3/23/09 REPORTS: KS, OK, NE, SD

[Mikey Gribble]

I originally headed for the Medicine lodge area today and was going to target the KS-OK border sout of there, but I decided to ride the first severe warned storm north up to Hutchinson. It had a good base by Kingman, but as it moved north into the drier air it became high based and we bailed to head south. We went down I35 to the KS border and intercepted the storm coming up from Oklahoma. After about 30 minutes it was showing rapid vertical motion and disorganized rotation. I was calling in saying they probably needed a tornado warning, but apparently it never got issued and sure enough a weak tornado touched down for about 10 seconds.The tornado occured about 2 miles southeast of Ashtong. I know a tornado report was posted a couple miles notheast of there, but these very well may have been seperate tornadoes since this was a short spinup that would have been hard to notice if you weren't looking right at it. The vertical motion was pretty intense for a few minutes. I think it's so cool to get to watch clouds developing near the ground, twisting and moving in different directions under a updraft base with good rotation and vertical motion..The tornado occured 2 miles southeast of Ashton Kansas just on the south side of highway 166.

We stayed on the storm for a while longer and it cycled through one more time and looked like it might get it done, but the occlusion became rain wrapped and I lost sight of the lowering. After that the storm started weakening so we just called it a day and are heading home.

Not a bad chase day. I got to play with the equipment and trouble shoot it and we got a weak tornado to go along with it.

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Good chase day in KS and OK. We started in Pratt after busting from a possible day before the day setup. We targeted Medicine Lodge, but quickly moved east meeting up with Michael Carlson, Dann Cianca, Verne Carlson, and Kendle (sorry bro forgot the last name :() Anyway got on some weak storms near Attica around 1pm and tried for small hail, but never got any. Finally got on a decent storm in Oklahoma west of Blackwell and saw the storm quickly acquire rotation and it even produced a nice gustnado. We followed it into Kansas and watched one of the craziest rotating wall clouds I have ever seen. Hopefully the video will do some justice, as it was amazing. Inflow dust blocked our view for several minutes as well as the Arkansas City. We reemerged from town and saw what looked to be like large cone tornado. I filmed it and thought tornado, but I thought it could be scud, minutes later I got a call from Michael Carlson asking me if I saw the large cone, so I assumed I was seeing a tornado. We followed the storm NE and got some timelapse of the incredible motion and inflow, as well as watching the most incredible gustnado I have ever seen that TOUCHED the cloud base for several seconds. Hopefully the video can do that justice too.

Tried to intercept the cell near Stillwater, but gave up and we are now sitting at the Braum's in Perry. Video and pics later!

[Daniel Christianson]

Positioned myself west of Osceola NE at the intersections of Hwy 30 and 92. Sat around for a good hour when cells began firing unsevere at the time near Elm Creek/Kearny and south of Hastings NE. Decided to stay put as storm motions were very fast 45-50 and higher to the north. First warning was issued for clay/adams/hamilton and merrick counties as a cell to the south headed towards Giltner NE was producing penny sized hail doppler indicated. Drove back east as more storms were beginning to fire and become tornado warned. I then intercepted the storm near Osceola and Rising City NE. Here's a pic. http://i586.photobucket.com/albums/ss301/NPRC09dcmw09/3-23-09/storm1.jpg
http://i586.photobucket.com/albums/ss301/NPRC09dcmw09/3-23-09/storm5.jpg

http://i586.photobucket.com/albums/ss301/NPRC09dcmw09/3-23-09/storm4.jpg
http://i586.photobucket.com/albums/ss301/NPRC09dcmw09/3-23-09/storm3.jpg

[Skip Talbot]

Targeted Wichita. Intercepted the isolated cell west of there before it went severe warned. I chased it all the way to almost I-70 before it got away from me at ludicrous speed. Saw the base cycle three times and a lowering which I dont think I can call a wall cloud. Sub severe hail. It was the best storm Ive seen so far this year (which really isn't saying anything). It briefly had a nice hook on radar which got me excited. Suffered dual GPS failures and had to chase without spotter network or GR integration. I managed though as I could get the delorme puck to work in Street Atlas. Will post any pretty pics later.

[jshields]

i went out in eastern nebraska today. i headed west of omaha about 80 miles to columbus, ne. i intercepted my first storm about 15 miles south of there along hwy 92 near the town of rising city, ne. this became the first tornado warned cell of the afternoon in eastern, ne, basically when it was right above me!! the warning was doppler indicated and i didn't see much rotation except a little along the front edge of the cell where i saw a small gustnado out in an open field. i proceded to intercept 2 more cells as i moved eastward along hwy 92, with the last one tornado warned again right before it reached me. i saw a fairly decent lowering but nothing else. the storms were moving n/ne at 50-60 mph, and each one crossed about 15 miles or so further east down the highway. finally i ended up back in my hometown, omaha, just as a tornado warned cell was entering southwest omaha. this storm had been producing confirmed tornadoes southeast of lincoln to just southwest of omaha. thanks to some yahoo driving only 45 mph on the highway, i wasn't able to make it back home before getting cored by this last cell! it was almost midnight dark out with very heavy rain and tons of quarter sized hail. i was listening to the radio and there were media reports of funnels and wall clouds as it entered town. i was unable to see any of this due to the precip core blocking the back end of the cell. finally just as i approached my house the cell passed by enough to see the lowering. at this point there was mainly scud and some rapid rising but no real rotation left. at my house the yard was covered with nickel to quarter sized hail and 1.5" of rain fell in about 30 minutes. a 2nd storm moved through town about half an hour later with winds to 55 mph and more nickel sized hail. i had a metal patio chair blown all the way off our deck down into our yard and it landed on all four of its legs sitting up! reports are now coming in of semis overturned on I-29 north of here near missouri valley and back near lincoln there was damage to some farms. i'll have more info and pics on my blog: http://omahatornadochaser.blogspot.com/

[Elinor McLennon]

Left home about 6pm and went to hwy 74 and hwy 33 just south of crescent. Watched for about 20 minutes as storm developed and became tornado warned just sw of crescent, ok. chased it north up hwy 74 and followed it east until it went outflow dominant. decent chase for march and got some great pics. not a bad day for only 40 minutes worth of driving/chasing.

