense flooding through the Oklahoma City area. I drove all night to get back home to Minnesota after that white knuckle adventure, driving by adrenaline and from what I had just seen.

The last few chases of the year were (sadly) in June as the atmosphere shut down for the rest of the summer thereafter. My wife and I chased 3 tornado warned storms in Iowa on June 12th, but did not see any tornadoes on this day. The storms were intense though, and we saw a really nice shelf cloud and got in some nickel size hail. One of the very few tornadoes in Minnesota occurred on June 21st as we chased storms out of South Dakota into southwest Minnesota. We were able to view a very weak EF0 tornado right in front of us near Tracy, Minnesota. It wasn't much more than a grand dust devil, but it was still really cool to be that close to what certainly was a tornado. This is what finishes up the highlights video.

In summary, I managed to see 6 tornadoes this year, 1 EF4, 1 EF3, 1 EF1, 2 EF0's, and the other rating I'm not sure of. Considering it was a down year for severe weather and tornadoes, I managed to pick some great days to go, some of which featured incredible storm structure and features that made the chases very enjoyable. Looking forward to chasing storms in 2014!

JUNE 21ST SOUTH DAKOTA AND MINNESOTA - CLOSE WEAK TORNADO

July 10, 2013 by Brad in 2013

Intense storm with high winds and hail about to overtake us from the southwest near Lake Norden, SD.

Ahead of the main line of storms east of Lake Poinsett, SD just across the border into MN.

Looking north at the severe warned, intense line of storms quickly moving to the east as we attempted to stay ahead heading into southwest MN.

Severe warned storm and clearly ingesting tons of low level moisture right into the base near Tyler, MN.

I did not notice this until putting the chase log together, but there is a funnel and even a dirt swirl underneath between the two trees on the left-center side of the image. This was looking to our southwest, so the tornado was down even longer than I thought. This was taken shortly before a farmer came flying into the area where we were parked, laying on his horn, and yelling about seeing a tornado. He was right!

Taken after seeing the weak tornado near Amiret at the storm base that was starting to look a bit more outflow dominant.

Shelf cloud at the end of the chase near Wabasso, MN.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

JUNE 21, 2013 CHASE LOG: SOUTH DAKOTA & MINNESOTA

This was one of those days where I almost decided not to go, pulled the trigger to head out, and did not regret the decision. It’s not too often where I’ll blow off a chase when I have the opportunity and time to do it. Leading up to this day, it looked pretty decent in regards to supercell and even tornado potential. Insane instability in the 4,000-5,000 j/kg range was in the forecast ahead of a surface low and south of a warm front from eastern SD into southwest MN, while a subtle shortwave was expected to trigger intense thunderstorms during the afternoon hours. The caveat was what a complex of morning storms in SD would end up doing as they progressed into eastern SD and southern MN and if this would indeed be the main show, primarily a wind/hail threat with shelf clouds and really low tornado potential.

Wes Hyduke and I left Burnsville, MN around 11:30am and headed west on Hwy 212 towards SD. On the way, we watched on radar as a complex of intense severe thunderstorms advanced across SD with numerous severe thunderstorm warnings for damaging winds and hail along the storm path. This was my fear for the day as I thought this would be it, but the line of storms began to break apart into individual storms as it moved into eastern SD. We were still in MN heading west on 212 when the storms started to become tornado warned. A mesoscale discussion was issued by SPC at 1:34pm, highlighting an area ahead of these storms and into southwest MN on the northward retreating warm front where severe weather was expected through the afternoon. A Tornado Watch soon followed at 2:00pm CDT.

As we approached Watertown, SD, tornadoes were being confirmed on the storm near Redfield, SD but there was no way we were going to make it. Instead, we traveled south on Hwy 81 and west on Hwy 28, intercepting a tornado warned storm near Lake Norden. This storm was a beast and was starting to wrap a strong and large hook around the core at 50 mph. The thought was to get to a main road and travel north to stay ahead of the hook and attempt to look into the notch of the storm, but we quickly became overcome by the intense rain core with small hail that packed 60 mph winds as we turned around on Hwy 28 and attempted to get out of the way. Our route took us on Hwy 28 to the east of Lake Poinsett where the storm became very intense before we finally got to the eastern edge of the core as we entered into MN. I’m glad we got out of there, as there were extreme high winds in this storm that led to a fatality at Lake Poinsett due to a trailer being lifted off the ground and slammed back down.

