2008 OKWeatherWatch Storm Chase

Chase Days: 29

Total Miles: 11,397

Observed Tornadoes: 12

March 2 - xx:xx x.m. - xx:xx x.m. CST (xx hrs xx min) xxxxx-xxxxx (92 miles)

Decided to go ahead and add this late entry to the log. There were a few scattered supercells across western Oklahoma. I spent most of the afternoon trying to work out various equipment problems... and at the last minute decided to make a run toward a tornado warned cell in Blaine County. The storm was on the downhill slide when I picked it up east of Okeene and returned home having barely made it out of Kingfisher County.

March 30 - 4:52 p.m. - 11:39 p.m. CDT (6 hrs 47 min) 28839-29125 (286 miles) MAP

My original target this day was northwest/north central Oklahoma in advance of a small surface circulation that was moving through Major County. The atmosphere was very unstable across a large part of the state east of a dry line... but there were also questions about how strong the cap would be and if storms would form in the daytime. Questions about initiation were answered shortly after I started toward Enid, OK... but they were forming opposite of where I was headed. The first storms became severe in Washita and Greer Counties. Not wanting to leave my target area too quick... I stayed near Enid for about an hour before accepting the fact that the sky did not look favorable for storms. It took about an hour and a half to get back south to Weatherford, OK. Upon arrival... there were three supercells roaming through Washita and extreme southeast Custer Counties. I grabbed the first one that I came across which was just south of Weatherford. This storm had very impressive structure at times as it moved into Caddo County... but for the better part of it’s life, it looked too high based to present a serious tornado threat. By 9 p.m. I had decided to change my target to the western storm which was near Bessie, OK. It would have taken a core punch to get to the business end of the supercell to my south - near Albert, OK - and it appeared to have some extremely large hail with it. The Bessie storm had very high reflectivity and a great appearance on radar - but visually did not provide much of a photo opportunity. I ended up taking highway 152 back to highway 81 and north, home. This took me through the eastern supercell which was located between Minco and El Reno. I saw some golfball size hail 5 miles south of El Reno. All in all... not a bad first chase of the year.

PICS (Weatherford storm): ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX

March 31 - 10:49 a.m. - 11:02 p.m. CDT (12 hrs 13 min) (DS,EM) 29125-29607 (482 miles) MAP

Doug, Erin and I left Norman, OK eastbound on highway 9... with a general target of - south of I-40 and east of I-35. The dryline was still west of I-35... but surface winds had veered considerably and we felt that storms may not become tornadic until they reached the southeastern part of the state. Besides the veering surface winds... one of our problems this day was weak capping which resulted in numerous - too numerous - storms. Our drive through Seminole, Hughes and Coal counties was wet... no, very wet as we dealt with several storms in close proximity to each other. There were a couple of storms that we targeted.... but neither had very impressive structure and looked unbalanced to the outflow side of things. We were near Wapanucka, OK when we decided to target a supercell forming near Lake Texoma. This storm looked a little more isolated than the others and had some good structure on radar. It became tornado warned in eastern Marshall County and we had it in view shortly after - near Silo, OK. This storm was the best of the day for us and had some excellent structure... good rising motion and we were able to detect a broad sense of rotation. Later... it appeared that it was close to producing a tornado near Caddo, OK... but we only had a short view of this organization as we ran out of roads and the mesocyclone became rain-wrapped.

PIC (Johnston County storm near sunset): ONE

April 7 - 3:42 p.m. - 11:46 p.m. CDT (8 hrs 4 min) (DS) 30121-30482 (361 miles) MAP

When Doug and I left Okarche, storms were forming just south of the Red River in Wichita and Wilbarger Counties of northwest Texas. We didn’t target these storms... and felt confident that storms would form further north in southwest Oklahoma. By the time we reached Chickasha, OK... the northwest Texas activity had consolidated into a single supercell in northeast Wilbarger County. It was now tornado warned... right moving and headed toward northwest Wichita County - staying south of the Red River. We continued southward on I-44... watching for signs of storm initiation in Oklahoma... and still not targeting the Texas supercell. 1) We didn’t want to go into Texas and 2) we didn’t think that we could do it without a core punch. Stopping at the Walters exit... we watched the storm to our south gradually weaken and drift northward across the river to our southeast. While this occurred... several weak storms formed to our northwest in southwest Comanche County... only to weaken shortly after formation. One got strong enough to grab our attention and we moved northward to the Geronimo exit around 7 p.m. (PIC looking northwest and another of Kelly Thomas Field looking southeast) When these storms stopped showing signs of life... we headed back south to take a look at a couple of supercells that had formed in Wichita and Archer Counties. We stopped north of the Red River to photograph a left split that had come from the Wichita County storm (PIC PIC). Our new target storm started to weaken about the time we reached it in Wichita Falls, TX. By 8:30 p.m.... we were headed back home. There was a nice lightning show with new storms that had formed in Canadian County. One of these surprised us as we approached Okarche and became an impressive supercell which tracked eastward into Oklahoma County. We followed it for awhile experiencing hail up to quarter size and some interesting lowerings and cloud motions... dropping the storm on the southeast side of Piedmont as it began to accelerate through the metro area.