[Ryan McGinnis]

Pretty fun day for early season. Left from Lincoln,NE at around 2ish and drove west down I-80. Caught my first cell south of York. Followed a promising cell up to around Gresham, NE, then spent a while just trying to get east of the (now) line on an old gravel road. Dropped south of Valparasio into Lincoln and then east on I-80 to catch the rather healthy supercell that developed south of Lincoln. Drove for evvver through buckets of rain on the interstate, hydroplaned a bit, and was a bit shocked at how many signs were blown down. Finally got ahead of it and made my move on Hwy 63.

So here's a mental image: you're rushing south along a paved highway torwards a storm that is booking like 65mph NNE right at you. Your goal: to reach the east paved option in four miles before the circulation does. The gravel is wet and the storm is fast. Finally, you emerge from the penny-hail. Ahead of you, through the murk of wrapping rain curtains, you see a whole mess of rotation on the ground about a mile and a half to your south-southEAST. Oh crap. The inflow is still screaming, but you can see the RFD a'comin. Crap, about to get cored, gotta hit that road! You arrive at the road, only to find that it's... tada, GRAVEL. And wet as hell. And no way are you going to race the tornado on a gravel road. Great.

That's pretty much what it was like a few miles north of Alvo. Good ol' Delorme tricked me with the "thick orange line" that usually means "paved", but today meant "barely maintained gravel". (I really need another program. I shouldn't have trusted Delorme, but dang... you'd think a program that does nothing but map stuff would get the mapping part right. I digress.) So I start turning the car around north with the idea of trying to get back to those trees I saw to maybe break the fall of any big hail and spare the windshield. But now that I look west I see that the sky is very low and definately rotating, and only about half a mile away. I start wondering if maybe I am looking at an occluding meso barelling down on me. Okay, turn back south again. Here comes the RFD! Aaaaah! Luckily after about half a mile I bumped into a home that had a man looking out the kitchen window. I pulled up flush to his garage, ran through the hail, rang the doorbell, and said hello, and chatted with him and his wife inside for a while while he shouted expletives out the front window. The RFD passed and I watched the back end slide away at like a thousand miles an hour. Good lord it's been forever since I've had a chase day when the storms weren't qualifying for pole.

So, backtracked north to 80 and played catch up with the storm all the way to northern Omaha. Here and there I got good enough position to see the obvious wall cloud; I crossed over into Iowa, and after that I rarely got more than a glimpse. Not a lot of NNW roads out there, and hard to catch a storm going that fast by zig-zagging.

I'll post some pics here later once I get them uploaded to the copyright office; I'm sad that I didn't get a pic of the most exiciting part of the chase, the moment where I popped out out the hail and saw the ground circulation. I didn't get the picture because I was too busy yelling "AAAHHHHH!!!!!!!" and mentally calculating whether I should try the east option or look for shelter. Not that it would have made a great picture... a good video, probably, but not a great picture.

**edit** Here a handful of shots from east of McCool Junction. Mostly just atmospheric stuff, though in a couple a wall cloud is trying to form (and not getting anywhere.) The only storm of the day that really seemed to crank was the one that came though south of Lincoln and none of these are of that. Click any of these for the Flickr page where you can see them much larger.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3473/3383400146_9552d3c250.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/digicana/3383400146/)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3579/3382584113_9fb5b82cf7.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/digicana/3382584113/)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3453/3383400492_e2bec89831.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/digicana/3383400492/)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3641/3383400590_8802b39676.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/digicana/3383400590/)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3630/3383400742_3de7b29172.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/digicana/3383400742/)

[Angie Norris]

Got home a few minutes ago from the Logan county storm. I left Norman right after the storm went SVR warned in Kingfisher county with the plan of intercepting it near the Orlando/Perry area. Picked the storm up south of Mulhall and watched as it put down a couple of wall clouds. That little storm was trying hard to produce, but it just couldn't totally get it together. It had some of the COLDEST inflow I think I've ever felt, which is probably what kept it from producing. I did see some small (~0.5") hail at the rest stop near the 174 exit on I-35 about 20 minutes after the storm had gone through.
Not at all bad for the first chase of the year.

[Tyler Burg]

Couldn't leave Omaha until 3:30, but headed west on hwy 92. As we drove through Wahoo, the sirens went off and we we're like sweet! after getting outside of town the base became visible, and we quickly pulled to the side, crap...the cell weakened considerably and I honestly couldn't believe it was tor warned, not much of a lowering anywhere, but we stick with it a while and about 10 minutes later notice what looks like a cone behind a curtain of rain, but I'm not convinced...

http://tonightssky.org/images/032309d.jpg

Then we try to keep on this thing, but can't find a paved road, so we take a gravel one and run into a road closed sign and only have a west option - crap again! Eventually we decided to head back on 92 towards Omaha after my partner got a call from his sister about a tornado warning in Omaha (all this time we have no data, which totally sucked, but I signed up for this NWS severe weather alert thing that sends you texts, but the only problem is, thats all it sends you. I think I got 45 texts all saying "new event. tornado warning from 3.23.09 4:43pm to 3.23.09 5:20pm" - It doesn't tell you for what county! what good does that do? Lol it just annoyed the crap out of me is all it did. Anyways, we head back into Omaha and these train crossing sticks are down and this guy in front of me just goes around them and soon enough I don't see a train and do the same. Driving through the core for most of the way home we finally got a view of the "wall cloud" just crossing dodge street from hwy 6, didn't look like much so we headed home (and because the storm motions were way too fast for the city, let alone the open road).