We continued to progress east into MN and stair step south towards Tyler, MN where we intercepted the tail end storm on what was becoming a bowing line to the north. As we got on the storm, you could tell that this was not becoming outflow dominant just yet. There was a lowering and what soon became a wall cloud as we progressed east on 160th St to the east of Tyler. The storm was obviously still in a decent low level helicity environment as there was a lot of motion, scud rising and falling, and continued strong inflow into the storm. As we stopped to watch under a slowly rotating mesocyclone near Amiret, MN and 8 miles northwest of Tracy, a spin-up occurred to our southwest. We watched as what looked to be a strong dust devil moved to our southeast and then to the east on our road. It was really cool to get on video what was a weak tornado right in front of us! We were able to get within about 50 yards, maybe less, before the tornado went into a field to our north and continued on. This tornado was down for several minutes before we could not see the ground rotation and debris field anymore. At first, this looked like a strong dust devil or gustnado, but there was definitely a rotating mesocyclone overhead and a funnel that others documented as well, so classifying it as a tornado for sure. After having this close encounter, we stayed ahead of the storm as we traveled towards New Ulm and it weakened, and then headed for home on Hwy 169 thereafter.

JUNE 12TH IOWA - 3 TORNADO WARNED STORMS

July 10, 2013 by Brad in 2013

Wall cloud on tornado warned storm near Independence, IA right as storm merger was starting to take place.

Storm near Independence, IA while new flanking line towers started to go up. Nice mammatus on western side of storm.

Heading west on Hwy 20 looking back at our initial storm with new updraft and mammatus near Jessup, IA.

Large rotating, low mesocyclone on tornado warned storm near Allison, IA.

Bowl lowering in the rain shaft to the left of the road on tornado warned storm near Allison, IA.

Lowering on the left side of the photo with noticeable inflow bands feeding into the storm near Shell Rock, IA.

Awesome shelf cloud at the end of the day near Readlyn, IA.

Another shot of the shelf cloud near Readlyn, IA as it was about to overtake us.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

June 12th, 2013 CHASE LOG: IOWA

This was an event that I had no intentions on chasing as the thought was that the system would be too far east and would be more of a damaging wind/squall line threat. But after looking at things around the lunch hour and seeing a favorable tornado set-up, I decided to make a run for it. There was a deepening surface low over central IA and a frontal boundary eastward into northeast IA and along the IL/WI border. The environment was characterized by moderate to strong instability with MLCAPE ranging from 2,000 j/kg over central IA to 4,000 j/kg over eastern IA and northern IL. Deep layer shear across the area was in the 50-60 kt range and low level shear was fairly impressive, although surface winds south of the boundary were turning more southwesterly leading up to storm initiation. An upper level impulse approached from the west, which allowed storms to initiate across central and eastern IA by mid afternoon.

As we progressed south along Hwy 52 from MN into northeast IA, SPC issued a PDS Tornado Watch at 1:50 PM CDT, highlighting the risk for strong tornadoes with any discrete storms initially and then a bow echo/derecho scenario setting up into the overnight as storms progressed further to the east. Already behind the game, we encountered numerous areas of road construction that slowed us down along the way as we headed due south on Hwy 52 from Decorah down to West Union, IA as storms were already developing along the boundary just to the north of Hwy 20. We finally were able to get on our first storm, which happened to be tornado warned, on Hwy 150 north if Independence. This storm had a nice wall cloud on it, but struggled after merging with another cell to the south. We waited in Independence to see what would happen after the cell merger; all the while a storm near Hampton to our west near I-35 was producing multiple elephant trunk tornadoes. This was very frustrating as we were not able to make it to these storms that happened to be right on the triple point. I felt like I made a mistake in not going further west, directly towards the triple point, but I did think the low would move along the boundary, which it didn’t, and the environment further to the east appeared to be much better than the western environment. Lesson learned: Never doubt a triple point storm! They just happen to produce magic, even if you don’t expect it.

Anyways, back to the storm we were on near Independence…it could not get its act together after the cell merger and echo tops continued to drop and the radar presentation was looking horrible, although the storm was photogenic as we watched in a gas station parking lot and then as we traveled west on Hwy 20. We did bail on this storm and got on another tornado warned storm just to the northeast of Waterloo. This storm also had a really nice, ground dragging lowering on it, but also weakened soon afterward. At this point, we were getting quite frustrated as it seemed like storms were weakening right as we got on them.