April 24 - 3:19 p.m. - 9:22 p.m. CDT (6 hrs 3 min) (DS) 31341-31588 (247 miles) MAP

This one goes down as a true bust with regard to weather. While Doug and I knew that there were questions about initiation... we were surprised that we hardly saw a cloud! We spent some time in Kiowa, KS (PIC PIC) looking at the local scenery. Then some time by the canola fields near the state line. (PIC PIC)

May 1 - 3:29 p.m. - 8:50 p.m. CDT (5 hrs 21 min) 31973-32122 (149 miles) MAP

I managed to squeeze this chase in between some work hours. I needed the storms to be close enough and form early enough to allow me to get out and back to work by 9 p.m. For a change... Mother Nature cooperated. Several supercells formed in Kansas and northern Oklahoma... I picked the southern most storm which formed over Blanchard and moved northeast through the eastern sides of the Oklahoma City metro area. While I never saw a tornado from it... the overall storm structure was amazing! Here is an image during the explosive development as it approached Moore and southern OKC. I took up somewhat dangerous positions around the storm (east and north of the updraft) just to see storm structure from a little different point of view for a change. Here was a view looking back to the west from about NE. 10 and Choctaw Rd. (PIC PIC). I don’t know how I managed to do it.... but I escaped getting hit by the many baseball to softball size hailstones that were falling around me. Just east of Choctaw and Wilshire is where I think the updraft structure was most incredible (PIC PIC). I followed the storm into the Wellston area before making a dart back to work. Fun, short and well worth the days effort.

May 5 - 4:33 p.m. - 10:10 p.m. CDT (5 hrs 37 min) 32377-32666 (289 miles) MAP

I didn’t really plan on chasing this day. However... convection began forming on a weak surface boundary that extended from the northwest corner of the state to just north of my house in Okarche by mid afternoon. A slow moving supercell was located well to the northwest in Woods County when I left to examine weaker developing showers around Kingfisher. The close activity never took hold and I found myself drifting farther and farther northwest toward the Woods County storm. I stopped to shoot a few pictures near the Glass Mountains in Major County... then continued north intercepting the isolated supercell west of Alva. This storm was well elevated and small by the time I got to it. I grabbed a few lightning shots and headed toward home at sunset.

May 6 - 11:02 a.m. - 1:28 a.m. CDT (14 hrs 26 min) (DS) 32666-33384 (718 miles) MAP

Doug and I left not really knowing what atmosphere evolution might take place in the Texas Panhandle... but we felt there were enough things going for the day to make a run at it. We got to Amarillo well before the show started... so we hung around the parking lot of the National Weather Service for a short time and then made a visit to my Aunt’s house in the far northwest part of the city (kind of like a scene out of ‘Twister’ - but my Aunt Gwen is cooler than Aunt Meg). By 5 p.m... we had moved to Vega and watched as several TCU/small CB’s made attempts to our west near the New Mexico border. By 5:30 p.m... we had decided that these were having a difficult time with it and we directed toward a storm that was forming about an hour south of us in Bailey County. Upon arrival... there were several updrafts that were having trouble getting organized into a single storm. We stopped a few miles south of Olton: PIC PIC... and again a couple more miles south. Here our storm had moved out of the way just enough to reveal the updraft of a LP storm a few miles west. We moved a little to the west and were able to watch this beautiful storm for quite a while: PIC PIC PIC PIC. By 7:40 p.m... we had become surrounded by supercells - not a bad position to be in. We had the LP to the west... a left split supercell approaching us from the south and our original storm to the east. Our storms suffered poorly from the interaction of outflow and convection that approached from the south. There never appeared to be a significant tornado threat. TIME LAPSE VIDEO (50 seconds)

May 9/10/11 - 5:00 p.m. - 10:06 p.m. CDT (53 hrs 6 min) 33436-34398 (962 miles) MAP

This was pretty much as bad of waste of time as you can get. I stayed the first night with a friend near Canadian, OK. This would be a good jumping off point for the 10th... little did I know how good of jumping off point it would be. Had I stayed at his house... I might have seen a tornado from his back deck. But... I targeted Arkansas instead and drove southeast toward De Queen. I finally picked up a well organized supercell near Benton... but the combination of trees... lack of roads and traffic near Benton made it impossible keeping up with this storm. Returning westward on I-40... I picked up another supercell after dark just north of Russellville. Again... trees and lack of visibility kept me from seeing any of the business end of this storm. I overnighted in Russellville and watched all the tornado reports file in from Oklahoma earlier in the evening. There’s a good reason I don’t chase eastern Oklahoma or Arkansas. I just need to do it every few years to remind me...

May 13 - 2:24 p.m. - 11:32 p.m. CDT (9 hrs 8 min) 34403-34610 (207 miles) MAP

I had a bit more hope for this day. Plenty of moisture/instability and a boundary hanging around the area.... plus some decent flow upstairs and we were set for some supercell chances fairly close to home. The short drive was the best part. Updrafts were generally weak and skinny and I gave up on the day early in the evening. I made a couple of stops on the way back to shoot some video for time-lapse (27 seconds). Not my best... but a little salvage work on the day.

