3/30/2006 REPORTS: KS,NE,OK,TX

[samuel stone]

Figured I'd start the report thread, figured this would be the best place to put this.

Just got home from school at Hutch Highschool where they sent us to the tornado shelters when the sirens blew here in town. Tornado reported doing damage in Hutchinson at 11th by the Mall and at the hospital and on the north side of Hutch on Lucille and 43rd street. all this was reported by a "local off duty law enforcement officer". I havent look at the damage myself yet (which I may still do) but from what I have heard it was mainly just windows blown out and other minor damage on the east side of town. I couldnt see it my self because I was hiding in the Hutch High bathrooms with about 100 other students in the dark, but I'm pretty sure it was a non-mesocyclone/ landspout type of tornado similar to the one that knocked out car windows in Newton Kansas back on January 28th of this year.

So that was an interesting experience to say the least, I was amazed at how badly our schools tornado plan worked out, We had students still walking the halls at least 10 minutes after they announce to go to our tornado shelters, that could be bad if we get a tornado actually strike the school ever. Anyway we still have shingles and branches blowing down all over town at this very minute as the westerly winds behind the dryline are blasting in at 50-60 mph so still some interesting weather around. Guess I will be repairing roof tommorow :(

[Shane Adams]

Observed two tornadoes today in SC Oklahoma, one just east of Duncan and a second north of Velma.

I saw a storm on radar near Hobart that caught my attention, and decided to go after it, owing to the fact there was still plenty of time/daylight left should the first "wave" crap out. I left OUN at 10:45 and drove to Chickasha. Took US81 south to OK19, and sat there for a while listening to the play-by-play between spotters and WX5OUN. Resisted the temptation to try and fly north to intercept the early cell along I-40 which was a nice supercell for a time. Kept myself to the game plan and gradually drifted south along US81, watching the approaching cluster of storms. Caught my first view of a base northwest of Marlow, and watched that linear storm do nothing as it moved by to the northwest. Another core was southwest of it, so I drfited south into the north side of Marlow and watched this base produce a non-rotating (but persitant) wall cloud. Eventually rain became an issue, so I moved south through town. Once on the south side of Marlow, it was obvious this storm was outflow-dominant as well, and reports of nickel to golfball hail around town began to pour over the scanner. I briefly considered heading north back to OK29 and going east to target the Marlow storm, but a report of a new storm still further southwest near Duncan got my attention.

I moved through town, and as I came to my east option (OK7), I broke free of the rain and saw a high, flat base. There was an intense precip core north of it, and while the storm itself didn't look too spectacular, I notcied it was the last in line. I moved east a few miles, then stopped to observe and shoot a bit of video. The storm was still looking like all the others; outflowish and linear. However, it was still ther last storm in the line, so I stayed with it. I got back on the road and continued east. After a mile or so I looked in the rearview and saw a rapidly rising scud bomb flowing into the RFB. I stopped, set up the tripod, and rolled video. The evolution of this was incredible to watch. Rapid rising motion was occuring all along the base of the wall cloud, and I looked almost overhead to see the eastern edge of the rotation. The mesocyclone gradually tightened, as after a few more minutes, strong rotation was noted within the wall cloud itself. Surface winds picked up dramatically, to where I had to hold my tripod to keep the vidcam from blowing over. Rotation became violent, and a large cone funnel began to descend. The RFD began to wrap around, which was filled with black-as-night precip. The funnel was over halfway down and rotating violently, as a few small tendrils tried to reach for the ground. Before I could see full condensation to the ground, the rain curtain wrapped around, completely obscuring the tornado. I packed it up and blasted east, until the rain curtains parted and I could once again see a large cone tornado (actually it looked like a Hershey's Kiss). I couldn't see condensation to the ground, but based on the violent rotation, persistence, and all the rain around it, I assumed it was a tornado the entire time. As I pulled over to set up the tripod after it reappeared, it finally condensed fully to the ground, in a classic "SKYWARN" logo tornado shape. It rapidly roped out in the "vaporized" style, as the next mesocyclone strengthened east of it. I moved east and stopped again near Velma. The wall cloud/lowering looked kind of ragged, but had chaotic motions. Within a few minutes a large cone funnel developed and dipped halfway to the ground. It persisted, and came about 3/4 of the way down, as pieces of scud were lifted off the ground and pulled into the funnel. This tornado persisted for a few minutes, until the RFD crashed in, wrapping the tornado in precip. I could barely make out the shrinking funnel within the rotating rain curtains as the tornado dissipated. During the second tornado I ran into Jeremy Wilson and Aaron Hughes.

After the second tornado ended, I flew east on OK7 to OK76, then went north. South of Pernell I ran into other chasers who were braver than I, as they headed north into the rotation while I turned around and headed back south. I was blasted with RFD as I heard a report of a tornado west of Pernell. I drove south until I got away from the intense RFD winds (took both hands to keep the car on the road at speed), then stopped and turned around to face north. I never saw the tornado. I turned back south and continued back to OK7, where I once again blasted east to I-35, all the while slowly losing the storm. My miscalculation and subsequent "escape" south of Pernell had been a fatal navigational error; I never coulld get back in front of it and, despite knowing it would continue for several hours, I let it go to concentrate on a new storm west of Pauls Valley. This storm was ingesting the previous stale air from the first one, and never could get its act together. After being delayed just north of Pauls Valley by an accident (which you'll see shots of on KOCO-TV because they rolled up on it), I headed home.

