Today was the final chase day for the Tour 8/Doswell group.  The previous day featured the murk and messy nonsense in central and eastern NE, so I was ready to head out west for some pristine skies.  The outlook for severe weather along Colorado’s front range was rather slim, but the surface flow was upslope and moist enough for some high-based updrafts.  We made our way from Cozad to Limon and west to Interstate 25, between Castle Rock and Colorado Springs.  This is right along the Palmer Divide:  the elevated, favored area for storm formation on many late spring and early summer afternoons.  Given the “35-40 knots of deep layer westerly shear” here, according to SPC, I was hoping for a picturesque, isolated, rotating updraft.  Well, we got about four of them, one after the other!

Storm cells went up west of Larkspur (which is along I-25 north of Monument) and moved east.  We waited near the Interstate, and moved east a little with one or two of these.  The updrafts sputtered east of the Interstate due to a decrease in low-to-mid-level instability, and we headed back to the Interstate as the next pulse  strengthened over the mountains.

The first couple of cells were unimpressive, but the last two were somewhat strong (see images above).  I elected to place ourselves in the path of the core of the last supercell, and we caught a rainbow and some one-inch hail a little south of Larkspur.  I was going to continue east with this updraft, but then the sun came out and the light on the backside of the storm was quite nice.  We stopped on a hill on the west side of the Interstate a little north of Palmer Lake and set up the tripods.

This was the final chase day for Tour 5, out of OKC, and we had to be back to OKC by noon the next day.  So, I was looking for a target within about six hours of OKC.  Fortunately, there was one — the OK Panhandle!  We started out in El Dorado, KS (a little east of Wichita), so we had a 5 or 6-hour drive to the west to make.

(By the way, our tour guest Tom Trott has some fabulous images from this particular tour, and from this chase day, on his web site “Capturing Adventure”.)

On the previous evening, I made the following forecast post, based on the evening computer model run(s):

Tonight’s NAM run for Saturday shows that wave at 500 mb (that Bob H. mentioned) cruising into SW KS around sunset time. And, it shows a splendid red blob for UVVs over SW KS at midnight. Winds at 850 and 700 crank up considerably in the vicinity of the eastern OK PH after 00Z. The theta-e axis runs from Baca County CO ese-ward towards Fort Supply, OK. Mid-60 dews are lapping at the eastern entrance of the OK PH around sunset. I suspect that a storm or two may scoot E or ESE from Baca County during the late afternoon, with a good chance for a significant increase in severity towards sunset around Elkhart/Guymon.

Around noon on this chase day I made the following observations and posted them to CFDG:

Our group has a loose tether today as we need to be back in OKC by about noon tomorrow, so we are looking primarily at the OK PH and vicinity. The 15Z RUC is kind of weak with the 500 flow—-25 to 30 knots from the west over SE CO and the OK PH. But, increasing SSE to SE flow from the surface to 850 (40 knots at 850 near GUY at 03Z) should more than compensate for that in the shear department. Forecast CAPES aren’t exactly off the charts, either. We will look for the tongue of highest dews making its way northwestward into and through the OK PH and latch onto that. The HRRR is generous with the storms in the eastern portions of the OK PH and NE TX PH by 23-00Z. 700 temps are quite a bit cooler towards Woodward, OK, compared to SE CO, and low-level moisture and CAPE may be a tad better.
We are westbound from Wichita and will be closely looking at the axis from about Baca County to Texas County to Lipscomb County. The NE TX PH play is slightly preferred given that we head back to OKC tomorrow. It looks like a great setup for spectacular supercell structure around sunset time. I’m not very bullish on tornado chances, in part due to the pre-existing drought in this region. We’ll see…

And,  I wrote a “now” post at about 3:40 p.m. CDT:

It looks like the storm to be on right now is the one that is nearly stationary and NW of Kim. It has a very nice shape, but is likely high based given temp/dew point spreads of 30 (F) or greater in the area.

My thinking of Baca County ESE into Texas County OK for the 01Z to 03Z time frame, when the stronger winds begin to ramp up, still looks good. We are late for the afternoon show in SE CO—–still heading west through Meade County KS at this time. We will fine tune from the Liberal/Guymon area.