May 20 - 11:28 a.m. - 9:22 p.m. CDT (9 hrs 54 min) (TL) 34826-35388 (562 miles) MAP

Long day spent mostly covering ground. We ended up seeing a few non-severe storms near Sterling, CO which were the first that Tom had seen since he got here a week earlier. The pattern was changing and this was just the start. (Photo by chase partner Tom Lynch)

May 21 - 11:36 a.m. - 10:38 p.m. CDT (11 hrs 2 min) (TL) 35388-35787 (399 miles) MAP

We expected more storms and got them... but the low levels were still fairly dry and most storms were high-based with little in the way of interesting structure. Near sunset... we did observe a supercell storm north of Straton, CO which held our interest for a time before heading to Goodland, KS for the night. We would meet up with ITV cameraman Chris Terrill and the rest of the U.K. crew the following day. Photos courtesy of Tom Lynch: Me and Chris / Ian, Nick, Paul, Me, Tom, and Jim Andy not pictured

May 22 - 11:15 a.m. - 11:29 p.m. CDT (12 hrs 14 min) (TL) 35787-36130 (343 miles) MAP

TORNADO #1 - 5:06 p.m. - 5:10 p.m. - from 6 SSE of Selden to near Selden in Sheridan County, Kansas - large multiple vortex

TORNADO #2 - 6:12 p.m. - 6:17 p.m. - about 8 NW of Hoxie in Sheridan County, Kansas - fairly large cone

This was one of the more interesting chases I have ever been on since my first in 1982. I felt sure that there would be tornadoes in Kansas... but the strength of the system for late May had me unsure of just how things would evolve and where the best place to be was. Even as the dryline passed Elkhart, KS during the early afternoon... their winds backed to the south. The cyclone was wrapped up so much... it was throwing a kink in my thinking as the low level flow remained so twisted. As much as I tried to visualize that supercells would track north and meso's would be located on the southeast flank of a storm... it still was hard to watch it evolve and position ourselves in response. Not to mention the speed of the storms. We left Goodland and moved southeast to Oakley and finally south of Gove before I decided to stop.... because despite most model signals that convection was going to fire southeast of our location.... the backed winds at GCK/DDC/LBL/EHA had me thinking that it was going to be hard to mix the dryline very far east. We had the ITV film maker with us from England.... and he was able to catch on film.... no doubt for public viewing later on.... me looking like an idiot... not once, but twice. The first time was when the tornado warning was issued for Weld County. I explained that it's not unusual for tornadoes to happen in the highly sheared region.... back near the surface low with very cold temperatures aloft. But... most of those are weak, small and short-lived tornadoes.... sometimes “non-mesocyclone”... that rarely do anything. It wasn't an hour later that we were online watching video from a Denver station showing the large tornado and finding out that it killed someone. So... I spent the next hour trying to explain how rare an event like that was and why we were not there. Storms began to organize around Garden City around 1930z. We didn't move because they looked rather linear for a period. It didn't take long however... for the line segment to break into a couple of discrete supercells. We moved to the south of Healy and watched the north cell to our west which looked small in volume go by... then the south cell take on a very nice supercell look with lowering cloudmass in the updraft region. It was at this point that one of the guys in our party.... fell on his back and managed to put about 200 (what we used to call goathead stickers) into his back/arms and butt. Yes, for about 15 minutes while an organizing supercell was tracking to our west.... we took turns pulling these things out of him. (Photo by chase partner Tom Lynch) Paul is a great guy and it really didn’t cost us any time.... it was just one of several firsts for the day. We finally got going back north toward Gove.... our storm wasn't looking as good and others were forming back to the south... in the Garden City area once again. I was very close to pulling off of our storm and heading back south when a tornado warning was issued for the storm just north of us. A light-bulb actually did come on and made me realize that the magic was happening as storms were approaching the warm front and all we had to do was wait ours out. Sure enough... as soon as ours approached I-70.... we were back in business with a rapidly intensifying supercell. We didn't see the tornado that happened near Grainfield....but overall, the storm was very impressive and everyone was pleased that we were rolling again. We zigzaged through some rural roads between Grainfield and Hoxie.... convinced that the meso was wrapped up and we would not likely see anything. I decided that it was going to be “Custer's last stand” west of Hoxie and we headed up there with the intent of being in the right place as the storm passed highway 24. We made it there.... just in time to see the storm look like crap visually. It appeared that a big surge of outflow had wrapped around the south and east sides of the storm and had the ugly look you would see behind a typical gust front. One of those that you always think has a chance to be wrapping back in somewhere and could do something... but never does. Until today. Chance of looking like an idiot on film number two: While I'm explaining how this outflow was wrapping around and that the storm was starting to go down hill.... rapid cloudbase rotation developed a few miles to our northeast. It was impressive enough to have me stop in mid sentence and start toward my video camera. Within a minute.... we had a large multi-vortex tornado to our north. The map showed that the gravel road we were sitting on 8 w of Hoxie went through all the way to Selden. We headed that way watching this very impressive multi-vortex event continue to unfold for a few miles.... doing fine at about 40 mph.... when the road went to mud. You wouldn't have been able to find a pebble of rock in a hundred yards of this road. I am still proud of the fact that of the three vehicles in our convoy.... I was the last one to go into the ditch.... making ME the best driver of the bunch. Without anyway of getting out... the only thing to do was to continue filming as the very impressive tornado.... moved steadily north and just went away into the distance. I never said a word to anyone else.... and while they worked on trying to push their cars out.... I just set off toward the closest farm about 1/2 mile to our south. I think everyone wondered where I was going when I just went walking down the road.... but, I think that everyone could tell that I wasn't in the mood to explain. Luckily, I found one of the nicest farmers in Kansas at the house. I was SO glad that he had never had a problem with a storm chaser before. I was soon riding in the cab of a John Deere tractor back to the scene of the wreckage. Of course it was only right that I was the one to crawl under the cars to hook up the chains. They have all captured some great pictures of me covered from head to toe in good ol Kansas mud. Larry Hill was our savior.... he didn't want money but we forced a 100 bucks on him anyway and I took down his address. He will be getting a Christmas card from me this year. (PHOTO PHOTO by chase partner Tom Lynch) We went back down the road we came north on to highway 24 and back east toward Hoxie as a supercell was passing just to our east. It wasn't but a few miles down the road that a cone tornado to our north became evident in the poor contrast. Eventually it exposed itself more and we were able to film it roping out several miles to our north. Of course this was the time that we came across the damage path it caused about 4 w of Hoxie and our chase was brought back to a stop again. Power lines (Photo by chase partner Tom Lynch) were keeping anyone from getting by and we were left again looking for a way around. Another nice farmer told us that there are NO roads west of Hoxie that would allow us to get north without getting stuck....and we went back west/south and east to get back into Hoxie. These roads were not that much better and there were several times that we thought we would end up in the same shape as before. We made it through and over to Hill City where a large, wrapped up meso passed just west of the city. I'm convinced that something was happening there....but we were never able to see anything for sure. After watching a stream of fire/ems and police head north of HLC... we moved south to WaKeeney to get fuel and watch yet another strong, wrapped up and hidden meso move over. This one caught us as we were trying to escape to the east on I-70. Winds to 70+ and extremely heavy rain made the driving dangerous....but all I wanted at that time was to get the hell out of the way and be done with the day. We watched one final storm after dark form south of Wakeeney and track to our northwest before heading back into Hays where we crashed for the night. We spent two hours telling stories before bed. Two tornadoes were cool.... but they were the last things that were mentioned. If anyone is wondering what Kansas mud looks like (Photo by chase partner Tom Lynch).... all you have to do it look at my feet. I'm sure some of it will still be there for several weeks to come. VIDEO of large multiple vortex tornado while we were stuck. TIME LAPSE VIDEO of first storm.