Our last effort came with yet another tornado warned storm we intercepted between Allison and Shell Rock. We came upon this storm with a large, rotating mesocyclone southeast of Allison. At this point, I thought this was this was the storm that was going to give us our tornado. We had strong inflow, a couple nice inflow bands, and a slowly rotating mesocyclone and the storm had a solid 55k foot echo top. We followed the storm as it produced a rotating wall cloud south of Shell Rock, but eventually it began to gust out and produced a beautiful shelf cloud near Readlyn. At this point near sunset, the show was over so we let the storm core us as we sat in a church parking lot in Oran and encountered quarter size hail in the process. Although no tornadoes and a typical letdown in eastern IA, it was fun considering that we were not even expecting to chase in the first place!

MAY 31ST OKLAHOMA - THE EL RENO EF3 TORNADO

July 09, 2013 by Brad in 2013

First getting on the approaching storm roughly 3 miles southeast of El Reno, directly east-northeast of the already large tornado. Tornado tough to pick out at the time due to what looked like a large hail/rain core underneath.

On the north side of the storm, well defined feeder inflow bands sucking in the rich low level moisture. Even mid-level moisture bands can be seen spiraling into the intense supercell. Tornado on the left underneath the storm updraft.

Can clearly pick out the wedge tornado underneath the impressive structured supercell at this time.

Taken over my right shoulder as we were bailing south to get out of the way. Stopped only for a brief moment to look back and snap the photo as this was the closest we came to the monster tornado.

Tornado begins to get even larger and take a hard left turn towards I-40 as we watched from SW 15th St and Evans St.

Another shot looking north-northwest as the tornado was starting to move by us and go over I-40, becoming even larger and picking up speed in the process.

Had to crank up the contrast here, but I believe this is close to when the tornado was at its largest. Reported as large as 2.6 miles wide! Notice the entire mesocyclone now on the ground.

Another shot of the incredibly massive tornado in the distance as it was moving away and wrapping into the supercell.

Incredible phased array radar imagery of the tornadic supercell that spawned the powerful, massive tornado.

RAXPOL radar imagery. Notice in the DBZ and VEL imagery how clearly you can see the main tornado and the satellite tornado. ZDR clearly shows large debris ball with foreign objects to the radar indicated in green and blue.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 31, 2013 CHASE LOG: OKLAHOMA

Rest in Peace and God Bless Tim and Paul Samaras, Carl Young, and others who lost their lives to this tornado.

The El Reno Tornado will go down as one of the most remembered tornadoes in history and the largest tornado ever recorded to date. This tornado was originally classified as an EF-5 with winds of 296 mph based on mobile radar, but has since been corrected down to an EF3 based on damage assessments. It was also a record 2.6 miles wide at its largest point. It grew from 1 mile wide to 2.6 miles wide in 30 seconds! What a monster.

May 30th was my last day of chasing as a tour guide for Silver Lining Tours, but thinking Friday was going to be a big day near Oklahoma City, I decided to stick around and chase with some friends. I met up with Peggy Willenberg, Melanie Metz, Kevin Van Leer, and Kate Demchack in El Reno, OK as the first cumulus towers began to develop on the intersection of a stalled front and dryline. The environment was extremely unstable with 4,000+ J/KG of MLCAPE, temperatures in the upper 80s, and dewpoints in the middle 70s. In addition to very steep lapse rates supporting large hail, surface winds were backed out of the south-southeast with 50 kts of effective shear and decent mid and upper level wind speeds, supporting a substantial tornado threat with any supercells that developed within this environment. As a result, the Storm Prediction Center issued a Particularly Dangerous Situation (PDS) Tornado Watch at 3:30 PM CDT.

