May 19, 2008 Update

Finally —- an update for the SB faithful!  The final 5-6 days of Tour 1 were extremely active, as were the first three days for Tour 2.  The latest four days have been storm-free, and I am not complaining too much as I needed a break.  Fortunately, the final two days for this tour look active (Wed/Thu, May 21 and 22).   I suppose I should say here that we have yet to see a tornado, though many of the storms we were on came very close, and one of them DID produce a long-track tornado, but we were out of position to witness it.  That is how it goes much of the time in storm chasing.  We drive and drive and drive, and every chase involves a lot of skill and a little luck.  These past couple of days I have been writing up chase accounts for the period from May 5 to May 18.  The pictures will have to come much later, as I am just not ready to spend time at the laptop and getting those ready for display.  To tell you the truth, I have yet to look at one single picture I have taken or one frame of video since the tours began, as I spend all day looking at the computer and I prefer to sleep when there is down time!  No surprise there to those who know me, right?!

The official “May 19^th Update” follows:

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Yikes—-it has been almost two weeks since my last update.  Today is Sunday, May 18^th, and I/we are halfway through Tour 2 (a 10-day tour).  I write this as we are headed north from Pecos, TX towards southeastern New Mexico under sunny skies.  The last few days have been storm-free, but the previous ten were extremely busy as we had significant storms to chase nearly every day.  I think I need to begin around May 5^th….

 

MAY 5, 2008  Garden City, KS, supercell

 

This was Day 5 for Tour 1, with 11 guests and my drivers Jennifer Dunn and Bob (“I just opened a new tab”) Conzemius.  On the previous day we drove from Cisco, TX, to Garden City, KS, for positioning purposes.  That wound up being a 499-mile jaunt up U.S. 83.  And, it was not without excitement, as I elected to take the group to the Hollis “Bridge of Doom”.  This is a very old road bridge over the Red River, between Hollis, OK, and Childress, TX.  It kind of looks like it may have been an old railroad bridge.  There is only one lane, with a couple of planks for the tires.  The weight limit is three tons, so I have the guests get out of the van before driving across (about one-quarter mile).  Anyway, I had my “regular” route to the bridge figured out as we left Childress, but then looked at the Delorme map on the laptop halfway there.  It suggested that I go a different, more direct route.  These were dirt roads, which I would never use if there had been recent rain, but I figured that there would be no problem this time.  About three or four miles before the bridge, our alternate dirt road was becoming very sandy.  There were a couple of places where our big van had a tough time of it.  We made it through the deep sandy parts, but our second vehicle, the minivan driven by Bob, got stuck.  His minivan was “high-centered”, as the ruts for the tires were too deep given his low clearance.  The eight of us in the big van trudged back about a tenth of a mile to help rescue the other six.  We decided that it would be best to try to push the minivan back the way he came, though it was slightly uphill.  We cleared the sand out from beneath the vehicle and tried to even out the sandy road behind it.  I took the wheel, and about 8 people pushed the minivan backwards as I tried to get the thing moving in reverse.  It was very slow to go initially, but after several seconds the thing began to creep backwards.  Once out of the deep sand I was able to continue backwards far enough onto solid dirt and easy motoring.  Unfortunately, Bob and his five guests were forced to go back to Childress and north to Wellington, and missed out on the scenic Hollis Bridge of Doom.  Meanwhile, our van had to navigate another couple of miles on this occasionally very sandy road.  At one other point the sand was so bad that we were going no more than 1 mph.  I tried to keep the thing moving, and I barely did.  I don’t know how we managed to get through, as I thought for sure we were on our way to Tow-Truck City.  The van made it to the bridge!  Next time I will take the route that I know is less harrowing.

