{"id":6650,"date":"2012-04-27T00:00:02","date_gmt":"2012-04-27T08:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/?p=6650"},"modified":"2012-05-03T22:37:47","modified_gmt":"2012-05-04T06:37:47","slug":"april-27-2012-council-grove-ks-brief-tornado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/2012\/04\/27\/april-27-2012-council-grove-ks-brief-tornado\/","title":{"rendered":"April 27, 2012 Council Grove, KS brief tornado"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our tour group was up and on the road at the ridiculously early hour of 8 a.m. out of Ulysses, KS.\u00a0 A strong upper system was finally making its way onto the Great Plains after sitting west of California for days.\u00a0 The upper-level cyclone was a still a little too far west to help out much on the day prior, though we did manage a severe storm in Baca County, CO.\u00a0 After midnight, early on the 27th, was when storm activity really started to strengthen and organize.\u00a0 Southeastern Colorado was on the receiving end of several tornadic storms around 2 a.m.!<\/a>\u00a0 We were sound asleep a few counties to the east while areas around Lamar and Chivington in Colorado were under the gun.\u00a0 A system this strong typically doesn’t care what time of day it is…when it is time to make tornadoes, it makes tornadoes!\u00a0 We had to get east into the moist air asap.\u00a0 If and when the sun came out later on, the atmosphere would probably be in a foul mood somewhere over central or eastern Kansas.\u00a0 By late morning there was convection along a sharp frontal system which stretched from a little east of Dodge northward.\u00a0 The individual cells were moving northward rather rapidly.\u00a0\u00a0 I wanted to get a couple of counties east of the front, find some sunshine, and wait for a strong cell to come my way.\u00a0 SPC had a moderate risk and 15 percent hatched tornado area outlined, centered around Salina, if I recall correctly.<\/p>\n

We hung out near Newton, and then Marion, for much of the early-to-mid afternoon.\u00a0 We waited and waited for something to get strong and that wasn’t going to immediately blast north into murk north of I-70.\u00a0 It looked like another case of ill-timed upper-level support, as the early morning upwards motions were now replaced by subsiding air.\u00a0 The storms that did go up on the boundary to our west and southwest were not impressive.\u00a0 And, a perusal of the SPC mesoscale page showed that any storm that did go up would not have much time to improve in quality air.\u00a0 Hmmmph.<\/p>\n

Finally, around 5 p.m. we committed to a couple of developing storms coming towards Marion and Strong City from the El Dorado area.\u00a0 One was a bit east of 177, and the other one a tad west of 177.\u00a0 These had relatively decent rain-free bases and were fed by nice and strong easterly inflow.\u00a0 Organization seemed strange, though, and I had problems figuring out just what the heck was happening.\u00a0 South of Council Grove, we observed a funnel cloud with the west cell (some five miles distant).\u00a0 It persisted for a couple of minutes and quit. We lost sight of this base as we maneuvered through Council Grove and continued north on 177.\u00a0 When we emerged out of the trees and river-bottom areas a few miles north of town, the base to our east several miles looked promising.\u00a0 But, lo and behold, nice low-level circulation was quickly developing VERY near to our east.\u00a0 A funnel developed, came halfway down, and a tight ground rotation was observed in the trees beneath it for about 30 seconds.\u00a0 It dissipated somewhat quickly.\u00a0 Our location was about halfway between Alta Vista and Council Grove, and I put the tornado at 6:00 p.m., maybe a mile-and-a-half east of 177.<\/p>\n

We tried to keep up thereafter and slowly fell behind.\u00a0 We found ourselves at Burlingame in time to watch a different storm get tornado-warned and scream off towards Topeka. It showed an “area of interest” on its back end, and some dangly stuff was teasing the ground, but rotation was non-evident.<\/p>\n

There was little to nothing worth pursuing 45 minutes prior to sunset, and we headed to Emporia for dinner.\u00a0 We were a bit lucky to be so close to one of the few tornadoes that did occur in Kansas today.\u00a0 Given the expectations, the chase was a bit underwhelming and disappointing.<\/p>\n

A youtube clip of the Council Grove tornado is here.<\/a><\/p>\n

The first two images below were taken south of Council Grove along 177.\u00a0 The third one (6344) was about a minute after the tornado dissipated, looking east from 177.<\/p>\n

Photographer Kelly Delay was with our group, and he managed an excellent shot of the tornado.<\/a>\u00a0 Kelly’s images from the tour can be found on his Clouds 365 page<\/a>, his Facebook page<\/a>, twitter, Kellydelay.com<\/a>, etc.<\/p>\n

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Our tour group was up and on the road at the ridiculously early hour of 8 a.m. out of Ulysses, KS.\u00a0 A strong upper system… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,22,15,11],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6650","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-48","7":"category-cumulonimbus","8":"category-sunsets-and-storms","9":"category-supercells","10":"entry","11":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6656,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6650\/revisions\/6656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}