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So, given all of the above, it is clear that I liked Texas County — the middle of the OK Panhandle.  We were headed west towards the “Kim” cell (in southeast CO), when a storm went up quickly just 30-40 miles away to our southwest, in Texas County.  Here is the account that I wrote shortly after the chase:

It was very nice to have a forecast verify and for things to work out just about as planned —– though a bunch of luck was involved and things kind of fell into place and right into our laps. I thought that some nasty supercells would move ESE from about Baca County into Texas County this evening, with the best ingredients coming together in the OK PH around sunset. Stuff went up pretty early in SE CO and approached Baca County, with the nice Kim supercell nearly stationary. We were just getting out of Greensburg after a late lunch as the Kim cell was getting good — about 200 miles too far east! We plugged away westward, aiming at the Kim cell in case nothing else happened. A CB went up fairly quickly to our southwest when we were a little NNE of Liberal. It was close to or on the boundary, and it was easy pickins for us. The Kim cell instantly became a distant memory for our crew. We got up close to the east side of the new storm south of Hugoton, on the E-W road that goes west from LBL (3 miles north of OK). The cell was very high based, with the occasional downburst of precip. The cell split once, and the south split stopped moving NNE and started to slowly drift east along the KS/OK border. GR Level showed a 4-inch hail marker in the core a few miles to our SW, so I decided that it was no longer a good idea to sample the precip core.

As we neared Liberal (maybe 10 miles west of town around 6 p.m.), the precip core to our west became very heavy, and a rain foot developed beneath the base. Some dust got kicked up and scud clouds were all of a sudden swirling around on the interface of inflow and outflow beneath the base. Strong east winds were whipping past us at our location east of the cell. In a matter of minutes, it seemed, the scud clouds attached themselves to the updraft base and the storm morphed from a ho-hum high-based hailer to a phenomenal low-based beast of a supercell. We were viewing the sculpted updraft base towards the SW while in light-mod rain, with strong ENE winds now. The thing was moving ESE, so we had to get into LBL and then south to maintain position.

At a stop about seven miles south of LBL, we had the business end directly to our west. A long plume of dust swept up to and under the low base from the NE, only a few miles away. Not too long after, we were blasted by extremely strong inflow winds from the NE, and my tripodded camcorder blew over onto its side (it still works, at least most of it). It was difficult to tell if there was much rotation with the low wall cloud due to dust being lifted into it.

After several minutes here, we had to bail south. I went right past the U.S. 64 east option to Forgan, figuring that that route would certainly lead to some sort of nasty encounters with hail, tornadoes, damaging winds, and/or Sasquatch. Seconds later I see Paul and the COD crew blast by northbound in the other direction right into the MAW of the BEAST! Yikes!

We had to blast south for several miles to clear a precip core just to our SW. After stopping again for a few minutes to look back north again, we got into the vans to reposition. It was just seconds after we got back on the road south that we looked back to the northeast to see an obvious dusty cone tornado connecting the surface and the cloud base, maybe 4 miles distant. We were about halfway between Turpin and Boyd on U.S. 83, looking NE. We quickly stopped, got out, and the tornado was no longer there—it had either quickly dissipated or had become rain-wrapped or dust-wrapped or otherwise visually indistinct. I called NWS AMA to let them know, and I think it may be my report which is in the tornado log at 0050Z in Beaver County. Unfortunately, we were unable to get any pics of the tornado, though Brian has some good ones of the action area taken a minute or two just prior to the tornado. The tornado was probably east or ESE of Turpin.

The cell continued mostly east along 64 as we went south and then east on 412. We had several good looks at the very nice HP structure around sunset, and found ourselves in a precip-free area with supercells to our NW, N, SE and S, all less than 25 miles away! The new beast of the moment after sunset (when we were near Slapout) was the one that was entering Ellis County, OK. One of the Threatnet wheelies showed 149 with that cell. All we could see was a bunch of embedded lightning. We followed it into Woodward for the night.

Okay, this blabber has become tiresome, time for some pics!  The first one below shows the young storm splitting between Hough, OK, and Hugoton, KS, right along the state line.  Later, the still relatively high-based “right split” member as a microburst-like blob develops.  Views are to the west and WSW. 

The next set of stills is of the impressive updraft “bomb” that went up (in Lipscomb County, TX) to our distant southeast as we maintained position just east of our nearby storm.

In the meantime, our “Hugoton” storm was starting to dump more and more precip, and scud clouds found themselves twisting around on the boundary between cool storm outflow and warm inflow from the east and southeast.