May 23/24 - 11:59 a.m. - 11:01 p.m. CDT (11 hrs 2 min) (TL) 36130-36768 (738 miles) MAP

TORNADO #1 - 5:15 p.m. - 5:22 p.m. - from 5 NW Dighton to 4 W Shields in Lane County, Kansas - wide multiple vortex

TORNADO #2 - 5:37 p.m. - 5:42 p.m. - about 6 N Shields in Lane County and likely tracked into Gove County, Kansas - large cone

TORNADO #3 - 7:29 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. - about 4 SE Ransom in Ness County, Kansas - large cone

TORNADO #4 - 8:21 p.m. - 8:25 p.m. - about 1 SW of and into Ellis in Ellis County, Kansas - large trunk

I made some mistakes early in the day... but there were so many tornadoes that one couldn’t help but running into some eventually. My biggest mistake was moving well south of the warm front... thinking that tornado potential this day would extend well south along and east of the dryline. While tornadoes did indeed develop further south.... most waited until well into the evening. We left Hays and moved all the way to Dodge City before grabbing hold of storms to the west and following them north - closer to the warm front. We were able to see a couple of tornadoes north of Dighton with the first storm we targeted. The first tornado was fairly large at first and evolved into a brief cone shape before weakening. The second tornado was a large cone tornado that moved into Gove County (VIDCAP VIDCAP). We shifted east after this storm passed (should have followed it north toward Quinter where it produced a larger tornado)... and picked up our next storm near Ness City. This storm had an extremely impressive radar signature as it approached the west side of Ness City.... but didn’t show itself as a tornado until it was several miles to the north northeast. We followed it to near Ellis where it produced an impressive tornado after dark which may have impacted the west side of the city. The tornado was lit up several times by bright power flashes. I think this would have been a great event to see during the daytime.... but impressive enough at night. We ended the day in Great Bend.

May 24 - 2:31 p.m. - 11:30 p.m. CDT (8 hrs 59 min) (TL) 0-237 (237 miles) MAP

TORNADO #1 - 3:07 p.m. - 3:16 p.m. - NW of Hennessey in Garfield County, Oklahoma - cone

TORNADO #2 - 3:37 p.m. - 5 E Bison in Garfield County, Oklahoma - large cone

TORNADO #3 - 4:32 p.m. - 3 S Douglas in Garfield County, Oklahoma - very wide multiple vortex