EDIT: full report up now here... http://tonightssky.org/account032309.html

[Jordan Hartley]

As good of a first chase of the season as anyone could hope for. Marcus York, Steve Rich, and myself left my house in Derby at 315pm. Got on I-35 at the Mulvan exit and went south. Intercepted the storm at the South Haven/Hwy 166 exit and parked it at the gas station there for 20 min. As soon as the chaser caravan converged apon the gas station it started hailing and we started are march east. Got about 3 miles away from I-35 and stopped off on a dirt road. Watched an impressive rfd blast for 10 min then went east another 3 miles. It was at this point that I got video of what I thought was a developing tornado just south of 166. We were too close at that point so we bailed east and missed getting the tornado Mike Gribble reported. I would much rather get out of dodge than stick around and get an amazing shot but have to risk my life in doing it. That paid off because as soon as the area of roation crossed the hwy things went crazy. Paralleled and documented the most violently rotating wall cloud not to have a tornado on the ground ive ever seen. Continued E on 166 as the rotation occluded. I got a large cone on video myself but im 4 miles to SE of this area of interest and it was pretty wrapped up so seeing the ground was impossible. I also have a pretty nice funnel 4 miles W of Ark City as the roation was to my north. Got video of someone chasing the storm in a chopper which was pretty sweet. The inflow into the storm was insane. It was like a scene from the dust bowl. Got excellent structure video all the way to Winfield where we intercepted again and followed it until about 5 miles ene of the airport between Ark City and Winfield. Jumped on the next storm that came out of OK and intercepted it S of Ark City. Watched the storm for about 15 min and called it a day. Stopped at Native Lights Casion and won $47 at one of the slots:) All in all a great day.

[Michael Carlson]

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3433/3381477444_945e8e63d3_o.jpg

REPORT AND PHOTOS HERE (http://michaelcarlsonphoto.blogspot.com/2009/03/photosvideo-severe-weather-outbreak.html)

MODS sorry but it wouldn't let me post in the reports thread you can move it over if need be.

[Dan Cook]

Posted on the behalf of CZandbergen:

Latched on to this cell in Medford OK and saw some nice rotation and RFD at the airport there with a couple of other chasers. It got ahead of us and we had to run very fast east to 35 and then north and the rotation passed over again just south of South Haven KS. We stopped there with a few others and had a great show.

Anyway, I stuck with it across southern KS and headed north through Arkansas City (which is a disaster of a town BTW) and then headed east to intercept. The cell was Tornado Warned at this point but wasn't nearly as impressive as it was 30 min earlier. After taking the only winding hilly road in KS, I shot the following video at the junction of CR 20 Winfield KS and CR1 Winfield KS or 7mi SE of Winfield. That is 7MI SE of Winfield and there were at least two reports I saw on a brief touchdown there.

Long story short, the video isn't that great as I was driving and filming and everything else solo, but I caught a very brief spin up of a gustnado / very weak tornado. The video is from about 1 MI south of the actual tube. I caught it just as I crested a hill and tried to catch up with it, but it was gone by the time I got there. There were three or four others on this as well. Maybe they will have better video. Anyway, here it is. Just freeze the first frame as that is probably the best shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=277pjW-K93s

[Dan Melby]

Being that It is my last semester of school and It is Prob. the last spring that I will just be able to go chasing whenever I want, I had to go today.
I originally targeted Northeast Nebraska but knew that there was no way I would make it there in time, so I headed west on I-80 and hoped for the best. Intercepted the TOR cell in between Eagle and Palmyra, bridges there are not safe down there, consist of a few wood planks with no side rails.. Anyways, the storm was very impressive, the inflow was was insane, I tried to get out to take pics a few times and got sandblasted. I had a clear view of rotation, but never saw anything touch the ground... I tracked the storm as best as I could into Alvo, impossible to keep up on gravel. Dropped south hoping the next one would go, but it didn't, had pretty good structure. Gave it up after that and headed home for a full night of homework..
Try to get a vid up later, but now I have to get my priorities straight, an hour of tv, then homework.:D

[Shane Adams]

Chad, Bridge, Rick Jarvis, and myself observed a brief tornado 2-3 NE of Arkansas City, KS around 5:14pmCDT. It formed just south of route 242, northeast of town, crossed the road about a half mile east of us, and continued north, churning in an open field as a dusty multi-vortex. It dissipated after about a minute. Nice rotation was observed above the debris swirl.

I'll have a detailed account with images up in a day or two.

http://www.passiontwist.com/32309cross.htm

[Shane Adams]

The tornado occured 2 miles southeast of Ashton Kansas just on the south side of highway 166.


Was there a single piece of debris flying around in the tornado, looking like a bird? We were watching the intense twisting lowering south of 166 and noticed what looked like either a large bird flying or a piece of debris. I haven't reviewed all my video yet but I'll definitely be looking at this clip again.

[APritchard]

Wall clouds ruled the day on my end, one of which came pretty close to producing a tornado near Herington.

Wall cloud on first supercell near Herington. It really got it's act together after it's initial downfall to the south.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3628/3381574866_a5db84133e.jpg?v=0

Storm then proceeded to hit the after burners and was soon nothing more than a nice distant storm to me. Looking northeast from Herington.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3445/3381575262_8f7475c351.jpg?v=0

Then drifted about 2 hours south for another cycling supercell near Lost River, Lost Falls? Don't remember which it was... south of Yates Center by about 20 miles.

This one had another blocky wall cloud, but lacked much in the way of organized rotation. Looked pretty cold and outflowy pretty quickly.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3445/3381575580_39d0b28d2c.jpg?v=0

Don't you hate when your road turns into this without so much as a hint of a sign?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3617/3380755441_1095809f83.jpg?v=0

[markstauss]

Not a bad chase for the first one of the season that went beyond trying to capture some lightning pics from my driveway. This also could be near the top of my list for the most disorganized chase I've ever had.

Tried to assemble everything this morning in case I decided to chase this afternoon after work. SLR - Check, Video Camera - Check, Tripod - Check, batteries - check, blank tape - check, gps - in other car, maps - MO map but no KS map, - weather radio/scanner - in closet at home, tripod mount for vid camera - on desk at home office, Kestrel 4000 - next to wx radio at the house.