A great way to get on the board in 2006. I'm miffed I let the storm get away, but happy I was able to observe a few tornadoes before it did. There was no tornado warning on this thing the entire time I was seeing tornadoes. I tried to call in the rapid rotation near Duncan just prior to the first tornado, but of course my phone had no coverage. I will be submitting a report and video to OUN tomorrow.

Did it all while driving with one hand, LOL. My car kept popping out of 5th gear all day, so I had to hold it in. That made for a hectic chase.

[Michael P. Morris]

I'll keep it short. We left for NC Oklahoma at about 11, targeting the strong jet max and intense deep layer shear progged to round the base of the trough near 18Z. Bad idea. Got sucked in by a crappy storm near Kingfisher which exhibited some brief lowerings, then moved over to attempt to intercept a storm near Guthrie, but it was moving way too fast for us to catch up with it. Gave up on the chase in Stillwater, but it appears that the cell produced at least one tornado in SE Kansas around 4:00. We decided not to attempt to blast down I35 to catch up with the tornado producers in SC OK and instead came back here and watched on TV. Congrats to those who were successful, and better luck next time to those who were not.

[Mike Peregrine]

I was on ... actually, kind of "in" a tornado tonight north of Savannah, Missouri. This was completely accidental, and I know I'm going to get raked over the coals for it (probably rightly so) ... I came through the hail core of a severe cell that came over into Missouri from Kansas, and as I rounded the corner onto 71 highway north of Savannah, I immediately spotted a tornado just off to my west. It was dark, but the lightning was like daytime, so it was easy to see (pics coming) ... anyway as I'm standing there I start hearing this roar ... at first it just sounded like wind, but it was coming over the hill toward me and I realized suddenly that I was really close. This sounded like I was standing under a jet engine going full blast ... when I realized that it was getting louder and louder I jumped back in the car and headed south as fast as I could, flashing my lights at the northbound traffic. This was just way too close. My heart is still beating a million beats a minute as I type this. The outer bands of rotation passed over my car, but I would say the core of the funnel was probably about 1000-2000 yards to my west. I wish I could describe the sound more than anything. This is the FIRST time in all these years that I've ever heard it. Before you start lashing me (which I know I deserve) ... the storm was NOT tornado warned when I came around the south side of the core, and I had no way of determining there was a tornado until I turned the corner. I'm just so glad I got off the first road, because the tornado passed right over it.

Pics coming within 30 mins or so. Hopefully I'll calm down a bit.

---------------------------

Here are the vid caps:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/SavannahTor3.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/SavannahTor1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/SavannahTor2.jpg

Damage photos and more explanation on this storm can be found: http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=10796

One more quick note ... I gave the nuttiest report to EAX tonight I've ever given, but they called the tornado warning immediately ... which was cool. These were taken as the tornado was moving across the top of that ridge ... I was actually not in any real danger as it was moving more north than east at the time, but it did cross the road I had been on not more than a minute before. Tor was moving fast - - - I'd say around 50 mph or so at the time.

EDIT - damage reports now coming in from two miles north of Savannah ... ambulances were called, a silo rolled in a ball ... and the road that I barely escaped from is closed with telephone polls and trees across it. If I had been one minute later on that road, I wouldn't be writing this right now.

EDIT 2 - I'm getting a little more shaken up ... there are now multiple injuries reported on this tornado. I honestly tried my best to get traffic going northbound on 71 to stop, but the cars kept going and now I'm getting upset because I know they were driving right into this. It sounds like the injuries so far were minor. 4 homes were destroyed or damaged, however.

[Jason McKittrick]

No tornadoes here either. I played the surface low today, needless to say it was a tough chase. I left Omaha about 12:45PM and was initially heading for Hebron but wound up in Beatrice trying to intercept the Tornado warned cell coming up from Concordia. Successfully intercepted it just south of Beatrice as it began to bow. Got some interesting downburst pictures near Courtland, NE. Followed to bow northward through Lincoln and all the way back to Omaha. As I got back into the Omaha suburbs sirens went off for a public report.
I did a brief damage survey this evening and IMHO it looks like we had some straight line winds but I could find no evidence of any tornadoes. Damage consisted of a few uprooted trees, a few flattened signs, some large hay bails tossed about, a demolished horse barn and part of a metal roof torn off of a church. While the debris was blown all in the same direction it appeared that the damage path was very narrow, only about 100yards wide, and along a straight line.

[Anthony Petito]

I wasn't able to get out and chase this afternoon, but it seems (according to public reporting atleast) that a tornado decided to come along my way anyway. It seems the majority of the activity was in Papillion, Nebraska this afternoon. I went through while there was still some light outside and there were numerous fences torn down, trees torn out as well as downed powerlines.

My girlfriend, who works at InfoUSA in Papillion, claims the building might have been hit on the SE corner of the building by this tornado. She gave me all the characteristics of a tornado (debris cloud, sounds like a fright train, etc..). The damage looks insignificant, but there were obvious signs of fatique and cracks in the foundation of the building.

I have my doubts that it may have been a true tornado. If there was, it would have been impossible to see with the large amount of precip. The ornado would have ben rainwrapped.

No pictures... camera battery is dead. :(

[Chris Allington]

Chased the Papillion/ Omaha activity after leaving school.... pictures to follw but headed west on highway 370 to witness a large shelf cloud with winds reported to 60 mph behind it. The precip was right up on this thing and many of my shelf cloud pictures have the extremely thick precip right behind them. decided to head back east on 370 when the new circulation formed just to the SSW of Papillion. I observed a lowering and extremely fast moving horizontal rain curtains being wrapped around this feature. The church with the roof damage is in my nieghboorhood and we saw some small limbs down near my home as well as some shingles from nearby roofs. This was an extremely compact circulation but i thinK the damage was cause by an rfd or strong downburst...it actually does have a fairly long path though...