 

Well, back to May 5^th, we left the Soft Pillow Inn, did lunch and laundry, and drifted southwest of Garden City a little and waited for storm development.  My forecast turned out to be pretty good, as storms developed near Lakin, in the county west of Garden City (GCK).  The Lakin cell exhibited fine structure as it crept eastward towards GCK.  We stayed just ahead of it on U.S. 50.  The cell was somewhat high-based, and was not a good tornado candidate, however.  A new cell developed nearby to its northeast, and had a much lower base.  It was just to our north, north of Charleston.  A wall cloud developed and lightning increased on this cell, but low-level rotation was weak.  Eventually, numerous cells developed in a linear fashion and the party was over.  Four-inch hailstones were observed  with the primary supercell on the south side of Garden City, shortly after we exited the town.  It was a relatively very easy and rewarding chase, and only a total of 213 miles for the day after arriving at the Days Inn in Dodge City.

 

MAY 6, 2008  Lamb County, TX supercell

 

On this Tuesday we hit the road a little on the early side, as we needed to be in the Lubbock, TX, vicinity by mid-afternoon.  Some chasers were targeting the eastern TX Panhandle, but by late morning it appeared that the western Panhandle, perhaps west of Lubbock, would be best.  While coming out of Guymon, OK,  a cop pulled over our media person, a Frenchman named Felix.  Felix had exhibited some dubious driving maneuvers during the tour, so it wasn’t particularly surprising that a law enforcement person witnessed an infraction on his part.  I had to keep going, as we could not risk being late for the show in West Texas later on.  I figured that Felix could call me later to find out where we were.  But, son of a gun, there was Felix right behind our tour group some five minutes later, as the cop had allowed him to continue on almost immediately!  Felix said that the cop had seen him drifting about in the lanes in town or something, and I guess he wanted to see what Felix was up to.  Whatever Felix said, it worked, and the cop laughed and waved goodbye. 

 
Storms went up several counties to the south as we drifted south of Dimmitt and into Lamb County.  We were patient and watched a couple of storm towers develop southwest of Amherst, about 30 miles WNW of Lubbock.  (Meanwhile, the tour director of another storm chase tour company was arrested while watching a storm from a rest area in Crane County, TX, south of Odessa!)   Our storm blew up very quickly and had a strong updraft and impressive anvil, but then seemed to struggle a bit as it pulsed and teased us with lowerings.  Another cell just to its northeast (and beneath its anvil) went up quickly and was soon better looking than our western cell.  We went after it and soon were under some crazy skies with plenty of swirling and intimidating lowerings.  Nothing was tornadic.  Just as it appeared that one or both of these cells might organize to the point of tornado-making, a “left-mover” from a splitting cell in the next county south came crashing into our storms.  Game over.  We watched a nice lightning display to the east from a high spot on Route 86 east of Silverton, and reached our rooms at the Days Inn in Childress rather late.  564 miles.

 

MAY 7, 2008  Rubottom, OK supercell

 

We awoke in Childress to cold drizzly weather and northwest winds.  Fortunately, the front was not advancing eastward very quickly.  Our forecast was for the Red River area near Gainesville, TX, between Ardmore and Fort Worth.  We stopped in Quanah or Vernon and took some quick group photos, and then hustled east to Gainesville.  Nothing was brewing yet, so we sat beneath Interstate 35 next to the Red River until we grew weary of the traffic noise.  A cell went up in the target area near Ringgold, TX.  We positioned ourselves just northeast of it on the north side of the river, near Rubottom.  While it was still 10 miles or so to our southwest it showed a good lowered area.  We felt that we might have something good for a little bit.  Some small hail fell on us and we decided to scoot south of the Red River towards Saint Jo, as the cell showed little inclination to move rapidly northeast.  Unfortunately, once again, the cell sputtered and weakened.  A new cell to the southeast, near Denton, was tornado-warned as we tried to reach it.  We got close, and it sputtered out.  Dinner was at the Pizza Hut in Bonham.  Some dark and menacing clouds forced me to take their pictures near the Bonham water tower.  We went back west to the Vernon Super 8 for the night.  It was quite late.  561 miles.