Had to drop my vehicle off at the dealership this morning for a check engine light and some normal maintenance. After working a full day I picked it up late this afternoon and took advantage of their free wi-fi. Noticed a discreet cell south of Manhattan, KS speeding to the NNE. Decided to leave Shawnee Mission, KS with the hopes of this cell still being discreet when it crossed 36 highway in KS. Called home to get a radar update when I was between MCI and STJ. Tried to walk significant other through a quick radar lesson to find out if I could catch the storm and if it was holding together. I decided to take the chance. I got to 36 and 75 just as the storm was a few miles to the SW of the intersection and caught these pics. Nothing very exciting, some scud clouds, high wind (wish I had packed the Kestrel this morning) and a small dust storm.

Images can be found here.
http://www.houseofstauss.com/images/storm/032309/Dust1.jpg

http://www.houseofstauss.com/images/storm/032309/Dust2.jpg

And one about 5 miles down the road.
http://www.houseofstauss.com/images/storm/032309/Hay.jpg

After this storm passed I headed west on 36 to try to catch the storms nearing Seneca, KS. Deputies had the road closed off so I turned around and headed toward Hiawatha, KS. Stopped for a drink and a snack and the local radio station said another storm was headed that way. Headed south of town and had some help from Lassie that showed up while I was trying to take hand-held lightning pics in 40+ mph winds. That wasn't working so I decided to head on home. Except Lassie decided to take shelter under my truck. I tried to get the dog out from under my truck so he/she walked in front and disappeared. I didn't want to run over it so I got out and found that it had moved to the passenger side for shelter. The storm is getting real close now. Eventually I had to lay on the horn to get the dog to move away. All's good except for the 1" hail reported 2 miles S of Hiawatha is now falling on my truck. Finally made it back to 36 headed east and escaped the hail.

[Brian Emfinger]

More pictures/eventual full report - HERE (http://www.realclearwx.com/032309.htm)

Drove right in on the storm that eventually became the supercell that tracked from near Enid, to I-35 into Kansas, and eventually through Arkansas City and NE from there. Was in pretty good position throughout but missed the tornadoes. It seemed like everytime one of those tornado obs popped up we were repositioning and getting around toward the east side. When the storm was still in Oklahoma N/NE of Medford it really looked like it wanted to drop a tornado. It had a great RFD cut with a really low hanging wall cloud but it looked like the RFD was a bit too strong. Here are a few pics... i got a decent amount of lightning pics off of the dying supercell (that I think tracked near Stillwater) earlier north of Tulsa.

http://www.realclearwx.com/images/2009/032309st01.jpg
and a few min later when the door closed behind the rfd: http://www.realclearwx.com/images/2009/032309st02.jpg



http://www.realclearwx.com/images/2009/032309st03.jpg

http://www.realclearwx.com/images/2009/032309st04.jpg

http://www.realclearwx.com/images/2009/032309st05.jpg

[Connor McCrorey]

I left Plano with David Reimer at around 12:45 PM, and headed up to our initial target of NW Oklahoma City. By the time we arrived, it was clear storms would fire earlier than expected, and would be in better conditions (more instabililty, mainly). We got on the supercell that formed near El Reno and followed to I-35, before leaving it to move on through Stillwater.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1B_GeWbCLw

[Aaron Estman]

Left DFW around 9:30, got to Norman around 11:30 or so. Waited there about an hour then headed west to El Reno. Storms began to fire, me and Erin Wheeler followed a few storms until we saw that the main dominant storm to the south was coming. Blew back south, caught the very nice wall cloud. Then it fizzled out :(

Video soon.

All in all good day. Cant really hate on it :D

[Zac Goode]

Drove to enid and watched 3 or 4 storms fly past me trying to get there act together but really didnt(except the ark city storm). Saw the Cresent storm looking better than most that came buy me and hopped on it just south of Mulhall. Watched it wrap up in precip and followed it across I-35 a couple of miles and then called it a day.

[David Poch]

I started the day sitting off I-40 south of Calumet. Decided to head up to Kingfisher and wait. One cell starting to look ok so I followed it up north to Hennessey. I lost that storm but noticed the one that was coming up between El Reno and Kingfisher. I dropped south on HWY 74 and ended up just north of Cimarron City to wait for the cell to pass. It developed a nice wall cloud and had some good motions. I sat there and just enjoyed the display it put off.

2191 2192

2193 2194

2195

[Shane Adams]

Full summary now online:
http://www.passiontwist.com/32309chase.htm

[Andrew Ryan]

Great chase day. Chased with Scott Peake, Greg Blumberg, and Kevin Rolfs. Started off the day getting on the Ark City storm, if you want to call it that, around Pond Creek, OK when it was still a multi-cell. It quickly organized into a supercell but it really couldn't decide whether it wanted to be HP or classic. Once we got to Medford we almost abandoned it because it looked like outflowy garbage but decided to stick with after we saw strong rotation right above our heads.

http://www.shearamazement.com/images/smallplane-copyright.jpg
Storm near Medford, OK

The storm finally got its act together when it crossed over the Kansas/Oklahoma border. We swear we saw a tornado briefly spin up near Ashton, KS. I'm not sure if the dust whirls were from a tornado or inflow winds. But either it formed really quickly, within about 30 seconds, from nothing to rapidly rotating wall cloud/tornado.

http://www.shearamazement.com/images/smallpossibletornado copyright.jpg
Right after the brief spin up near Ashton, KS. Note the RFD wrapping almost all the way around the wall cloud.

We finally left the storm for good just N of Ark City. It looked like it was trying to gets to act together again, but we didn't have the confidence to keep chasing after it. I do have some regrets for leaving it after hearing that it produced.

After leaving that storm, we quickly headed south back into Oklahoma to intercept some intensifying cells. We were targeting the cell that was moving slowly, relatively, towards Perry. As we got closer, it started to look really good and become tornado warned. Once we could actually see the base of the storm, it looked it might produce something, but it became elevated after that and quickly went to crap.

After dark we watched storms near Duncan, OK. Not much happened there but some decent wind gusts and ping pong sized hall.

Overall it was a good March chase and the storms gave us a lot of rain, which is great!