EDIT*** Confirmation of an F0 Tornado in Papillion, NE by OAX. Tracked right through my neighborhood.

[CHris Whitehead]

Well looks like everyone was up north today.
For some reason this day had the song "Always" by Saliva running in the back of my head the entire chase.
Well I left Norman at around 11:30 shortly after the 2nd TORN WW went up. Headed for the southern cell round Chikeshea. Watched it do its thing then crap out as the one out of Lawton toward Duncan starting picking up steam. Raced south on 81 toward Duncan out of Chikeshea. Had to flip the bouy switch on the truck as street flooding was widespread in Duncan. At that point the storm starting getting its act together and tightining up as was not only visible on radar but also visually. So we booked it east on 7 out of Duncan and came up to the backside of the cell as the area of roation was to our north and east. Then somewhere between Countyline and Ratliff City, the thing started dropping as went tornado but just briefly. Almost simultaneouly OUN blarred the warning on the 2meter frequencies. Coming into Ratliff City I saw Shane Adams on the side of the road in his blue hatchback looking completely dumbfounded so as I screamed by I leaned on the car horn like a train. But anyway we came to the intersection of highway 7 and I-35 pulled over at fillin station and sat and watched the cell went thru a splitting process looking totally unorganized in doing so. Then after about 10 minutes WX5OUN came on and wanted chaser on the eastern cell toward Pauls Valley as that one was becoming the dominant one. So we headed north on I-35 toward Pauls Valley and headed east on 19 out of Pauls Valley but didnt go far as the western cell then took over as dominant cell. So we went toward Pauls Valley.............................errrrr anyway that went out and was on this cell that time knows what we ran into. Yep thats right THE WALL of magenta 70dBZ zero visibility water and pea sized hail. After much panic looking for an awning, we found shelter and waited out 5minutes as the cell passed. So we back east out of Pauls Valley. After dawning our scuba gear and rafts through the heart of Pauls Valley (and who said the burn bans should be put back??) we did, as Gary England would say, a "jump back" in time to December as we ran into white out conditions on the road and all throughout the fields. In my life I have never seen so much pea sized hail covering the road. And not only that, it was like this for a good 10 to 12 miles on the road east. Hell, the cows were up on the levis as their fields were under 3 feet of water. At this point we were getting into hills and crap toward Ada and decided to call it quits as the terrain was becoming what is known as Eastern Oklahoma.

But all in all it was a fun chase, nothing to write home about but honestly I didnt walk out the door expecting to see a tornado anyway. Walked out the door at approx 11:30, walked back in at approx 7pm. So thats how it went.

Looks like I might doing this all over again here this weekend or next week even.

[attachmentid=52]

[attachmentid=53]

EDIT: Norman Dome 5,534,349,589,358 Tornadoes 0

"I see, the blood all over your hands
Does it make you feel, more like a man?
Was it all, just a part of your plan
The pistol's shaking in my hands and all I hear is the sound

I love you, I hate you, I can’t live without you
I breathe you, I taste you, I can't live without you
I just can't take anymore, this life of solitude
I guess that I'm out the door and now I'm done with you"

[Melissa Moon]

Today was a bit frustrating at times, but I enjoyed myself. I headed out with Greg Stumpf a little bit before noon, and when we first headed out, it looked like the storm that was going to hit near Guthrie was becoming discrete, whereas everything to the south still looked linear, so we headed north on 35 to almost Edmond. However, it started to kind of crap out, and the storm to the south started to become discrete and started looking really good as it was approaching the Norman area (where as the storm to the north seemed like it was dying). So, we abandoned that storm, and went for the one closer to Norman, which also kinda crapped out. Byt that time, we were down on Highway 9.

Tail end Charlie (the one that produced the tornados that Shane saw) started looking really nice, so we headed south on 177 towards that storm but trying to stay east of it. It had become tornado-warned by that time, but we were too far east trying to get in position for (hopefully) more tornados that didn't happen, so we didn't see the tornados. Wound up intersecting the storm about 5 miles East of Wynnewood and followed it up to Ada. By that time, there were actually 2 storms, and the one behind the first looked a lot better, but it turned out to be this massive HP bomb, so even if there had been a tornado with that storm, we would have had a really hard time seeing it because it would have been surrounded by a nasty-looking HP core. We went south on 3 since the storm was moving more E'ly rather than NE'ly to get out of the way, and then headed north for a little while on 48 near Lula (and easy on some county road...I think 1600 or something). Ran into Gene Rhoden and RJ Evans while stopping to get a last glimpse of this storm before letting it go into the jungle that is better known as SE. Oklahoma. Chase humor story of today (for us) was that there was a marijuana plant growing on the side of the road right where we pulled off to watch the storm/talk to RJ and Gene. I guess someone threw some seeds out the window dodging the cops or something!

Anyway, Greg and started to head back to Norman, and decided to drop south on 99 briefly near Ada to catch a smaller cell that was moving through the area, hoping to get a last glimpse of something before heading back. Not too much luck, other than some CG's.

All in all, it was a pretty good chase. Would have been better to see a tornado, but I was perfectly happy :-). I'll put a few pictures up in a bit but first I need food.