It didn’t take long for these scud clouds to rise and “stick” to the updraft base, and the storm began to rotate hard and became much more menacing.

The six images above were taken some four to eight miles west of Liberal, KS, and the view is to the southwest and west-southwest.  As the storm moved ESE at about 20 mph, we scooted east to Liberal and then south on U.S. 83, stopping a few miles south of the KS/OK border.  The updraft was now to our due west, and sucking up plenty of dust on very strong E-NE inflow winds:

The next step was to get out of the way, and I got these shots towards the southwest as we blasted south:

Shortly after getting south far enough, I got this shot of the action area back to the NNE, where we viewed what may have been a dusty tornado moments later:

Finally, here are a few images of the storm structure and some lightning taken from U.S. 412 south of Beaver and near Slapout:

On June 2 we worked our way north from Valentine towards central South Dakota.   My chase account for CFDG was written the following morning:

The better risk for tornadoes on this day was east of the Missouri River in the Dakotas, according to SPC, in part due to strong 850 winds late. But, the cap was quite strong and there were no boundaries for low-level convergence in the eastern Dakotas. We had to venture north and west from Murdo after lunch, I figured, if we were to see convection before sunset. An approaching trough at upper levels was cooling the mid-levels and weakening the cap in western SD during the late afternoon, and a “lee trough” at the surface extended from about Lemmon to Rapid City. Dew points on the east side of the surface trough were 65F-67F, but the southeast winds were weak.

From Eagle Butte we drifted west to Faith, and we finally saw some perky cu west of Faith around 23Z. A very pretty line of convection went up in the deep blue South Dakota sky from near Usta to McIntosh. The strongest cell was to our north, between Isabel and McIntosh, and we could easily see a large RFD cut and some shallow lowerings. One or two other updrafts spun hard along Hwy 20 near Glad Valley, but these were scrawny. The biggest cell was heading away from us into ND, and I was reluctant to follow it given our leash (we had to start heading back to OKC on the 3rd), and its tornado potential seemed to be slim. The updrafts just to our west, west of Isabel, continued to struggle, so we elected to abandon this area and to dash south for the severe storms moving northeast through the Badlands. We had only an hour of sunlight remaining, and the Badlands storm was 120 miles away, but at least we might get a decent lightning display.

The storm complex held together and gave us a fairly good light show, both on the approach and at our stop just west of Hayes. The warning mentioned tennis ball-size hail and strong winds, and the structure was impressive in the lightning flashes. The cell(s) weakened a little just as it neared. Southwest winds picked up very quickly as the rain began, and we made our was into Hayes and found some cover for the vans. The wind in Hayes gusted to perhaps 50 mph and the hail was only marble-sized. The main storm core passed by just to our west and north.

These images were taken along Highways 73 and 20 from Usta to Glad Valley and Isabel.

 
And these lightning images were taken at Highways 63 and 34 several miles west of Hayes, SD.

Today was a somewhat marginal chase day.  Strong to perhaps severe storms appeared probable, but conditions were not favorable for tornadoes.  Of course, with the tour group and a Weather Channel camera crew with Jim Cantore depending on my expertise, it isn’t a question of whether we are chasing, but where!

Pasted below is my account, written late in the evening:

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Our group targeted an area not too far southwest of Great Bend, which was convenient because we started the day in Great Bend.  A lobe of decent CAPE was forecast to poke northward towards Greensburg, and the wind field late morning indicated a wind convergence and low-level circulation just east of DDC. N-S linear junk went up a county or two west of Great Bend early afternoon, and we moseyed on down to the tail-end cell near Greensburg. It had its moments as it moved NE, but it eventually fizzled as a new tail-end cell developed. This cell had a great low-level look for 10 minutes between Pratt and Preston, and then became outflowish with a large blocky non-rotating wall cloud. This cell dragged us NE a little, and we let it go to drop south again to get in front of a new tail-end cell near Pratt. This one was able to maintain a decent supercell look for quite a while, and it moved slowly east instead of moderately fast to the NE, like the others. It sported occasional shallow wall clouds, but never made a serious attempt at tornado production. As it drifted east to Cunningham, its large and medium-wet RFD loomed over U.S. 54 and a breath-taking TEN COMMANDMENTS sky materialized towards sunset. The colors and cloud patterns and structure and lighting in and around that RFD cut were absolutely insane! I filled up a bunch of camera cards, and I hope to get a free day soon to look the images over and to post some.