TORNADO #4 - 5:39 p.m. - 4 SW Perry in Noble County, Oklahoma - cone

TORNADO #5 - 5:39 p.m. - 8 SW Perry in Noble County, Oklahoma - cone

I left this morning at 6:30 am from Great Bend in order to pick up a rental SUV in Yukon that was to be called home for two arriving guests and ITV cameraman (Chris). Plan was to get a little rest, meet Chris... load the SUV and pick up Lorraine and Gareth in the evening. Seemed simple enough... until I noticed that we had been included in a tornado watch. So much for the needed nap. I couldn't argue against something pretty good happening based largely on the mesonet plot and degree of instability. I held off....jjjjjjjjust a bit longer before the tornado warning was issued including the county that I live in. In a mad dash, I threw what I thought I would need in the truck and started north on highway 81. Making it through Hennessey by way of dirt tracks.... i was able to see one of the final set of early cones that happened west of highway 81. I continued to work my way north on roads that were not the best in the world....but seemed to be doing fine without very recent rain. They still had that feel that they had been moistened up the night before....but managed to kick up dust as I drove. So, all is well I thought. I turned east from highway 81 about 1.5 miles south of Bison. The road was paved and all was good to keep me in position for the next tornado event. At least for a mile. I was a little worried about the road changing to dirt....but much like the others... little recent rain made it fine to travel down. I pulled down to a nice oil lease road and watched. About the time things started to look interesting to my east....i heard the sound of the rain coming. It only lasted a couple of minutes and wasn't very heavy. But....the damage it had caused was done. My road had become an ice rink. I tried several attempts at getting out of the valley I was in....only to finally end up in the same spot I was about 48 hours earlier. I'm sure you all saw this coming like a bus down 6th ave. Once again.... I was walking, ankle deep, carrying my shoes up a bunch of slop they used to call a road. I was lucky that my crap AT&T service actually let me call Hank Baker who was only 1.5 miles from me at highway 81 where I started. Telling him I was stuck.... he said he would be right there and would pull me out. I repeated several times “DON'T COME DOWN HERE!” He tried anyway only to stop about 50 yards in - use full 4 wheel drive and reverse and barely managed to get himself out. You have no idea some of the things that were going through my head as I once again made that walk. I would stop about every 50 feet or so and turn around to see the nice cone that had formed about the time of my incident. It took 28 years to get stuck the first time....and 2 days for it to happen again. I could barely walk up this hill.... carrying gear would have made it worse. So... all was left in the car. I jumped in with Hank at the top of the hill and the chase was back on. This time.... without any type of camera at all and riding shotgun. No tape recorder for a log....I couldn't even find a piece of paper and pencil to draw a picture of what I was seeing. We got to watch a beautiful evolution of a very large tornado between Douglas and Marshall. Then shifted east of I-35 where we watched a couple of solid tornadoes occur at the same time we believe somewhere near Orlando. To the defense of being useless..... it was quite amusing and somewhat soothing to watch the others around me stress out... cuss and fumble with various tripods/cameras and vidcams. The decision was made easier for me since all of my stuff was sitting in a ditch about 25 miles to the west. I kicked back and watched and repeated several times - serenity now, serenity now... In all....I ended up with 5 tornadoes on the day. First time ever for me to land tornadoes on 3 consecutive days....but I have paid the price to do it. Despite a good scrubbing in one of the greatest showers ever.... if you look close, I think you can tell the difference between black Kansas dirt and red Oklahoma dirt under my toenails. Alvin (the tow truck driver) was able to get our SUV out of the ditch the following morning... only to find out that it wasn’t big enough for our upcoming trip anyway. It went right back to Enterprise Rental - with a bit more mud than it had when I picked it up - and was replaced with a 12 passenger van. Thanks to Hank for throwing a brotha a lifeline.... thanks to Bill Wasinger for the airport pickup in my absence and thanks to Alvin for the quick work with the tow.

May 26 - 12:32 p.m. - 12:29 a.m. CDT (11 hrs 57 min) (LE,GP,CT) 9030-9435 (405 miles) MAP

Best shear for supercell storms was located near and north of the Kansas/Oklahoma border. While en route to that general location... we came across some storms that formed near Woodward. We played with the left split on the west side of the city and then the right split near Sharon. Neither storm was very impressive and we headed north to check out a few storms between Buffalo and Alva. We still did not find anything very interesting.... and we moved back south for lightning. We were able to set up near Foss Lake for about 1/2 hour of lightning before returning to Okarche. Lightning photos: ONE TWO

May 27 - 12:27 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. CDT (8 hrs 33 min) (LE,GP,CT) 9451-9798 (347 miles) MAP

Deep layer shear continued to weaken across the state.... but it was clear that there would still be storms and with the instability.... some would be severe. We were trying to get Chris some large hail and we headed into southwest Oklahoma. Storms were getting organized west of Altus and we started west for a core punch between Altus and Duke. We observed golfball size hail just east of Duke. The storm was drifting southwest.... and we had to go into Duke and south for another core punch. On the way south... the hail wasn’t too bad. On our way back north for a final shot at some hail....we came across a very wide area that had a tremendous amount of hail around quarter size. I have never seen so much hail on the ground and in places it was a couple of inches deep and the landscape looked like something you would see in the middle of winter. Trees were totally stripped and all crops were flat to the ground. When we returned to Duke... we found a house with the roof totally involved in fire. My hunch that it could have been lightning started proved true and Chris was able to shoot a lot of video of the firefighting operations providing yet another view of thunderstorm danger. Oh yeah, on the way home... some of the things you see while chasing...