[JHadorn]

I didn't get to see any tubes, or anything else at all that exciting. Most of the day was spent praying for the Stratus Deck of Doom to start burning off so we could get some instability going (although MLCAPE values were around 1200j/kg which was more than sufficient once something got started).

I witnessed cells firing to my west and east all day, but was confined to work all day. At one point one of the cells to the east started showing organization and there was visible circulation in the mid levels at least.

The one cell that did completely roll on us was part of that line that was tor. warned in Concordia. By the time it got to Beatrice it had turned into a grungy bow beast. The shelf cloud that came rolling over had some interesting motions to it. At one point there appeared to be some rotation to an especially lowered portion, but I can't verify. As the storm rolled over Beatrice it started off with light rain, lightning, and the ominous green sky. I gave my co-workers an off-hand estimate of nickel size for the largest stones and was proven right a few seconds later. The light rain and hail turned to a blinding deluge that was driven by 70 MPH gusts according to OAX. I can't verify that because I could not see out any windows at work during the time, but I would believe it.

I really wish I could have snagged pictures of the shelf cloud as it came roaring into town. It really was grungy.

Later in the afternoon I got bored while the dry slot was rolling over Nebraska, so I decided to try my hand at some photography. I wanted to capture the storms on the western edge of the slot as they rolled over town, but the whole system was cranking east at about 60 MPH at least (I was doing 60 and it was overtaking me). I did manage to snag a shot of a supercell to my southeast (somewhere in Kansas) by the shot came out as a blurry mess. I did get a shot of the line just a little farther north of it. I also got a picture of the storm on the western edge of the dry slot as it started passing overhead.

Photography from the day may be found at: http://www.thespiralingshape.org/img/wx/060330/

Nothing of MikeH quality, but then, what is?

[Jay Cazel]

Mike Gribble and I left Wichita around 10:30am heading south toward our initial target Wellington Ks. After resetting XM and checking data we turned around and headed back north towards the cell near Wichita that was going up ahead of the line that was south into Oklahoma. The cell finally went tornado warned around Potwin Ks and was showing some rotation and a wall cloud.

The storm motion was around 50mph so it was hard to stay with it. Heading towards highway 77 we tried to cut over on a dirt road but it was very muddy and had to go back to the paved road that went over to highway 77. This is when the chase started to go down hill.
http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9112/03302006chase19pf.jpg

Took a quick stop to get cameras ready right before the highway, just got back into the explorer and a Butler Co sheriff dove up and was storm spotting. So we had to follow him until we got to Florence Ks and jumped on highway 50 heading north, well the traffic was so bad could not catch back up with the cell. We turned north towards Council Grove trying one last attempt to catch the cell but it was moving to fast. We broke off the chase because there really was no good road network and the speed of the storm. So we headed back west on highway 56 heading towards Herrington trying to intercept the line that was showing rotation coming out of Reno Co. The storm lost its punch right before we got to it so we decided to call it a day.

http://img307.imageshack.us/img307/4663/03302006chase128hd.th.jpg (http://img307.imageshack.us/my.php?image=03302006chase128hd.jpg)

http://img426.imageshack.us/img426/6222/03302006chase144wg.th.jpg (http://img426.imageshack.us/my.php?image=03302006chase144wg.jpg)

On the way back got a flat so had to change it in the wind, rain and muddy road. It was not a bad chase day no tornados but car, equipment problems (had to reset XM three times) and the speed of the storms made it stressful.

Also I got to meet fellow Stormtrack member Ryan Shirk and his brother in law they caravaned with us.

[Eugene Thieszen]

Just a short report. Walt Gish and I saw the same two tornadoes as Shane. As such too much further description etc. would simply be repeating what has already been posted.

We left Cordell a bit behind the game but managed to get ahead of the line of storms and worked our way south on Hwy 81 to tail end charlie which we had to core punch at Duncan in order to get into position. As we neared the southern edge of the core, we heard spotters reporting rotation along Cherokee road--I thot--here's yet another example as to why it is unwise to core punch!!. We were lucky I guess and got into position in time to see the first tor east of Duncan and then the second NNE of Velma. With trees and low contrast the video isn't really worth much so I won't bother to post any captures. No time to get out and tripod, and both tors were brief in any case.

Broke off the chase a bit after the cell crossed I-35. It didn't seem to be able to get itself re-organized to produce anything other than some weak rotation.

Wondering why the tors aren't on the SPC report page. The spotters were all over them even tho the cell wasn't tornado warned....

Good chase for the first time out this year and my first time out from my new location.

Gene

[Dick McGowan]

Darin Brunin, Eric B' Hymer and I witnessed a rope tornado near Buffalo KS earlier this evening. Will post a pic and chase report later.

[bbarjenbruch]

Just a quick chase encounter...

Initially targetted Hebron NE out of Lincoln, but ended up doing as many others did, chasing the tor warned cell from Concordia toward Beatrice. Saw a decaying wall cloud with possible funnel in a cell before this and farther to the Northwest, but was really not that impressive. When we finally got ahead of the targetted cell, stopped for about 2 minutes and took pictures of a wall cloud with weak rotation present SW of Beatrice. RFD QUICKLY flew in on us as it was in the process of rapidly bowing out. The road network to the east of US77 was weak so we were basically screwed. Pulled into a pasture to take the full onslaught of the storm. Saw ~8 in. diameter tree branches fall close in front of the car ( the 70 mph wind estimate from OAX was actually called in by me) as we took ~ golfball sized hail. Most of the stones were smaller, but there was one right next to my car door that was up to that size. I was seriously thinking my car windows were going out, but got lucky. It was an exciting chase, but without tornadoes. Congrats to those who had better luck today.