 

MAY 8, 2008  Shallow Water/Jetmore/Kinsley KS supercell

 

Back north into Kansas!  Even though we drove quite a bit the previous evening to be nearer to today’s target, we weren’t even close to seeing the nice landspout-type tornadoes which developed near Selkirk, KS, around 2 or 3 p.m.CDT.  Not long after lunch in Pampa. we could see the associated cumulonimbus clouds to our north — 175 miles away!  It was not fun seeing the counties light up red (for tornado warning) while still three hours away.  We pressed on northward on U.S. 83.  The landspouts ended and a new cell developed a little closer, and moved east-southeast towards Shallow Water in Scott County, KS.  We managed to position ourselves right in front of this beast on a dirt road near the triple point of Lane/Finney/Scott counties.  There was a lot of  up and down motion and a lowered “area of interest”, but cool outflow hit us before we would have liked, suggesting that the tornado threat was not great at the moment, presumably.  The ugly jaws of the updraft base chased us east and south to Kalvesta.  This supercell looked quite nice on radar, but it wasn’t “tornadoing” for us.  We managed to get to Jetmore and then south before that town was hammered by the hail core.  As we dropped south we had several great views of the overall structure.  We dropped all the way south to Spearville and east to Kinsley.  By this time the cell was moving more easterly, and numerous other cells were competing for the juice.   We observed a metal roof on the ground on the south side of Kinsley.  Perhaps very strong inflow had carried it away from where it belonged.  We drove behind the main cell on the northeast side of Kinsley and found hailstones from one-to-two inches in diameter littering the muddy fields.  That was cut short as a new cell approached.  Just as we found a protective covering in Kinsley, the town was blasted by another round of wind and hail and heavy rain.  Right at sunset we were headed west out of Kinsley.  A bunch of cows were wandering onto the highway, and we narrowly avoided one.  A minute later we passed a big rig charging the opposite direction towards the cows at about 70 mph.  I wonder what transpired….

 
After 524 miles we were back at the Applebees and Super 8 in Dodge City.

 

MAY 9, 2008  Grant, NE, supercell

 

Great Scott……I had a tough decision to make on this morning.  Should I play today or tomorrow?  There was a good chance of a supercell in northeast CO/western NE later on this day, and already a moderate risk and an excellent setup for tornadoes on the following day in the trees of E Oklahoma, the last chase day for this tour.  The downside to chasing the CO/NE target on this day was that it would be next-to-impossible to be in proper position the on May 10^th—–in E OK or NE TX.   Another downside was that tornado potential looked to be slim-to-none for the CO/NE target, as dew points were not quite high enough.  Still, the prospects of chasing a supercell on the High Plains was so much more appealing than trying to chase tornadic supercells through the trees and mountains of E OK, that I decided to head northwest into Colorado.  I told the guests not to expect a chase the following day, as I doubted that we could make it back east and south in time.

 

Our target area was near Sterling to Wray in northeast CO, and as we headed north through Yuma County on 385, a cell strengthened to our NNW near Chappell, NE.  The cell was tornado-warned just as we stopped south of it on the Sedgwick/Phillips county line!  A large wall cloud appeared to loom a few miles to our north, but the contrast was poor.  A spotter had reported a rotating wall cloud, and this prompted the warning.  We got up close on the updraft’s southeast side and observed a decent lowering with some slight rotation.  The supercell, like the day before, had a nasty look to it and it was turning ESE into the inflow.  The race was on again to stay in front of it as we utilized the unpaved “section” roads.  Early on the cell was blowing cool air out at us.  An area filled with precip wrapped around on the updraft’s south side and chased us farther southeast to Vanango, NE.  From here we had to boogie quickly ENE to Grant, with a view into the notch to the east.  A prominent and blocky wall cloud hung close to the ground, near Routes 61 and 23 on the east side of Grant.  The supercell was tracking east-southeastward, and the road network went from bad to worse here, so we could do little but watch as the storm continued into southeastern Perkins County.  We stayed a little too long near the core southeast of Grant and caught some golfball-sized hail in the wrap-around precip curtains.  Halfway to Imperial, we had, like the previous day, a great view of the supercell structure on its south side.  On our way to another intercept near Palisade, the cell elongated and weakened.  It was maybe 7 p.m. by this time, and I could start thinking about the next day.  Maybe if we drove a bit tonight, and got up early the next day, we could catch something worthwhile on Day 10!  I booked rooms in Wakeeney, KS, on I-70, and we drove through a lot of heavy rain to get there near midnight.  Another 500-mile-plus chase day in the books:  588 miles.