[Rocky Rascovich]

Started out from the TUL area.. with only limited knowledge of current data.. had no internet where I was staying. Based on progged helicity values, cape bullseye that NAM and RUC projected, I targeted the area roughly around Enid to Perry. I was mindful that the NAM also had a convective feature taking off through Canadian into Logan counties by 0Z.. which reasonably verified.

Highlights of the day was intercepting a LP/classic supercell that trekked up into Grant county. I observed this in Hunter which is about 20 miles NW of Billings. A wall cloud tried developing but with little fanfare. There was some respectable south winds that were occurring.. gusts to around 45kts, probably enhanced due to some inflow from the storm. I observed pea sized hail as I was on the edge of the precip. shaft of this in Hunter. I followed the storm to Tonkawa where I briefly met up with Dave Ewoldt. It was at this time (aprox. around 1800cdt) that it spun up the best wall cloud of the day, nice rising motion with moderate rotation, but it was screaming off to the northeast, so I decided to the bail on that.. thankfully, to my knowledge, it did not produce.

I then targeted the storm that was rapidly intensifying over northern Canadian/southern Logan counties. I intercepted that around Mulhall, a few miles west of I-35. The wall cloud I saw was disorganized with minimal rotation but I noticed there were intense downbursts blowing toward the mesocyclone from it's north by the way I was seeing the rain shafts occur. They would come down in big blobs and produce spectacular rain foots. I could hear a definite hail roar with near continuous thunder from the copious amounts of IC lightning. I went back to the interstate, listening to one of our local media outlets amping up the possibility of a rain wrapped tornado. I tried heading south of Mulhall on I-35 but the core rapidly caught up with me and winds suddenly shifted to the north and increased to at least 40 kts. Fearing that I may run into something that could have ruined my day, I turned around. Winds suddenly backed to the NW, and was throwing at me some occasional big hail stones, not sure how big, but they sounded big, enough that I was concerned about a broken windshield or side window. I took shelter on the east side of a church back at the Mulhall exit, thinking this could be a riveting couple of minutes. Turns out the hail at that location was minimal, winds were 40 knots at the most, and it was over with within 2 minutes. Afterwards, I tracked the storm toward Stillwater as it attempted to develop a wall cloud. Hail drifts on Hwy 51 west of Stillwater was impressive, most of the hail was quarter size at most. Afterwards, I decided to head back to the farm as I was treated to some occasional lightning and experienced a brief microburst east of Langston by a couple of miles.. winds were the highest of the day.. at least 50-55 knots.. lasted less than one minute.. definitely had my attention though.. that occurred around 2030cdt (estimated time).

What really capped off my day was what happened at our farm (5mi. NW of Piedmont) between 0115 to 0130. I awoke to go the bathroom and noticed a near strobe light display of mostly IC lightning, infact, it was one of the best displays of lightning like this I've seen in many years. What was really bizarre was the thunder.. absolutely constant, non stop thunder.. it sounded like a bunch of jet engines in the distance.
I think some of this was a hail roar too, because what happened around 0120 was a DELUGE of nickel to quarter size hail. It was starting to cover the ground pretty good and then abruptly ended by about 0125. Surprisingly, the wind as not an issue, maybe 30 knots, if that. By 0145, lightning was distant and the storm well over with.

Thanks to Dave Ewoldt, Jim Leonard and Ray Walker for their nowcasting. Overall, a good day to get the season officially started!

[Steve Miller TX]

Played with the tornado-warned cell around Kingfisher/Guthrie and then intercepted the storms around Chickasha and Rush Springs after dark. I was lucky to get a couple of good CG shots before it all ceased. All in all, a fun but exhausting chase trying to keep up with 40mph+ storm motions.

http://texastailchaser.com/blogger/2009/20090323/IMG_8847.jpg

http://texastailchaser.com/blogger/2009/20090323/IMG_8848.jpg

http://texastailchaser.com/blogger/2009/20090323/IMG_8854.jpg

http://texastailchaser.com/blogger/2009/20090323/IMG_8862.jpg

[David Drummond]

I too was on the Kingfisher to Stillwater storm. A little hail, some really nicer wall clouds, some more hail. That about sums it up. Thought we were going to have a tornado a couple times there. Posted a video on Youtube of one of the rotating wall clouds.
http://youtube.com/drylinemedia (http://youtube.com/drylinemedia/)

[Jason Young]

Well chased the Lawton cell , nice updraft , good lowering , no tornado. But did see 3large power flashes in Lawton at night fall . Chased the cell west of Marlow and watched it die. Long night and I am ready for a good May.

[Verne Carlson]

Here's a timelapse of our entire chase as streamed live on TVN. Starting at Russell, KS ending up at Perry, OK. A fun March chase!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_c37N8MPxk

FULL REPORT HERE (http://stormchaserco.blogspot.com/2009/03/2009-03-23-report.html)

[Chris C Sanner]

Had an interesting day, was on the Geary - Stillwater Supercell like many others. Basically started the day in Hinton and started moving ENE throughout the rest of the day until we finally got a storm to finally mature along the dryline. It was a pretty decent chase for March, got some good structure and such. Video and pics are both available at:

http://www.supercellhunting.com.

Will be trying to get some bigger versions of stills from the DSLR up sometime later, but the HD vid is up, which includes a bit of a core punch at the end.

[Jason A.C. Brock]

CHASED WITH JEREMY WILSON FOR HOLY TORNADO TODAY. GOT ON CELL NEAR CRESCENT OKLAHOMA FROM SEVERE WARNED TO TORNADO WARNED AND INTO STILLWATER AREA. NICE WALL CLOUD & STRUCTURE AND NOT A BAD CHASE DAY FOR MARCH. PHOTOS BY JASON A.C. BROCK. CHASED BY JASON BROCK & JEREMY WILSON. NOWCASTED BY JEFF PAPAK & AARON HUGHES.
WE WILL HAVE PICS VIDEO AND A NEW WEBISODE OF STORMCHASER MAN FOR THIS EVENT HOPEFULLY BY THE END OF THE WEEKEND OR EARLY NEXT WEEK. BE SURE TO TUNE INTO OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL AT WWW.HOLYTORNADO.COM (WHICH WILL DIRECT YOU THERE) OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS NOT ONLY FOR MORE CHASES BUT NEWLY EDITED VIDEO OF PAST CHASES FROM THE ARCHIVES OF JEREMY WILSON.