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The images above were likely taken somewhere in Edwards and/or Kiowa counties, not too far from Greensburg.  Below is a cell which sported a rotating updraft for little while near Preston, northeast of Pratt.

The cell pictured above wimped out, and we dropped south to a new cell between Pratt and Cunningham (near Cairo).  This was the view to the west.

Continue to sunset images for this chase day.

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We will play the warm front just northeast of the triple point surface low.   The Pawnee County area just west of Great Bend might be a good place to hang out (we are near Pratt currently).  There does appear to be a fairly wide-ranging area today to choose from and, at the moment, I can’t find an arrow that says “go here”.  So, we’ll stick to Storm Chasing 101 basics and find some sunshine on the backed winds near the surface low.  The models appear to break out storms rather early, which I dread.

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About an hour later, I wrote a NOW-post regarding the convection around Pratt:

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We are just east of Pratt. Some strong towers to our SE and E are anviling out some, but then are getting shredded apart by the shear. We will sit tight —- hoping for something to approach from the SW and latching onto the nearby warm front.

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It seemed like we went back and forth through Pratt a dozen times as I contemplated the healthy updrafts along U.S. 54 and eastward towards Wichita.  Fortunately, I blew these off and stuck to my guns, which were pointed more towards the area a little west and north of Pratt. Surface ob trends and the warm front pulled us north from Pratt towards Great Bend…and this looks like a good place to paste my original write-up for the day…

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The chase went pretty much according to plan today, for once. We (Chris Gullikson, Chad Cowan and I) began in Pratt and targeted the area just northeast of the triple point/dry line bulge which was west of Pratt midday. There was plenty of sunshine and it looked like the atmosphere was going to go into storm-making mode by noon, but it held off, fortunately. One concern today was that a storm would form in the good air along the NW-SE oriented CAPE axis and then quickly move NE into the cool murk north of warm front. At 2 p.m. the wind at DDC shifted to SW. Wind at Great Bend was SE and moist, so that was the impetus to get us moving north from Pratt. We continued just past Great Bend, and a healthy CB developed right in front of us. We stayed with it towards Russell and it matured into a supercell, though somewhat of a messy HP supercell. We were behind it a little on its west side as we reached Russell, and then jumped on I-70 eastbound. After a couple of brief stops to allow a hail core to pass, we made it through to the north and then the northeast side of an elongated updraft base with a couple of action areas. Near Dorrance, an area tightened up some and we saw dust get kicked up beneath it. It was dark and nasty looking and the base was quite low to our west —- we were a little north of the warm front, and east winds were strong. Someone reported a tornado with the storm a little north of I-70  —- our group did not see one for certain (though Chris’ video shows a power flash). The cell seemed to move more to the NE and more slowly now, and we managed to get in front of it at Sylvan Grove. Inflow winds from the NE gusted to near 50 mph, and rain curtains swirled around beneath the large base to our SW. It chased us a little east of Sylvan Grove as the sirens wailed, and we stopped after going about a mile east on 18. Here, the winds were dead calm, and an area of strong low level rotation was developing just south of the road. I thought we were going to get a tornado at close range at this point, but it couldn’t pull it off (though, again, a tornado was reported with the storm by a spotter).

We went north of Lincoln a little for one last look. The cell seemed messier and less organized, and the air was murkier, and it seemed that tornado prospects were slim. So, we blew it off in order to get south to a tail-end cell near Great Bend, but this cell weakened. A couple of cells went up on the retreating dry line near Dodge City, so we went SW and stopped at Rozel for a very pretty sculpted (though elongated) storm at sunset. As the light faded it looked like the storm base was issuing some funnels to our N, and then a tornado warning was issued. We blasted north on 183 to get a closer look, but the cell quickly disorganized.

This was a fairly satisfying chase as the forecast worked out and we managed to stay with a fast-moving supercell from formation to maturity.

Here is a look to the north of the developing CB with pileous cap, between Great Bend and Russell. Below is a view of the low supercell base to the west, from Dorrance, and then towards the southwest, from Sylvan Grove.

Later, we were WSW of Great Bend, near Rozel, east of a dry line supercell.