[David Schuttler]

Couldn't get out of work until 3 but decided to head north and intercept the Osage county storm in Oklahoma. Never could get close enough to see anything as it went through Independance, Ks. but there was a bunch of emergancy vehicles headed there as I continued up 75.
I ended up catching up to a cell coming into Wilson county and got these pics as it dropped east of Buffalo, Ks.
http://stormdriven.com/cblog/uploads/0330061901.jpg

http://stormdriven.com/cblog/uploads/0330061902.jpg

http://stormdriven.com/cblog/uploads/0330061904.jpg

http://stormdriven.com/cblog/uploads/0330061906.jpg

More are on the blog (http://stormdriven.com/cblog/index.php?/archives/11-March-30th-2006-Wilson-Co.-KS..html)

I'll add some video tonight or tomorrow

[Chris C Sanner]

Well, I missed the two highly visible tornadoes near my hometown (DOH!) as I was engaged with a very nice looking wall cloud with very good rotation near Lindsay. After finally coming to my senses and getting on the tail-end, we saw most of the action near Pernell/Elmore on through Ada. God bless the GPS, it kept us ahead of the storm the whole day. Props to that thing.

Anywho, onward with the report. We watched the wall cloud in the Elmore City-Pernell area and heard the reports of tornadoes, but we watched this thing the whole time and did not see anything highly visible, so I bet they were rain wrapped, which I will have to check film on to check. Either way, the storm cycled down and went through a split about I-35, which really threw us off for awhile, as I found myself in between two storms and both had some decent rotation at times.

Finally, I'm pretty sure we observed a rain-wrapped tornado about 10-15 miles WSW of Ada. We experienced some ping-pong balls falling from the sky just before that, then the wall cloud completely wrapped itself in rain. We approached from the North and we began seeing a lot of leaves falling out of the air just about a 1/2 mile from the rain. We then saw a couple of trees broken in half, but I'm not sure if this was from a tornado or not, but I'm fairly sure the leaves were caused by a nader.

We later heard the reports of debris falling from the air from this same storm, so I imagine it was one of the folks who were convoying behind us (we had channells 11, 4 and 9 right behind us for about an hour and a half). Either way, it was a great storm and another great set of memories. I wish we could've saw the first two within a few miles of home, but I will not be too picky, this was the first Supercell I've seen in what seems like forever. Now time to focus on the next event...

[Shane Adams]

Coming into Ratliff City I saw Shane Adams on the side of the road in his blue hatchback looking completely dumbfounded so as I screamed by I leaned on the car horn like a train. [/b]


(really laughing)

I never stopped in Ratliff City and I don't own a hatchback. The only person I heard honk at me was in a red SUV, and this happened south of Pernell. But the "completely dumbfounded" part I believe.

[Chris Vagasky]

I left the KSBI studio today at 1:20pm. Almost immediately after leaving, I was in a torrential downpour, then started hearing the unmistakable sound of hail hitting my truck.

I pulled off I-35 in Moore at Indian Hill Road...with some nickel to quarter sized hail. No damage, thankfully.

My focus was down closer towards the Ardmore area, so I headed back south on I-35. I crossed over the Canadian River and off to my west, I saw a lowering, so got off at Goldsby. I was pulled into the Goldsby Baptist Church parking lot recording what was happening with the lowering, when Brady Brus told me that there were some tornado reports in Choctaw.

We considered having me head back up towards OKC, but then decided to keep focused on the southern storms. I got off at exit 72 near Pauls Valley when I saw the lowering, then decided to head a bit further south. I got off at exit 66 and saw the storm becoming better organized. The storm was headed straight at my location so again I headed a bit south. I'm glad I did. I was able to get some very good video from the south end of the two storms, including a very good inflow and tail cloud. At one point, the storm seemed to be struggling to produce a tornado, almost directly over I-35, but the rotation weakened on it.

I started following the storm towards Ada, but needed to meet the satellite truck back in Pauls Valley to get the video ready for the news. I was able to get some good pictures of the McAlister, OK supercell, and an anvil with nice mammatus. Those will be posted shortly, and some video captures may be posted sometime during the weekend.

[Ryan McGinnis]