Initially, there were 3 intense storms that developed on this boundary intersection but these congealed somewhat, which made me think that maybe this day was not going to turn out to be a big tornado day after all, especially since the few days before did not work out as planned. We first went west on I-40, then north on Hwy 270 towards the northern storm with 60k foot echo tops. At this point to the north of Calumet, we could see all 3 storm bases as the storms were intensifying and starting to produce a few lowerings. When the storms started to congeal, we decided to head east on 248th St NW towards Okarche, and then get ahead of all of the storms on the northwest to southeast angled road of Hwy 3 towards Yukon. I did contemplate turning around and heading back south on Hwy 81 to intercept the tail end storm, which was starting to look the best, but this decision not to do this turned out to be a very good one. We went south on Hwy 4 in Yukon and then Hwy 92 south of I-40 as the southern storm became tornado warned. Already traffic was starting to get bad as we were caught in some rush hour congestion and we slowed to a crawl as we attempted get south. I noticed an option to head west, directly at the developing hook echo, on some gravel roads so I took it. This ended up working out perfectly as there was little to no traffic and open roads for us to work with as we approached the storm. We ended up stopping near the intersection near Reuter Rd and Evans Rd, roughly 3 miles from the approaching tornado that we could see was rain-wrapped but visible, along with a satellite tornado that you can see in the video to the right side of the main tornado. I had enough time to take some photos and video, but clearly this was not a storm to mess with as it was getting larger by the minute and moving right towards us. I decided to bail south on S Evans Rd and east on SW 15th St to watch the ever growing and intense wedge tornado pass by. This is when the tornado unexpectedly quickly grew and made a sharp shift to the north towards I-40 and unfortunately injured and killed several chasers in the process. As I recorded the tornado on my camera, I walked away for 30 seconds, came back and the whole tornado to my amazement had exceeded the viewing pane. It was incredible to see a tornado grow that large in that short of time. It was hard to get real excited about this strong and massive tornado, knowing there were probably people and homes in its path, especially since it was approaching Yukon.

After leaving this tornado, we paralleled the storm to the east on SW 15th St into the south part of Yukon, seeing power flashes occur to my northeast along the way. This is when the traffic started to really become a problem. I attempted to bail south and get out of the way of the second and third couplets that were on storms approaching from the west and taking a dive to the southeast. I became stuck in bumper to bumper traffic trying to get across one of the few routes across the Canadian River (S Mustang RD to Hwy 4) in Southwest Oklahoma City. This is when a couplet on radar passed just behind me and my car was slammed by roughly 50 mph RFD winds and people really started freaking out. It was mass chaos as people started abandoning their cars and running for any shelter that they could. There were vehicles slamming into other vehicles, people getting rear-ended, and a total loss of laws and rules that you would see more in a movie rather than playing out in front of you in real life. I witnessed several accidents and people just kept driving, leaving others stranded with disabled vehicles. After that debacle, they police started opening up all lanes across the river and south and not allowing traffic to go back north so we got out of there and over to Tuttle on Hwy 37 and then south on Hwy 93 before the next and stronger couplet on the third storm reached the area. I can honestly say that this is the first time that I thought about leaving my vehicle to find shelter from a tornado as we were not sure if we could beat the third couplet due to the horrendous traffic and almost tried getting into a church. It was the first time that I thought I was trapped in a bad situation with a tornado and no place to go…definitely a scary ordeal. We made it around the storms to the west and then back north on Hwy 81 where we drove through a lot of flash flooding and a large damage path between Union City and El Reno. Here is where there were overturned cars, some thrown well into fields away from any roads, and police and ambulance lights as far as you could see to the east. It was a very eery scene to a scary and deadly day.

MAY 30TH OKLAHOMA - DRYLINE SUPERCELLS & MASSIVE BEAST AT SUNSET

June 30, 2013 by Brad in 2013

Lowering on the left, underneath the developing supercell near Blanchard, OK.

Rising, twisting tail cloud into the developing wall cloud on the storm near Blanchard, OK.

Another shot of the rising scud into the developing wall cloud. Storm starting to get cylindrical base to it.

This got really interesting at this point of the storm. Lots of rotation noted as the storm pulled in moisture-rich low level air.

Still an interesting lowering on the storm and well defined inflow bands as we approached Dibble, OK.

Nice look to the storm near Dibble, OK. At one point, it looked like a little funnel-looking thing underneath, but could not confirm.

Near Lindsay, tornado warned supercell was nearing full maturity.

Storm taking on a liberty bell shape, but looks to be starting to gust out at this time.

Tight, little, but intense updraft near the Red River in southern OK.

Massive beast of a storm approaching sunset near Pauls' Valley, OK.