May 28/29 - 6:24 p.m. - 9:57 p.m. CDT (27 hrs 33 min) (LE,GP,CT) 9895-10610 (715 miles) MAP

TORNADO - 5:17 p.m. - 5:20 p.m. - 4 SW Kearney to Kearney in Kearney and Buffalo Counties, Nebraska - cone

The day started so nice.... waking up in Concordia we had dews well into the 60's and a nice southeast wind blowing.... things were setting up nicely for a good severe weather day. We rolled north to I-80 near York and watched severe storms go up in the southwest corner of Nebraska/Northwest Kansas. At first... the storms were going up in an area with dews still in the 50's. They were going to have to move several counties to the east before they got into some 68+ dews near Kearney. One supercell did take shape and started tracking toward Elwood and Lexington...... I just hoped that it would maintain itself long enough to dip into the better moisture. We had great radar data and I felt safe running west on highway 30 from Elm Creek through the core of the storm with the meso well south of us (even south of I-80). We were trying to get Chris some more hail. The meso was exposed enough that I felt even safer being able to see it....combined with the good radar data we were getting. We only came up with quarters between Elm Creek and Overton and gradually worked eastward keeping the area of interest in sight to our southeast. Just east of Odessa... we observed a cone tornado in poor contrast to our southeast. We came across some strong RFD winds (60-70 mph).... nothing too bad. It was strong enough however..... to topple about 80 cars of an empty coal train that was sitting just south of us. I was watching the tornado.....but the guys in the car behind us said that they were able to watch the train fall like dominoes as we drove by. They even caught a little of it on video. The tornado wasn't evident as we drove close and through Kearney....but there was a considerable amount of EF1 type damage as we went through the city. It looked like the tornado rotated north of Kearney and we dropped south to go east on I-80. We got some golfballs for a brief period of time south of Shelton.....but otherwise things were uneventful as we shot east on the interstate. Things really started looking messy on radar (and visually) for the trip toward the Aurora exit. There was probably a couple areas of good rotation well north of the interstate.....but besides that, just many - non visually interesting cores forming and moving quickly north toward the supercell system. We decided to get gas, drink and food at the Aurora exit (Loves) and look at data further to see where our next play - if any - was going to be. My last look at radar showed an increasing core to our southwest....but it looked cutoff by the RFD/outflow spreading east from our original storm. From this point on.... I saw virtually no radar data. I went into the store while the guys fueled up the vehicles.... got something to eat and drink..... hit the head.... and generally thought our day might be over. All in all... it took about 15 minutes. When I returned.... I saw that our storm to the SW had increased rapidly and was surging toward us. I guess I should have taken the time to look at velocity data.... but even on reflectivity images.... it appeared that a meso was wrapping up to our north or northwest and we were getting ready to be hit with some fairly strong RFD. Little did I know. We quickly discussed our options... and driving away from it was out of the question since rain bands were already starting to hit the property. I told our driver (Gareth) to just point the van to the east and we would ride it out. Our initial gust with the RFD was over 80 mph. Things went to 0 visibility quickly. Within a minute or two.....winds increased to at least 100 mph. It was at this point... Chris started to open the side door. Did I mention that we were pointed east! Before I could get the words out: “DON'T OPEN THE DOOR!!!!”.... it wrapped completely around and slammed my passenger side blowing out the side mirror. Now we had 100 mph winds.... rain and debris blowing throughout the van. As I tried my best to cover up things like the inverter.... laptop.... cameras.... phones and myself.... the wind continued to increase. The van started to move (and seemingly float) a lot as winds increased again..... I'm guessing near 110 mph. The back window blew out and threw a spray of glass throughout the van. Amazingly... everyone pretty much came out o.k. Video from the other vehicle showed that the whole event lasted about six minutes. When it was over.... we had some RV's, trucks and several power poles around us laying over. The Loves canopies were shredded and numerous vehicles in the parking lot had missing glass. After spending an hour sorting things out.... drying out..... picking glass out of our hair, ears and whatever else...we started east on I-80. About a 1/2 mile north of us.... we could see a lot of emergency vehicles and buildings spread out. Yes, our crazy tale could have ended up much worse had this thing decided to spin up a 1/2 or mile south. National Weather Service survey showed that what we couldn’t see.... was a 1/2 mile wide tornado that moved toward us and decided to shift east before getting to us. Once again.... I was caught in a situation that I haven't seen before. I took my eye off an evolving storm and combined with the fact that it went through a RAPID evolution.... almost cost us dearly. For the first time in my chase career.... I was SCARED.... and not in control. As Hank Baker put it.... “we crossed the line”. We were at the mercy of whatever was going to happen to us. I decided that we would just roll into Lincoln and find a place for the night....calling it good. We were getting outflow from the storms to the south that were easily over 50 mph. Within sight of the motel.... a construction sign blew into the road and smashed into the front of our lead vehicle.... taking out part of the front quarter panel. A nice end to the day I thought. I'm not proud of our Aurora deal.... and would have never put us into a position like that had I thought that would be the result. My time spent messing around inside the Loves caused me to drop the ball on what was taking shape..... and by the time I realized what WAS taking shape....it was too late. Call it another learning experience.... or you can say that if you mess around with these things long enough, one is going to bite you eventually.... either way.... I don't want to see anything like it again. I felt bad for Chris because I knew that he felt bad about opening the door. The camera man in him took over and he wanted to get the outside shot. He also lost two of his HD cameras in the interior monsoon.... but not before having filmed all of this experience. You’ll be able to see it in HD next spring!