No tornadoes today for me -- and not much of photogenic anything due to the persistant cloudcover. But a really fun chase, nonetheless, especially considering it was in my back yard. I started out by driving west a bit on I-80 and waiting at a rest stop just east of Goehner, between Lincoln and York. I got the impression that the dryline storms out west were going to be completely linear, and I noticed that convection was trying to pop from an area basically overhead to points south into Kansas. So I dropped south. Eventually, a supercell formed south of Beatrice, so I headed back east to HWY 103, then dropped south to Crete. As I was doing this, the Beatrice cell was really getting wound up, and given the fact that everything was tearing along at 50+mph, I only just barely got NE of the cell on HWY 33 before the core could catch me. This was actually pretty cool, as CGs were dropping left and right around me about once every 2 or 3 seconds -- and they were really, really close, close enough to get the 'radio hum' before the strike. I stopped about 2 east of Roca to watch the 'meso' (not too impressive looking) roll by and to get in position to try to close in on it (briefly) once I had a clear shot at the inflow area. Unfortunately, the storm started falling apart at around this point. Still, it was the only game in town at the time, so I tailed it by taking the grid roads to the north. While I was doing this, I noticed another cell forming to the south. To be honest, I didn't have a lot of hope for it, as it had plenty of crap convection surrounding it, but the original cell I was on was limping into Lincoln like a wounded deer, so I decided to "try" to get east before the core of the new storm overtook me. Drove east on Hwy 2. No luck, but at least I only caught the blinding rain and wind part of the core, not the hail part. It seemed pretty clear, though, once I got to Syracuse, that the storm I was positioning for wasn't going to make the cut. I munched out on Slim Jim's & Strawberry milk as disorganized storms marched overhead. Once it was clear the the squall was going to march in and finish the day, I decided to go and try to meet it somewhere picturesque, so I took HWY 2 back to Lincoln. Got to the outskirts of Lincoln just before the squall did, and let me tell ya -- it was one of the more visually frightening things I've ever seen. I knew I wasn't in danger, but it looked like something out of one of those Apocylpse movies. I sat in my car with my jaw dropped as I watched a massive, impenetreble fist-like curtain of rain sweeping across the horizion towards me. I mean you could really see it coming. I parked next to HWY 2, and boy was it was making the traffic on HWY 2 freak out! Once it got right on top of me, I could literally see the power of the downdraft -- the rain flying horizionally several thousand feet overhead, and then whoosh! The car rocks as the gust front hits and the visibility goes from 5 miles to 5 feet in just a couple seconds. It was all over in five minutes, but wow! I'll never get the image of that squall coming in out of my head. It's one of those things that's so surreal that you wonder if you're dreaming.

Now, I saw no tornadoes today, but I still had an awesome time. Between the wondergul squall and the challenge of getting in position (even though the storms died), I had a good chance to shake down my equipment setup and have fun doing it. Plus, the usual chase magic was following me around. For example, at the gas stop in Syracuse, the clerk who was ringing up my Slim Jims seemed really distracted... and then she suddenly got this huge smile and blurted out to me that her sister, who has had cancer for the last 3 years, just called her and told her that her cancer was in remission. Outside, the last storm had just rolled through and the sun was poking through the clouds for the first time of the day. Yeah, it was a pretty cool chase.

[CHris Whitehead]

(really laughing)

I never stopped in Ratliff City and I don't own a hatchback. The only person I heard honk at me was in a red SUV, and this happened south of Pernell. But the "completely dumbfounded" part I believe.
[/b]

Bingo, that was me. Just I got the location wrong in the post. But I did notice you werent driving your white car with the back window blown. You were in some car with split antennas on top.

[Travis Klanecky]

This morning after class, me and a few other meteorology students here at UNL made our way west toward York and then south on US-81. We were hoping to get to north-central KS. During our drive a few tornadic cells popped up in the Salina, Ks area. So we were hoping to get in front of it somewhere near the NE/KS border. Although I haven't heard this in any other reports, we were able to catch a quick glimpse of a funnel to the southwest of Hebron around 1pm. It happened so quickly, I was only able to get a few minutes of video of the wall cloud, but it wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Unfortunately, this particular area was weakening rather quickly, so we decided to head east toward Fairbury to get ahead of the Salina cell which was quickly heading to the northeast around 55 mph.

By the time we had gotten to around to about 6 miles south of Beatrice, we were just barely ahead of the storm. It had amazing speed. As reported by another person above, the storm began to bow out. While heading north on US-77, the storm overtook us and we were hit with 70 mph winds, heavy rain, and around quarter size hail. So after we let the heavier rains pass we headed back to Lincoln to end the day.

I believe this particular line would eventually be the one that went through the Papillion and Omaha areas causing some damage. Lessen learned today: Keep lots of distance between you and the storm when it is moving at 50+ mph.

All in all, I really enjoyed the chase today. It's been two years and the wait was well worth it. Sometimes it's just important to have some fun. Most importantly, I pray that there were no injuries today.

[Jeff Miller]

Work was a late start today which did allow me to be able to get a local chase in to start the season this year, and I was not all that dissapointed. Since I know I had to get back to work by 8 tonight, going farther south towards Omaha-Beatrice was not an option, so I took the hand I was dealt.

Stayed back for a while watching an unorganized, sloppy mess get going all around me here in NE Nebraska. When some storms began to take on severe characteristics and went tor warned, I was on the road to intercept.

Observed today was a nice gust front/shelf cloud with non-rotating lowerings and some eddies that were deceptively swirling about. Once in the beast, (moving from the northwest to south you had no choice but to get in there, plus when I was arriving coverage was increasing remarkedly), I got hit by extimated 50-55 MPH winds with higher gusts -- tumbleweeds were flying on and over my car like crazy. CGs were not very constant with these cells up here, however, there was some nice CCs intermixed.

Hitting the core was like entering a waterfall with torrential rains and possibly some pea hail, but the rain/wind combination brought visibility down to just in front of the hood of my Explorer.

I intended to chase further, but after encountering this cell, everything went to a stratiform heavy rain mess, and there was nothing more with any semblance of structure to see so I went home.

Am I dissapointed? Not at all. As a storm chaser, I chase storms, and was thrilled to start off the season with a great show of convection. No tornadoes, no severe hail, lots of lightning, strong marginally severe winds -- I wont call that a bust by any means -- I call it the season opener. Here's a toast to the rest of the season.

Got video of the core and the gust front and non rotating lowerings -- will see if anything worth showing here later. Fun day!