 

MAY 10, 2008  SE KS/SW MO tornadic supercell

 

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:

 

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.  Severe parameters appeared very good by 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 helped us elect to check out the northern storm

instead of targeting the southern storm.  Obviously, the southern storm often

has the better tornado potential if two storms are near each other.)  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. 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. 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. 

Bill Reid 

 

 

MAY 11, 2008  T1 Departure Day

 

 

 

This was the departure day for Tour One, so we had to leave Tulsa before 7 a.m. and get to DFW by 1 p.m.  I dropped off several in our group at DFW, returned the rental minivan, washed the van with the help of Kirstie and Jen, and headed up the road to OKC for the start of Tour 2 the following day.. 

 

MAY 12, 2008  T2 Arrival Day

 

We met with the 16 guests for Tour 2 and hit the road for Chickasha, OK.  My drivers for this tour are Rob Petitt, Chris Gullikson, and Kinney (The Gardener) Adams.  Our media group consisted of Jenna Blum and Marcia Perez.

 

MAY 13, 2008  OK Bust

 

There was a fairly decent chance of tornadic supercells on this day along the I-35 corridor in OK.  In fact, I think we had a moderate risk over much of Central OK.  We targeted the area around Duncan, and watched and waited as some storm towers tried to break through the warm cap.  We were in between upper-level support/waves, though, and the cap won out.  There were some marginally severe cells near OKC, and none south of Norman.  We blasted southwest into Texas and caught a weakening supercell near Graford just after sunset.  I found 17 rooms for the group in Weatherford.  330 miles.

 

MAY 14, 2008  San Angelo, Brady, and Llano supercells

 

Yet another big day with somewhat high hopes for tornadoes!   My forecast target spot was a little west of San Angelo, TX, and that worked out quite nicely.  After our lunch in Sweetwater we went south towards San Angelo.  A strong storm developed quickly west of San Angelo and moved east.  After an agonizingly long fuel and pit stop in San Angelo, we blasted a little southwest of town to view a fabulously structured and rather skeletal-looking LP supercell.  It moved southeast, to our southwest, and dumped some dime-size hail on us.  Meanwhile, a second updraft was exploding just to our southeast.  This was an absolute beast of an updraft, and we really needed to get in position on it.  Unfortunately, the road network was sparse and we were forced to drive quite a ways south-southeast to U.S. 190 before we could blast east.  And, the darn supercell decided that it was Kentucky Derby day or something and it was moving ESE at about 45 mph, towards Eden.  The shear markers on this thing reached up to about 126 mph as we got south and finally southeast of it along U.S. 190.  Also, to our ESE, was a new and vigorous updraft.  This would become the “Llano” supercell.  It split and sent a left-mover scurrying north towards the Eden beast.  The Eden storm ingested the left-mover as an afternoon snack.

 

At Brady we were in position in front of the tornado-warned (Eden) cell.  The supercell was a massive HP with great multi-tier structure.  We stopped on a residential road and a lady screamed at us that a tornado was coming and we needed to take cover.  After about five minutes the thing was nearly upon us and we had to get outta town.  There was a wicked green maw descending upon Brady…though any tornadic area must have been mostly precip-wrapped.  Our group fled southeast as the edges of the core impacted us.

 