WE WERE ALSO ABLE TO STREAM LIVE THE WALL CLOUD NEAR CRESCENT OKLAHOMA TODAY SO HOPEFULY THAT WILL WORK OUT AS WELL. :-)

LINK TO OTHER PICS ON MYSPACE
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=459876281&albumId=689001

OTHER LINKS
http://www.holytornado.com
http://www.youtube.com/holytornado777
http://www.myspace.com/holytornado777
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/storm-chaser-man

[Matt Hughes]

Intercepted a cell NW of Wichita early on which looked really impressive with a nice rotating wall cloud.

2197

Later we intercepted the tornado warned cell in Cowley Co. but missed the tubes probably because we were viewing from the NE side at the time but saw a few more nice rotating wall clouds.

2198

Catch the short HD vid here (http://thestormreport.com/blog/2009/03/march-23rd-2009-kansas-funnel-and-wall-clouds-in-hd/).

[Aaron Gerhardt]

Tim Jones and I headed out at about 5:20AM yesterday morning from Cedar Rapids to make our trek west. We ended up playing the dryline for the day.

We decided to ride the Kansas turnpike, started seeing storms firing in the Medicine Lodge area and jumped off at El Dorado to 254 and headed west to 96, before finally ending up around Mt. Hope IIRC when we started jumping onto the farm roads to fine tune our spot.

This was just south of town looking SW, this is a little before the wall cloud got a little more solid, RFD was trying to break in at this point but was having troubles.

We sat in this spot for about 10min, ran some streaming video for a bit and prayed for it to develop a bit more...but no dice.
http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/4749/mar23p1.jpg (http://img403.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mar23p1.jpg)

Decided to run NE to try and reposition, but as we followed it northeast it started to lose form, hit light hail and some rains, then decided to let it go.

Took a break in Newton, KS for a bit to fill up and take a look at other storms down the line, saw a cell forming well over Grant County, OK and decided to head south and the east before Wichita to position ourselves around the storm.

We then encountered the worst technical problems ever....no data, no stream...no nothing. We had to just fly east hoping to stay ahead of the storm while Tim was in the back trying to coax data cards into actually function. During that time we heard the warnings on the HAM and just about had aneurysms because we were so out of position.

We finally got data at 5:50ish, we turned off at Severy, KS finding out we were right in the path of the storm, but not having much left in it in terms of tornado threat. Then the camera decided to not be recognized on the computer for stream, so I pulled out my little camera and try and get something on stream/tape.

We hit 99 just west of Severy and headed south a couple miles before stopping off on a farm road to salvage anything. We were getting some strong and close CG at this point on video.
http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/4398/mar23p2.jpg (http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mar23p2.jpg)
http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/mar23p2.jpg/1/w640. (http://g.imageshack.us/img120/mar23p2.jpg/1/)

Watched some broad but slow meso rotation for a couple of minutes before it started outflowing like crazy. We were so frustrated at this point that nothing was working that we just punched through it.

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/5/mar23p3.jpg (http://img217.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mar23p3.jpg)
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/mar23p3.jpg/1/w640. (http://g.imageshack.us/img217/mar23p3.jpg/1/)

Just before getting destroyed by this core...
http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/6441/mar23p4.jpg (http://img240.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mar23p4.jpg)
http://img240.imageshack.us/img240/mar23p4.jpg/1/w640. (http://g.imageshack.us/img240/mar23p4.jpg/1/)

Pulled off a half mile or so after hitting the outflow and got 1/4 inch hail as we just didn't care anymore. We let the storm go bye bye and called it a day and headed to Chanute for the night.

We had some positives and negatives. Positives was we finally got out of Iowa to chase. Second thing is we got the most viewers ever on our stream (KGANWX) that we've ever had, which I think was close to 250 on the first cell. Third thing is I got some more experience chasing with a partner, and a great one at that.

Negatives is nothing worked when we needed it to...too many equipment problems to even count. We also missed the tornado warned life of the second cell. All in all I think it was a good day for being early in the year, got one storm on the verge of dropping, and the other was strong but outflow dominant, had a good core punch and hail.

[Danny Neal]

SUMMARY: Adam Lucio (http://www.aerostorms.com/) and I left Chicago at 9 P.M on Sunday night (22nd) and arrived in Wichita Monday morning at around 830 AM (23rd) and met and stayed at Mike Nelson's house. Left his house around 1 P.M and intercepted a hail storm just East of Kingman, KS. From there we followed the storm for about 10 miles before abandoning it and headed South to SR 49 and intercepted 3 LP structures all in a row just north of Conway Springs, KS. We then got word of a large supercell coming north out of OK and intercepted that near Hunnewell, KS. We then followed this amazing storm to near Cambridge, KS where along the way it dropped at least 1 brief tornadoes and over half a dozen wall clouds. We then abandoned that storm and picked up our last near Cedar Vale, KS, and were treated to a rainbow and beautiful sunset. On our way back to Wichita the dryline lit up so we had a great light show. We went to bed at about 1 AM and left Wichita the next day for Chicago at 9 AM and arrived back at 8 PM. All in all it was about 1,950 miles roundtrip, talked with some nice people, and met a great chaser in Mike Nelson.

Sorry for the font and size and all of that, but I am just taking it from my website report I am currently making up, just thought I would post the summary and then the FULL report with pics and vids in an hour or two.