[Chris Vagasky]

http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g58/cvagasky/Storm%20Chasing%2030%20Mar%2006/100_0075.jpg (http://s53.photobucket.com/albums/g58/cvagasky/Storm%20Chasing%2030%20Mar%2006/)

[[My favorite picture that I took]]

Click it to see all the pictures.

When I get my video back, I'll do some video captures for some other pictures.

[Nic Wilson]

Kenny Tapp and I left OUN around 12:45pm to target the supercell just south of Chickasha that finally had a nice presentation on radar. We proceded to head toward Lindsay, OK where we randomly met up with good friends Aaron Kennedy and Ashton Robinson (fellow grad students at OU). We watched some unorganized scud and brief funnels such as the first one pictured in my link at 2:20pm. At that time we made the incorrect decision to head northeast back toward Maysville instead of diving south toward the Duncan supercell. It was a blessing to have the KFOR simulcast on 1520 AM, as they soon informed us of the brief tornado on the ground near Purnell as we maneuvered around leisurely rural Oklahoma traffic toward Elmore City (definitely not a city either). Although too late for the brief tornadoes, we were able to witness the redevelopment of the mesocyclone directly overhead just southwest of Pauls Valley - more amazingly we could make out the cyclonic and anticyclonic couplet, just as you learn in your textbook mesoscale course. After witnessing this we tracked back northeast toward Wynnewood where we called it an afternoon as things looked fairly ragged.

http://weather.ou.edu/~nwilson/chasing/mar3006/mar3006c.jpg

Overall it was a fun chase, but the event definitely did not live up to the PDS hype. Early initiation, backed winds aloft and too many storms fighting for inflow definitely limited the action today - but it was nice to see supercells with some structure, lightning and heavy rain (we managed to avoid the hail). AND its only March...errr for one more day!



A couple of my best pictures of the afternoon: http://weather.ou.edu/~nwilson/chasing/mar3006/

[Chris Vagasky]

Nic...I was in that blue ranger across the street from you guys...

I have this picture (http://weather.ou.edu/~nwilson/chasing/mar3006/mar3006d.jpg) on video

[Jeff Snyder]

I'll try to keep this report short...

I waited around OUN to see if the convection in southwestern OK would break up into discrete storms. I (with Jana Lesak, Gabe Garfield, Justin Walker, and *forgot the name,,, sorry!*) were originally planning on hitting up the storm near I40 to the west of OK, as it appeared to be becoming discrete. However, as we were leaving OUN, the cells in southwestern OK looked to be breaking up a bit, so we headed south in hopes that some insolation down there would help the cause.

The first storm we hit was northeast of Chickasha. It looked kind of outflowish, and it appeared as though the storm to its south was raining into that storm's inflow. So, we dropped south, eventually ending up two storm south in Pernell. We sat there for a bit and watched some nice RFD and wallcloud action to our west. We stayed with this storm through east of Wynnewood. Rotation was evident from time to time, but it didn't look too impressive. At some time, another cell developed to its west, near Paul's Valley. We watched this storm as we moved with it through Ada. We did stop somehwere west of Ada and watched some incredible rotation. The rotation of the rain bands and wallcloud is some of the most intense I have ever seen, and we all thought that the storm was going to produce. Well, it didn't.

We kept with the storm through Ada, where road network options became an issue. Here again, however, we did see some very nice, very wet RFD action. We ended up having to head into the forward-flank downdraft core for a bit, and we got some penny-sized hail for a while. Through the rest of the daylight time, we followed this storm through east of McAlester. Road network was a problem, as were hills and trees. We did have a time where we were north of the strong rotation and south of the larger hail and main core (in the 'bears cage' as some refer to it as), and there was at least one time where the storm possessed a very low, very large wallcloud. However, even then, the wallcloud(s) didn't look all too organized. We called off the chase northeast of McAlester.

Overall, I was slightly disappointed with the chase. We were able to get on two nice supercells, and there were a couple of times during which I really thought we'd see tornadogenesis (particularly that time when we were 10-12 miles west-southwest of Ada). However, something was obviously missing. Speaking of missing, I'm not sure how we missed the tornado near Velma, since we were watching it, but I assume it was a precip-blockage issue. I was also surprised that, despite sampling almost all parts of that supercell, the largest hail we experienced and saw was penny-size. For whatever reason, the supercells largely looked HP, with very wet, precip-filled RFDs (though they both had clean RFD occlussions once or twice).

It was good to finally chase west of McAlester. Roads were pretty bad, trees were abundant, and hills got in the way. This area wasn't HORRIBLE, and I don't think I'd avoid chasing there if there was a supercell there, but it certainly isn't what I would consider to be "good" chase territory, that's for sure! I'll probably throw some pics up tomorrow.

EDIT: I should note that, as usual, OUN was on the ball in terms of their presence on area ham radio / spotter/skywarn repeaters. There was quite a bit of play-by-play on the Cyril and OKC repeaters (also some good info on a freq that I have labeled as "Ardmore", but most be somewhere nearer Pauls Valley or Ada). Awesome job keeping everyone on the ball -- chasing and spotting is much easier when we have that good information!

My cellphone data worked intermittently, largely because I left my external antenna at home. Gr.