Looking underneath the shelf of the outflow dominant HP supercell near Paul's Valley, OK.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 30, 2013 CHASE LOG: OKLAHOMA

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

This was the last day of Silver Lining’s Prime Time Tour. Another moderate risk day and, since it was Day 10 and we were already at the host hotel, we were able to leave our stuff at the hotel and just bring our chase gear with us. Being in our target area already, were able to loiter around Oklahoma City for a lot of the morning and early afternoon as we knew the storms would initiate relatively close to the city, starting to the north near Enid and then building south roughly along I-44 towards Lawton along the dryline. After lunch and more waiting, the first storms fired and we headed southwest on I-44 as Tornado Watch was issued at 12:55 PM CDT. We were immediately posed with a choice between a more northern storm up near El Reno that looked better on radar, and a younger storm to the south coming up towards Chickasha that was in what appeared to be in the area with the better shear profile. The issue with the northern storms, we feared, was that they would become linear pretty early, merging with an MCS that was already active in Kansas. This did turn out to be true, though the tail end storm hung together longer than we expected, and much later that evening produced a tornado far to the east in Broken Arrow near Tulsa. We stopped at the rest area near Chickasha for a while trying to decide, and then, with the Chickasha storm clearly visible with a broad base and long inflow band to our south, we decided to go after that one, quickly getting through Chickasha and towards Anadarko on Rt. 62. Almost immediately the storm generated a solid wall cloud with rotation as we watched it move by to our northwest, but it never seemed to generate enough focus at the lower-levels, a common theme for the day.

We followed the storm northwest on Rt. 277 towards Blanchard, and it looked like it was ready to tornado at one more point as we stopped for a while east of Dibble (while the locals got ready to head into their storm shelters), but it again never quite got the focused rotation needed to tornado, and we were soon drawn south on Rt. 59 through Lindsay towards the next storm, as there were now a number of isolated supercells to our southwest in a line all the way down to the Red River. After dropping south on Rt. 76, we were soon retracing our route from the Moore tornado day and heading west through Bray to just east of Marlow, where we intercepted another storm with huge hail and rapid rotation that was turning hard right and coming right towards us! We stopped several times, staying just ahead of the core, and eventually ran south on the exact same road we’d seen the brief tornado on east of Bray on the Moore day. We stayed out in front of this storm, which had morphed into a high-precipitation hail storm with baseball-sized hail reported, all the way down to Tatums, where we again stopped and watched the big, teal glowing core pass us to the north, all the while looking to two more supercells, that were alternately being tornado warned, down towards the Red River to the south. Another theme of the day was constantly being torn between storms: From one radar scan to the next we’d be drawn towards a different storm, and every time we left one, it would seem to briefly cycle back up and tempt us to turn right back around.

Again the pattern repeated and after heading south through Fox then east on Rt. 53, we jumped on I-35 and headed south towards Marietta near the Texas border to intercept the last two storms in the line that were right along the Red River. Heading west out of Marietta, we stopped near Falconhead, OK and watched a textbook LP supercell just to our north, with almost perfect LP storm structure. It was clearly shriveling up not long after we arrived though, and we decided to head back north towards the hotel to intercept another big storm up there along I-35 on the way. First, however, as we headed east, the last supercell in line came across the river, and even though it looked to be dying, it was still tornado warned so we turned around and headed through the core just west of Falconhead, getting heavy rain and wind but only the smallest amount of hail. We turned around and headed back to I-35 to a pretty funny sight: what was left of that storm by the time we got on the highway was just the littlest poof of an updraft attached to what could be barely described as a tiny little anvil on top.

Heading back north, we were faced with a huge HP supercell coming across the highway. The structure as we neared the storm at dusk was amazing, mostly because it was just so incredibly big! The base of the storm seemed to stretch on for miles, with a giant rear flank inflow band to the left and a huge cow-killer shelf cloud in front. With structure that good, we had to stop briefly south of Davis, then were able to split between two big cores as we crossed under the storm near Paul’s Valley. Finally, after a dinner stop in Purcell (Braum’s!) we headed back to the hotel, completing the tour.

Lots of storms on this day, but the low-level shear just didn’t get it done. I don’t think I’ve ever chased so many tornado warned storms on the same day without any of them even managing so much as a decent funnel cloud! There were virtually no tornadoes in the moderate threat area for the day, while far to the north where nobody would have expected and nobody was chasing there were a number of them up in Nebraska.

MAY 28TH KANSAS - THE BENNINGTON EF4 TORNADO

June 29, 2013 by Brad in 2013

Supercell storm beginning to get its act together near Bennington, KS. Inflow bands becoming more defined in all directions.

First funnel forms at 5:31 PM CDT as we watch a couple miles to the east.

After the funnel, a lowering forms underneath the updraft as inflow into the storm strengthens, indicating increasing tornado potential.

Moisture rich inflow air being sucked right into the action area underneath the storm updraft as wall cloud forms.

The tornado first forms at 5:47 PM CDT.

Tornado getting larger with inflow surging in from right to left.