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Finally got the video up on the computer and it is currently uploading and I will post a link immediately after it is done. Anyway here are some stills of what we saw. The first is of the Kingman cell, the second is a gustnado near Medford, OK, the third is a rapidly rotating wall cloud that produced a brief tornado, the fourth is of a nice gustnado near Drexel, KS.

http://www.motionbox.com/videos/3098dcb6191ee0c2be

[Stephen Locke]

Photographs and account right here. (http://www.stephenlocke.com/blog)

http://stephenlocke.com/photos/3-23-09_160.jpg

[Matt Gingery]

I had a chance to get out and chase into Elk County, Kansas. The supercell had already produced two seperate tornadoes, but I did manage to get some video of the cell. Nice video of updraft base and wall cloud. I spotted a funnel as well as it tried to cycle. The cell became elevated shortly after.


Video 3/23/09: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLO77z6bfWo


We were chasing along HWY 99 near Howard Ks in the video.

Video 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_Pt_lV_Dc8&feature=channel_page

I managed to get video of other chasers along Hwy 99. You may recognize your vehicle if you were in this video.

[Danny Neal]

Well after hours of typing up and formatting this account I am done!

You can read our amazing account HERE (http://northernilstormchaser.com/March-23rd---Southern-Kansas.php)

What a day!

[Dustin Wilcox]

A few more photos and what not at the link here, I have some ok video and a lot more photos but figure this chase wasn't worth spending to much more time on.... http://severechase.com/3-23-09.html

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwunl68/323091.jpg

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwunl68/323094.jpg

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h260/dwunl68/323099.jpg

[Skip Talbot]

Log and pictures: http://www.skip.cc/chase/090323/

http://www.skip.cc/chase/090323/09032307.jpg
http://www.skip.cc/chase/090323/09032308.jpg

[Adam Lucio]

Full account here. http://www.aerostorms.com/032309.php

Started off the day intercepting a potent hail maker a few miles east of Kingman. Followed that storm as it strengthened before losing it as it became severe warned. Moved south to better moisture area noting some nice LP structure before getting on the big storm near the KS/OK border that produced the brief weak tornadoes. Pursued that storm but fell behind it in Arkansas City, followed it to just east of Winfield before letting it go once it fell apart, dropped back south to 166 and sampled a few more small hail cores followed up by some nicely lit storm structure thanks to the setting sun.

Overall a fun action packed chase, from 2pm till 10pm we were around some sort of weather, bagging 2009s first tornado was the icing on the cake albeit weak and brief. Definitely worth the trip.

http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/1618/ks032309048.th.jpg (http://img440.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ks032309048.jpg)
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/256/ks032309049.th.jpg (http://img440.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ks032309049.jpg)
http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/3317/ks032309036.th.jpg (http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ks032309036.jpg)

[Matt Gingery]

I shot this video along HWY 99 north of Howard, Kansas in Elk County. Video of wall cloud/updraft base.

In the video I shot several chasers along the side of Hwy 99. You may recognize yourself in this video if you chased along Hwy 99 in Elk County.

Video Elk County: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_Pt_lV_Dc8&feature=channel_page

[AndyGabrielson]

I considered this a very successful chase. Started off the day by sitting in a dust storm with visibility down to a mile at some points. The first cell I intercepted in south central was sort of a "pre-show" storm. It had a fantastic wall cloud that was rotating quite nicely at the end of its life and actually kind of wrapped up into a little funnel before it's death.
The next storm I intercepted again moved out of OK into south central KS near Winfield I think. Sorry I always mess the towns up. This thing did go tor warned and at one point had two wall clouds. We saw the funnel but didn't see any touchdown. Also continued chasing during the night and intercepted some nice storms along I-44 some of which were severe, had a decent lowering with one. Anyway heres the pictures to accompany this. As always streamed live video during the event at SS, thank you to anyone who watched!

findthetornado.smugmug...9534_XFiLp

videos and photos can be found there...
http://findthetornado.smugmug.com/photos/498019778_iP9By-M.jpg
http://findthetornado.smugmug.com/photos/499332063_44THb-L.jpg

[Brian Thalken]

Chase account: http://www.nebraskastorms.com/storms.htm

Left Lincoln around 2pm, headed west towards Seward, NE. Waited just north of I-80 Seward, NE exit for 30 minutes or so. Tried to get in position on a cell moving up from the south towards my location, was able to get a decent view of the cell near the Milford, NE exit as it had a radar indicated tornado warning. Couldn't really tell if that lowering was rotating but still caught my attention. Then decided to head east to get in position on new cells moving north.

Video grab just off of the I-80 Milford, NE exit.
http://www.nebraskastorms.com/images/2009/uvs090325-001.jpg

Made it to Lincoln, NE ahead of the cell as it was approaching my location.
Was just north of this cell as it skirted just east of Lincoln, NE. I should have gone further east past Eagle to be in a better position on this cell, but ended up getting caught up in the core as it was moving towards me around 60mph. I was happy to finally see some structure of this storm, there was SO much dust being kicked up making it extremely difficult to see anything, especially from my northern vantage point. Got out of position and my chase was over. Overall a good chase to test out some new chase gear and the live video feeds, along with a few lessons learned on staying in position with these fast movers.

Chase cam capture at 148th and 'A' east of Lincoln, NE - looking directly south.
http://www.nebraskastorms.com/images/2009/march23_2009_1.jpg

[James Langford]

More pictures and full chase account here:
http://www.langfordphotography.com/gallery/7712829_SrQEB

Chased with my friends Zack and Colin. We initially targetted the area just West of OKC. As we came up 35 and approached OKC, we decide to avoid town and take highway 9. Cells were firing to the West of town, so this gave us a good approach. We eventually ended up on Highway 81, just north of El Reno. The Kingfisher storm was churning away to our NE, but was too far away and moving to fast to catch:

http://www.langfordphotography.com/photos/498351981_mp4Yg-M-1.jpg

Several smaller cells were struggling to get going to our West. With the sun setting behind them, this made for beautiful pictures:

http://www.langfordphotography.com/photos/498351530_WzLqS-M-1.jpg

These little cells really struggled to get going, and we were quickly losing our light. We stopped a bit further up 81 to get some more pics:


http://www.langfordphotography.com/photos/498352048_uFU36-M-1.jpg

We entually ended up on highway 33 heading East towards OKC. Several of our smaller cells to our west started getting their act together, and we stopped for a lightning picture or two:

http://www.langfordphotography.com/photos/498351541_Yyqn2-M-1.jpg

We had only a few minutes here before a cell to our south really started intensifying. We shot East on 33 into town, and headed down 35 towards home. As we came into Purcell, we noticed a very strong cell on radar that was approaching from the West. We stopped just north of town and capture a few pictures of what we believe was a wall cloud:

http://www.langfordphotography.com/photos/498351704_wa5Ed-M-1.jpg

After some more shots here, we struggled back towards DFW in the intense headwind. We were hoping for a bit more storm action, but the photography was pretty great.

