Well, we managed to do pretty much everything right until the tornado of the day got going. The forecast was great—-extreme southeastern Kansas, near Independence. We were patient and waited for the storms to get their act together as they neared us. But…we made a poor choice of storms at a critical time, and wound up missing a long-track killer tornado. 650 miles—Wakeeney to SW Missouri and back west to Tulsa—and this was the sixth consecutive day that we were on a tornado-warned storm! Here is the account that I wrote for the chaser community:
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We were on the tornadic storm that moved from near Baxter Springs, KS eastward into SW MO for over an hour on Saturday. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of the storm core and were unable to witness the long-track tornado.
AAAAAAAAAAAARG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our Tempest Tours group was in Wakeeney, KS on Saturday morning. On the preceding day we were on the supercell in extreme northeast Colorado, south of Julesburg, and I figured that it would be a stretch to try to chase the Saturday set-up east of I-35 in OK and TX and into the jungles. At 8:30 a.m. we left Wakeeney and targeted extreme SE KS. The forecast severe parameters appeared to be very good towards 4 p.m. around Independence, KS. We could do that, but we had to be back in DFW by noon on Sunday to get this group back in time for their flights home. By mid-afternoon we were in position near Chanute, KS. Chanute had light ESE winds and Parsons had light southerly winds. A couple of storms developed south of Wichita along I-35 and moved quickly towards us. We tried to be patient as the storms developed as we didn’t want to jump on them prior to any tornadic phase. At Parsons we went east to Cherokee as supercell structure developed to our SW. We dropped south out of Cherokee to Columbus. By the time we got to Columbus there were two cells to choose from. The base of the northern one was due west of us by about 15 miles with a tornado reported near Labette. A relatively new cell was developing just south of the Labette cell. At this point in time, given our favorable positioning on the northern storm, I elected to head west from Columbus to see if a tornado was in progress. After about 5 miles, we stopped and had a view of the base with the large clear slot and a prominent lowering on the north side of the clear slot. The lowering was to our WNW and still about 7 miles away, but appeared to be struggling. Bob Conzemius radioed to me that a tornado was now in progress with the southern cell, perhaps 15 miles to our SSW. It was seven miles west of Baxter Springs (which is SSE of Columbus by 11 miles). We didn’t know it for sure at the time, but we had a sinking feeling that the make-or-break decision for the chase day had already been made —- and it was the wrong one. The “Baxter Springs” tornado was the one which soon hit Picher, OK, just 12 miles south of Columbus, KS. Rain and hail from the southern cell was impacting us on the way back east to Columbus, and reports of very large hail dissuaded me from punching the core of the southern cell that was approaching Baxter Springs. We were sooooooooooooooo close at this point to the south side of the (soon-to-be) long-track tornadic supercell in its earliest stages, but we could not safely get there quickly. (Note: we later recalled that the road south from Columbus to Picher and Baxter Springs was closed, and that this impacted our decision to check out the northern storm instead of targeting the southern storm. The southern storm often has the better tornado potential if two storms are near each other. With the cells so close and with precip from the southern cell interfering with the northern cell, it should have been a no-brainer to go for the southern cell as we cruised into Columbus from the north, and Bob pointed this out. The road closure south of Columbus really wreaked havoc on our options.)
We began the futile attempt to get east far enough in order to drop south in front of the cell. We drove for at least one hour through heavy rain and occasional strong wind into MO, north of Joplin, to US 71, south to I-44, and east a little on I-44. Naturally, as we were fighting the heavy rain and some slow traffic, we heard continued reports of a tornado in progress to our south. The precip core blocked our view. The dang storm was moving east at 50 mph, and we were losing the race!! After exiting I-44 in heavy rain at Sarcoxie, debris began floating down out of the sky. We continued SE on Route 37 to Pierce City, where the sirens were sounding. Occasional debris continued to flutter to the ground. At this point, we knew we had no chance to intercept the tornado, but we hoped we might see something on the back end of the storm. Rain ended as we drove south to a point about 5 miles west of Purdy, MO (where a tornado had been reported very recently). Mild damage was apparent here. We could see a heavy rain core to our east, but no visible tornado. The tornado had likely moved through about 7 minutes earlier. A road to the east took us into the the town of Purdy, and just north of the town was considerable damage to homes and numerous uprooted trees. One SUV was in a field with emergency personnel attending to a person on the ground. The damage path was perhaps a 1/10 of a mile wide. We continued north into Monett for a break, and while at the convenience store, at least 12 emergency vehicles were seen heading southward into Purdy. We learned of tornado damage in Neosho and headed that way (west) on U.S. 60. On the way to Neosho, damage was observed in Granby. Numerous homes sustained very heavy damage on the northeast side of Neosho along U.S. 60., and I would estimate EF-2 to EF-3 damage. It is now Sunday morning, and we are hearing about all of the fatalities in Neosho, Picher, Seneca, and elsewhere with this storm. Our little adventure has a bit of a sour taste.
Additional images from Tour 1 below are courtesy of tour guest Mark Dempsey.
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