Thick cone tornado underneath rapidly rotating mesocylone. Tornado has barely moved.

Well defined and strong stovepipe tornado at this point. Condensation surging up the left side of the tornado.

Zoomed out view showing the incredible storm structure and the stovepipe tornado.

Another shot of the tornado at 5:54 PM CDT.

Tornado becomes rain-wrapped at 6:02 PM CDT.

Tornado getting back out of the rain at 6:03 PM CDT.

What an awesome storm and tornado! Tornado and storm has not moved hardly at all while we have been watching.

Wedge tornado!

Another shot of the wedge tornado with heavy core to the left and inflow tail to the right.

Transitioning to a big high precipitation (HP) supercell as the tornado becomes rain-wrapped.

Tornado finally ended after nearly an hour! New wall cloud forming while an attempt to produce another tornado ensues.

Incredible structure to this supercell with long, striated inflow bands around the mesocyclone and wall cloud underneath.

Massive hook echo on the storm while we sit directly east of the notch. Our location is plotted as the white circle with a dot in the middle. We sat in the same spot the entire life cycle of the tornado and afterwards as the entire storm and tornado hardly even moved!

Velocity couplet showing the tornadic circulation relative to your position as plotted by the white circle and dot.

STORM REPORTS:

STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS:

MAY 28, 2013 CHASE LOG: KANSAS

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

A great chase day and one of the shortest ever driven for a chase! The toughest part of this day was figuring out our target. We started the day in Salina, sleeping in a little and waking to discover that we had 3 distinct targets to consider: Northeast Kansas just east of where we were, along the boundary with a good combination of shear and moisture, a nice high plains setup in Northeast Colorado, or the southwest part of the boundary near Dodge City. We agonized for a bit and told the guests we’d meet an hour later, then decided that at least we would not take the Cheyenne Ridge bait and hedge more about where on the boundary to play, so we waited, then went to lunch, hung out at Walmart, then parked at the Petro on the north side of town to wait some more, as by now we’d decided to play the northeast target. Problem was, it looked like we’d waited too long with a cell already dropping a tornado in the Manhattan, KS area, 100 miles east of us and out of range! However, we calmed down and reasoned that if we could get a cell to develop and right turn into the same environment that the Manhattan storm developed in, it should do the same thing. Plus there was a nice triple point setting up just to the west of Salina as boundaries became more established by the afternoon.

We continued to wait as towers bubbled all around us and more and more chasers parked and chatted with us, until finally an updraft just to our west took off and we headed out north on old Highway 81 after it. The storm was not moving fast at all, and we were easily able to get east of it, parking on Rt. 18 just west of Bennington, KS. As we watched, the storm, which was really a group of updrafts, began to congeal into one and showed immediate signs of rotation, much as the Manhattan storm had earlier. We kept our fingers crossed as a cell to the south merged with it, and the cell survived and was soon a rotating monster! The rotation under the mesocyclone continued to increase until, 35 minutes after we initially parked, a long elephant trunk funnel formed, making it 2/3 of the way to the ground before dissipating a minute or two later with a neat ropeout. By now, the wall cloud was spinning like crazy and it was only a matter of time before it tornadoed, and 15 minutes later the storm dropped a big cone about 3 miles west of us and slowly coming directly at us. As it got closer, you could get a good feel for how violent the tornado really was, and soon Bennington was sounding their tornado sirens. As the tornado closed on us, it spawned a brief satellite tornado to its south and occasionally got wrapped in rain. Soon the tornado turned into a monster ½ mile wide wedge that was rotating around a nearly stationary mesocyclone of the storm. What a moose! The structure and slow motion of the storm was incredible, with a striated updraft and inflow bands streaming in from all directions and wrapping around the updraft.

As we sat still in our original spot now for the 2nd hour, something I’d never seen before happened: The storm began to retrograde and soon the storm and the tornado were moving west away from us! At this point the whole tornado was rain-wrapped from our vantage, but the motion of the cloud base and inflow told us it was still in there. Finally it seemed to wind down and the storm went into obvious HP mode, dumping well over 6 inches of water on the same area as where the tornado ground away. Worried about the flash flood warning, we finally left the area about 2.5 hours later, having never moved once after we stopped!

A fantastic chase day virtually right on top of us. In fact, I measured and from the Petro parking lot to where we watched the storm unfold was only 10.4 miles! Incredible! We headed to Logan’s for a nice steak dinner, then to the hotel in Wichita for the night.