James

[Mark Farnik]

Full chase account here:

http://ragingskies.blogspot.com/2009/03/3232009-chase-log.html

To make it short and sweet - myself and Andrew Stoller went on a 21 hour, 1,170 mile marathon chase, and scored with a brief rope tornado near Winfield, KS on the Cowley County storm. My report has the full blow by blow account of the chase.

[jshields]

i've put a couple of not too exciting videos from my chase on monday;) full chase report is up on my blog.

http://omahatornadochaser.blogspot.com

tornado warned cell as it was moving thru omaha:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JuCHy0PW54
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JuCHy0PW54)

video from a couple of severe cells in east central nebraska:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5xPA6_QfIQ

[Randy Denzer]

Chased with Reed Timmer, Joel and Chris, Aaron Dooley, Erik Burns, and many others. Provided live stream for tornadovideos.net. You can see our chase report there.
This screen shot was captured as we crossed CR 10 on Hwy 166. I sat the cam down to call this touchdown into the 911 center, it lifted by the time I was off the phone.

[Brendon Lindsey]

Well the chase didnt turn out too great. Picked up the new trailblazer in NM the day before, and slept in amarillo. Woke up the next day and headed home towards enid. Was intending on hanging out for atleast an hour. but storms had already fired. Ended up on the Tornado warned storm that was on the KSOK border. These pictures are of it from its beginning stage. Then the lightning pictures over keystone lake.

http://www.stormaddiction.com/images/78.jpg

http://www.stormaddiction.com/images/123.jpg

http://www.stormaddiction.com/images/49.jpg

http://www.stormaddiction.com/images/212.jpg

The rest are posted here on my site. : www.stormaddiction.com

[Dan Melby]

I am actually going to try to keep up with my blog this year, a short account is up with a few photos and video grabs from the Eagle Nebraska Storm.
Thought that I would have a good video to document this storm. I let my girlfriend run the video camera assuming she had ran a camera before..:(
The vid grabs at the bottom are what i could see from my vantage point of the storm as it approached Eagle.
http://corepunch-com.blogspot.com/

[Dann Cianca]

Chased with Michael Carlson and Kendell LaRoche. Our target verified of Medicine Lodge verified and we briefly chased the storm that went north of Wichita. Then we dropped south into Oklahoma and intercepted and followed the "storm of the day" that everyone saw the spin-ups with. Tremendous wall cloud with this storm! We stopped following it after Arkansas City and intercepted two more storms in Oklahoma before calling it a day. But enough of my rambling ...

TONS of pictures and VIDEO:

http://blog.bigskyconvection.com/2009/04/2009-storm-chase-iv-brief-march-23rd.html

[Lanny Dean]

I know this post is a little late but I just got around to going through all the photos and video from this chase. I took well over 100 pics and since there has been quite a bit of drama surrounding this event in regards to a photoshoped picture of a tornado or tornadoes, I felt compelled to post these pics and my accounts.

I left Tulsa/Mannford with my sister (first un-official tour) about 1:30pm and headed west on 51 HWY to I-35. My target area was Ponca City where I felt the best CAPE values were and where the best helecity values bucked right up to strongest CAPE per the latest RUC data we had. Going North on I-35 we started seeing some pretty good CU's going up and I decided to play these if any of them went severe.
After firing up StormLab, we could see that a lone cell had gone up west of 35 and although not yet severe warned, it looked good on radar. We intercepted the cell on HWY 15 and HWY 74 near Hunter looking west southwest (this is where the first pic in the series was taken from.) Here we noticed a classic jagged rotating wall cloud with a clear slot just to the west southwest of us. This is also somewhere near when the storm went severe. After racing north on 74 HWY to HWY 60, we went west on HWY 60 towards Pond Creek where we stopped to film as the storm crossed HWY 60. It was at this point that we filmed our first funnel. (second pic in the series) I measured 51 MPH inflow for 2 minutes and 30mph sustained at this point and per the picture you can see massive dust inflow to the cell.
Racing back east on HWY 60 back, we went north on HWY 74 and finally stopped just south of Deer Creek/Medford area. At this location we noticed another quick brief funnel but were not able to film it as it happened to quick. After leaving the cell to move east we took HWY 11 back to I-35 and went north to the Braman exit (got a nice pic of the vault at this location with a very small funnel as it was crossing 35) where we went east on E0060 county dirt road to HWY 77 north towards Ark City. Since there is/was quite a bit of drama involved with this storm and someone who had a "picture" of a full condensation funnel while the storm was still in OK, I want to make it perfectly clear that, at no time did we witness a tornado of any kind while the storm was in OK and I was basically right up under the storm through it's life cycle while in OK. Although I was not streaming live via ChaserTV, I was using Spotter Network the entire time I was in OK and I believe Jeff Smith was following me via Spotter Network. BTW, thanks to Jeff for helping me after I lost data right at the state line!
We intercepted the storm again just as we were coming into Ark City....here is where I believe I saw a possible multi vortex tornado looking back northwest of Ark City. I can not tell for sure even on video as we were still a few miles away from the main area of interest. I believe Shane Adams was near this location and may have seen the same thing although I am not exactly sure. The third picture is the flanking line of the cell as we were looking back northeast.
After getting gas in Ark City we headed back south and saw the Stillwater cell (4th pic) and the last pic is the sun setting with a few CU's still visable right on the dryline.

All in all it was a great chase day, except for the bogus tornado reports in OK and photoshoped pictures.