May 30 - 1:00 p.m. - 11:18 p.m. CDT (10 hrs 18 min) (LE,GP,CT) 10610-10956 (346 miles) MAP

After the events of the previous eight days.... nothing else could go wrong, right? Ha Ha Ha. It took us longer than usual to leave this morning because we had to go to a car wash and vacuum out glass and water from our fun little Aurora, Nebraska experience. We worked our way south through eastern Kansas and finally came across a few storms to the east and northeast of Independence. After having been stuck in the mud a couple of times this year... I really tried to keep us on paved roads. While on one of these roads.... watching a severe storm take on an interesting look to our north.... we did a three point turn around. The back wheels of our van fell just off the pavement and into the soft mud. Yes, it was enough. We were stuck - for me, the third time of the season. This time I wasn’t driving! Gareth came up with the idea of cutting out some seatbelts (like we use them anyway)... and create a tow rope for the Tahoe to pull us out. It worked! I managed to destroy some shoes and shorts with some of that good Kansas mud again... and it was yet another trip to Wal-Mart to replace them. In the end... the storm didn’t really do anything to hold our attention and we shut down in Independence for the night. PHOTOS: ONE TWO

May 31 - 12:25 p.m. - 8:59 p.m. CDT (8 hrs 34 min) (LE,GP,CT) 10956-11149 (193 miles) MAP

We left Independence and slow rolled west and southwest near the Kansas/Oklahoma border to Medford, OK. There would be a chance of supercells generally near and east of I-35.... but we were hoping for something going farther west which would allow us to get into northeast Colorado by the following afternoon. We sat in Medford for about 5 hours watching Cu/Tcu pulse to our south and southeast before giving in and calling it a day. (PHOTOS of a truck load of friends that showed up: ONE TWO THREE FOUR. Storms did go up about 45 miles east of us..... but we just didn’t want to commit to northeast Oklahoma. We stopped in Alva for the night. I explained to Chris that if he wanted to shoot a documentary on storm chasing.... he had to have a bust day in there.... SUNSET

June 1 - 11:31 a.m. - 8:15 p.m. CDT (8 hrs 44 min) (LE,GP,CT) 11149-11674 (525 miles) MAP

A fairly long day of driving with a decent little prize at the end of the trip. We left Alva and drove northwest through western Kansas and far northeast Colorado. There were a couple of supercells taking shape in southwest Nebraska about the time we entered Colorado on I-70. We just needed them to hold together the one to two hours more it would take for us to get to them. One did... and moved southeast toward us allowing us a nice view south of Oshkosh, NE. We shot some time lapse of the structure and then allowed the core to pass over us giving us another round of golfball size hail. The storm never looked to have a serious tornado threat... but was worth the drive. We called Julesburg, CO home for the evening. SUPERCELL: ONE TWO THREE FOUR

June 2 - 12:35 p.m. - 8:06 p.m. CDT (7 hrs 41 min) (LE,GP,CT) 11674-11926 (252 miles) MAP

We seemed to be in pretty good shape starting the day in Julesburg.... with northeast Colorado our target. Good moisture was flowing westward with good shear in place to support a supercell and even tornado threat. As we were heading southwest and south.... a supercell producing grapefruit size hail formed near Burlington, CO.... just out of our reach. It moved slowly into northwest Kansas before weakening. Behind it.... storms had a very difficult time getting organized and it would be near dark before storms organized near Denver and moved out into the plains. By then, we had thrown in the towel and settled in Goodland, KS for the evening.

June 3 - 12:24 p.m. - 11:20 p.m. CDT (10 hrs 56 min) (LE,GP,CT) 11926-12399 (473 miles) MAP

The last day of this tour with our ITV film cameraman. Our forecast ended up spot on. We drove east from Goodland to WaKeeney and then south to Dodge City. A few storms were getting their act together in the central Oklahoma Panhandle and we caught up with them west of Laverne, OK. One supercell became very strong and started producing large hail. It was high-based and we never expected much of a tornado threat.... but we did top off the trip finding between baseball and softball size hail. We spent quite a bit of time in Laverne which got shelled by the large hail. A nice steak dinner in Woodward to celebrate and discuss our journey of the previous days was followed by a quick hop down to Okarche to complete the trip.

June 8 - 5:10 p.m. - 11:15 p.m. CDT (6 hrs 5 min) (GT) 37245-37519 (274 miles) MAP

I picked up Greg at the airport a little later than we expected due to airline delays. Severe storms had already formed in northwest Oklahoma and we might have missed out on one of the better supercells of the day. Still.... we ended up on some pretty nice storms without much of a drive. We went west and southwest out of Watonga.. Thomas and Custer City before coming across good storms west of Hammon. One of these storms took on a very nice supercell appearance and likely was producing some very large hail. We stayed ahead of it while we moved east and took some lightning pictures near Foss Lake.... and again near Watonga. All in all... not too bad of day for just stepping off the plane. LIGHTNING: ONE TWO THREE FOUR

June 10 - 12:11 p.m. - 10:48 p.m. CDT (10 hrs 37 min) (GT) 37594-38008 (414 miles) MAP

This was going to be a travel day with the hope that something could be caught while we headed north. We stopped in the National Weather Service office at Dodge City where we had a nice sit down visit with M.I.C., Larry Ruthi. He told stories of all the tornadoes they had verified in their C.W.A.... and we told stories of our chase season so far. We watched as TCU bubbled out his west window. We ended up playing some storms (weak) just west of DDC that had skinny updrafts which provided some photo ops.... but not what we were wanting on this trip (TIME LAPSE). We did meet some new friends. Closer to sunset... a storm became well established closer to I-70 which eventually moved into Rooks County. We came up on this storm from the south and were treated to some very nice structure and beautiful sunset colors. It ended up being a nice chase day.... especially when considering this was mostly to be used for travel. Supercell photos: ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE

June 11 - 11:54 a.m. - 10:56 p.m. CDT (11 hrs 2 min) (GT) 38008-38416 (408 miles) MAP

After spending the night in Hays, KS.... we drove east to Salina and then north into Nebraska for what was expected to be a significant severe weather day in the central plains. We spent time in Hebron, Gilead and Fairbury as storms organized well to our northeast and southwest of us in Kansas. I thought it only a matter of time before we had some good action in our region. By late afternoon... it became obvious that we would have to move if we wanted on some good storms. The activity that was forming and weakening near the KS/NE border was skinny and generally weak in its attempts to get going. We picked south... and drove to north of Clay Center where we watched as a tornado warned storm approached from Cloud County. Only to see it shrink up and weaken as it got to us. Without much chance of getting back on significant daytime storms... we drove south and west to north of Niles. Here, a storm did manage to become tornado warned... but appeared HP and we took in some lightning before driving further southwest toward Salina. It was dark by the time we were dropping into the north side of Salina and a tornado warned storm was approaching from the southwest. There was another one southwest of it... and we developed a plan to shoot south between the two. Letting the first one pass... we headed south as a beast of a supercell quickly organized to our southwest. Looking at radar... I knew that this was not one that I wanted to deal with - especially at night - and had all the looks of our Aurora, NE storm less than two weeks earlier. It took some stepped up driving.... but we got out of the way in time and listened to radio reports of a large tornado going through the south side of Salina. The tornado ended up getting an EF3 rating and the storm produced hail larger than baseball size which caused extensive damage in the city. We called Newton, KS home for the evening.

June 12 - 11:15 a.m. - 10:00 p.m. CDT (10 hrs 45 min) (GT) 38416-38691 (275 miles) MAP

We left Newton and drifted east with a plan of slow-rolling through a few small towns that we haven’t visited before and figured we were already in as good of position as any for afternoon storm development. We took the road less traveled and saw some country that very little people see anymore... including a stretch west of Madison that took us to some places like Teterville (ONE TWO) and Kenbro (Texaco Hill). We went a little over an hour without passing or being passed by another car. In Madison, we stopped by the old rail depot (oldest wooden railroad depot in Kansas - PHOTOS: ONE TWO) that has been turned into the historical society and talked with Mrs. Isch who took time during her lunch break to tell us stories of Madison’s past. Afterward... we drove north through Emporia and spent a little time in Americus. Storms actually started forming quicker than I expected and we cut our “small town jumping” short and moved west to the area north of Strong City/Cottonwood Falls. Several storms formed and were uninteresting for the most part.... before a supercell formed/became discrete and started rotating strongly west of Cottonwood Falls. Events in a year of firsts continued at this point. We were watching and shooting video of this storm when a BNSF freight train hit the breaks next to us. I’ve had a lot of people come up and talk to me before.... but never have I had a train stop and the engineer and conductor get out and run across a highway to me before. They told me that their dispatcher said there was a tornado coming and they needed to shut down and find shelter. I told them that their dispatcher had in fact, stopped them IN FRONT OF the storm.... and if I was them.... I’d jump in and hook it east. I don’t know if they relayed that information to their dispatcher or not....but a short time later... the black smoke was pouring out and they were on their way. Our storm went on to try and produce a tornado about three times without success... at least as far as we could tell. TIME LAPSE. Our route back south ahead of the storms took us back through our adopted town of Madison before we made it into El Dorado for the evening.

June 13 - 11:04 a.m. - 2:11 p.m. CDT (3 hrs 7 min) (GT) 38691-38878 (187 miles) MAP

June 13 - 5:29 p.m. - 11:23 p.m. CDT (4 hrs 54 min) (GT) 38879-39093 (214 miles) MAP

The first part of our journey was the drive back from El Dorado to Okarche. We spent a few hours at home before heading toward southwest Oklahoma. It looked like the best spot for surface based convection would be near the western end of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.... which is always a good spot to hang around even if storms don’t form. This was Greg’s first trip to this part of Oklahoma and as luck would have it - no storms - but we did have plenty of good photo ops. (ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN EIGHT NINE TEN ELEVEN) TIME LAPSE. By sunset... we had reached Meers and saw elevated storms forming well to our northeast in Canadian County. We drove back up the turnpike and stopped on Red Hill (south of Minco) for some lighting photos (ONE TWO) before returning back to Okarche.

June 14 - 3:58 p.m. - 12:48 a.m. CDT (7 hrs 50 min) (GT) 39095-39492 (297 miles) MAP

Lightning, storm clouds and sunset photos were the goal on what was to be the last day of Greg’s trip... and likely the last planned chase day for me this year. It pretty much worked out like we planned picking up storms in the southeast Texas Panhandle and following them into southwest Oklahoma. We ran into and photographed with Vince Miller and Matt Crowther for the better part of the evening. (Greg, Matt, Vince) There was never a risk of tornadoes.... but the storms did provide us with many good photo ops as we drove through Harmon, Greer, Jackson, Kiowa and Tillman Counties. The return home was interrupted by a badge in Snyder who thought 42 in a 35 mph zone was good enough to add $82 to the local economy. Always nice to have someone out there that can keep us evil law breakers in line. A fun day nonetheless. (Looking northwest from south of Snyder well after sunset)