We managed a few quick stops on 71 to Fredonia for views of the structure.  The supercell didn’t have quite the nasty look it once had.  The core of the Llano storm was now just to our southeast, and 71 took us directly into it.  This cell was now tornado-warned, headed towards Llano, and was only moving about 25 mph.  We could get in position on it, if we were willing to flirt with the core.  So, we pressed onward.  Hail size grew to dimes and pennies and persisted, but did not slow us down much.  As we neared Llano, the radar was showing a nice “TVS’ (tornado vortex signature) quite close to Llano.  A tornado could be in progress only 5 miles away!  We couldn’t see, though.  It was too dangerous to continue plunging southeastward through the core, and my plan was to wait a little in Llano beneath some protective covering until visibility improved.  Well, we didn’t quite make it.  Very heavy hail began to pound us as we entered Llano.  Some stones were golfball in size, and the sound was deafening.  Visibility was a hundred feet and the wind was strong from the north.  We pulled in quickly besides a metal building, which provided minimal protection from the hail and a little protection from the wind.  The hail and wind let up slightly and the streets began to flood somewhat.  Tempest driver and guide Chris Gullikson indicated that we should try to continue south out of town, as radar showed that we were on the southern fringe of the hail core, and any alleged “tornado” would be a few miles southwest of town.  We followed Chris for about a block, and then the hail barrage really started to crank.  Visibility was only 30 or 40 feet.  We could not hear each other speak, nor could we communicate on the radio.  I had Rob turn the van around and pointed him towards a strong overhang/covering at a car dealership in Llano.  The media vehicle followed, but the minivans remained exposed for the most part a couple of blocks away.  I was able to exit the big van with my camcorder, and I videoed the new trucks at the dealership “getting the business.”  Rob picked up a bunch of golfball-sized stones, and the barrage continued for several more minutes.  Yes, all of the vehicles received plenty of small hail dings and pimples, but somehow all of the windows and other vehicle parts escaped unscathed.

 

As the hail let up we scooted south through Llano, where hail drifts were a foot deep and the roads were white.  The low-level meso, or the “action area”, was not too far to our southeast, and we continued southeast on 71.  By this time the Doppler On Wheels truck and the Tornado Intercept Vehicle and its 10-vehicle entourage were right behind us.  We let them pass, and eventually we came up on an interesting area with some rotation and lowerings, but it appeared less than well-organized.  The storm continued ESE towards Marble Falls as darkness fell.  We found ourselves on a high point south of Marble Falls, and saw a wicked “notch” area just north of town with frequent CGs and a rain-wrapping free-for-all.  Apparently a good-sized tornado was not able to become established.  We saw the wet RFD wall-of-wind approach, and blasted south as small branches were rendered from trees.

 

We stopped at a nearby convenience store for a much-appreciated pit stop, and then went for our rooms in Fredericksburg.  512 miles.

 

MAY 15, 2008  Eagle Pass, TX, Supercell

 

At our morning briefing in Fredericksburg, we targeted the Rio Grande River area somewhere between about Del Rio and Eagle Pass.  Parameters looked good for supercells if storms could develop over the mountains in Mexico west of Del Rio.  If the storms didn’t turn too hard to the right, then they should make it to the international border for our viewing pleasure.

 

We had a nice Mexican lunch in Rock Springs and continued southwest to Del Rio.  A storm went up in the mountains, west of Del Rio, just as planned!  We had to wait about three hours for it to reach the U.S.  This occurred at Eagle Pass, and the cell was tornado-warned.  The base was a little on the high side and there was plenty of precip involved with the updraft, but the structure was impressive nonetheless.  The core neared and chased us south a few miles, and Eagle Pass was munched by hail up to almost 3 inches in diameter.  We went southeast to El Indio, but the cell elected to move more easterly than east-southeasterly, so we could not view the notch area adequately.  As the storm drifted east we caught the back edge of the updraft and a tight, spinning protrusion, but the storm was not in a tornado mood.

 

New strong cells blew up in Mexico and gave us a nice lightning show on our wet drive back to Del Rio.  380 miles.

 

MAY 16 and 17, 2008  Big Bend, TX

 

We reached the Big Bend National Park in light rain on the 16^th and photographed the purple cactus.  Our rooms were in Terlingua, chili capital of the world, on the west side of the park.  278 miles.  On the following day we were in sight-seeing mode along the Rio Grande from Lajitas and halfway to Presidio, and then at the Sotol overlook at sunset.  Dinner both days was at the fine Starlight Theatre in Terlingua.  147 miles.

 

MAY 18, 2008  Positioning Day, Terlingua to Santa Rosa, NM  469 miles

MAY 19, 2008  Santa Rosa to Limon, CO   Virga Bombs, little else