[Kathryn Piotrowski]

Wow...I'm beat...just returned from chasing in KS. Me and my Dobie "Sky" that is! Jeff decided to head south earlier in the day and I decided to head North (towards the low). Unfortunately we had an equipment mix up and SOMEONE ended up with my GPS. I am rotten at reading maps, well, I think only rotten at reading them when under the gun. So I tried to navigate around the storms without GPS on XM and without the DeLorme on my laptop. The tornadic supercell near Freedonia...well I missed that one...flippin' trying to get my bearings, find roads, these storms were flying! So I ended up crashing down to another storm coming up to Independence, Ks that storm had a nice cone to the ground...I have posted pics on my website but will post video tomorrow evening. http://www.twisterchasers.com/2006_storm_c...rch%2030%202006 (http://www.twisterchasers.com/2006_storm_chase_highlights.htm#March%2030%202006)
After chasing that tornado for a good long while I turned back to another storm coming up behind it....At Buffalo, KS...things got pretty hairy...the circulation was wrapped in rain...but looked so incredibly cool...then as it trucked on NE a nice trunk came to the ground. I only have video of that one. Then I followed that storm up to Chanute then Iola and east on 54 it was getting dark but looked to me that another cone, trunk had formed and was imbedded in the core. This is on Video as well. I hope everyone stayed safe. Now I'm going to sleep and getting rest for SATURDAY!

[mike scantlin]

We kept with the storm through Ada, where road network options became an issue. Here again, however, we did see some very nice, very wet RFD action. We ended up having to head into the forward-flank downdraft core for a bit, and we got some penny-sized hail for a while. Through the rest of the daylight time, we followed this storm through east of McAlester. Road network was a problem, as were hills and trees. We did have a time where we were north of the strong rotation and south of the larger hail and main core (in the 'bears cage' as some refer to it as), and there was at least one time where the storm possessed a very low, very large wallcloud. However, even then, the wallcloud(s) didn't look all too organized. We called off the chase northeast of McAlester.

It was good to finally chase west of McAlester. Roads were pretty bad, trees were abundant, and hills got in the way. This area wasn't HORRIBLE, and I don't think I'd avoid chasing there if there was a supercell there, but it certainly isn't what I would consider to be "good" chase territory, that's for sure! I'll probably throw some pics up tomorrow.

EDIT: I should note that, as usual, OUN was on the ball in terms of their presence on area ham radio / spotter/skywarn repeaters. There was quite a bit of play-by-play on the Cyril and OKC repeaters (also some good info on a freq that I have labeled as "Ardmore", but most be somewhere nearer Pauls Valley or Ada). Awesome job keeping everyone on the ball -- chasing and spotting is much easier when we have that good information!

My cellphone data worked intermittently, largely because I left my external antenna at home. Gr.
[/b]


me and my buddies were also on that storm. at one point we had a nice little group on the bridge over US69 just east of that ammunition plant south of McAlester. but we were watching one wall cloud, then noticed another lowering further to the west, and it looked really low, but there was a hill there. but some guy that was "with" channel 2 called it in as a tornado on the ground, which i think is ridiculous. it was too far away to tell. so maybe my first tornado, maybe not. we decided to label it as a tard-nado. we moved a little north on 69, stopped to watch both areas, and saw a few different funnels that were very interesting. one was like a rope funnel, with broken condensation leading outward and down on the far east side of the east wall cloud. it was spinning a little bit, then disappeared in about 20 seconds. very cool to see. not a bad chase, considering it was visual.

[Aaron Kennedy]

Might as well copy and paste Jeff's report... except we broke off the storm at I35. Couldn't leave till 1pmish so we missed the tornadoes, however, we did get a nice rotating wall cloud and counter rotating couplet pair.

http://www.convectionconnection.com/CHASE-033006/

Aaron

[Jason A.C. Brock]

Sorry I didnt get your message ya left for me Todd until later this evening. My Wifi only works if Im basically right on top of a solid siganl which I left in order to watch the storms that were moving towards Mountain Park NW of Lawton. Btw there is a wifi hotspot at the cracker barrell at the hotel behind it in Lawton.
Anyways I watched the storms to the NW strengthen along with a group of cows and then decided to follwo the cell as it kinda went parallel to I-44 North of Lawton. The storm began to exhibit signs of a wall cloud and some weak rotation and produce some half-dollar size hail. I took a few picks and followed the cell on into Chickasha. I decided to let this cell go on towards the metro as I did not run into all the moms crowding the highways to pick up kids from as well as the chaser hoards and I jumped over towards hwy 81 and went south to catch the cell that would produce possibly a couple weak tornadoes North of Velma. I caught this cell and followed it towards Elmore City adn sat atop a hill on I think hwy 29 and took some timelapse of the wall cloud passing very near as sirens sounded in the town.
I saw what I thought were a couple brief funnels with very good rotation in and around them and what at times was a rather large wall cloud. After tonights inspection on the timelapse I do believe one of these funnels touched the ground but oh so briefly. On the time lapse you can cleary see debris fly up towards the funnel off the ground and then dissapear. It was very very brief but now I do believe this was indeed the weakest or tornadoes but the time lapse was pretty neat. I followed this cell as it weakend towards Ada and waited as it died for the backbuilt brother to arrive that also began to have some good rotation. I decided to leave this cell at Ada however and head home even tho there was reports of debris falling from the sky such as leaves.
I headed South having to manuever sround the Indian Nation turnpike due to construction but caught a small LPis looking cell near Sulphur. I could also see the nice updraft and the anvils of storms to the SW along the Red River and decided to head that way on the way home to catch a few lightning pics.
I LOVE it when you can kinda ladder step your way South and catch multiple storms! Sometime ya wish ya didnt leave the northern storm but other times it can make ya look like a genious. :-p.
For a March chase this wasnt bad at all and I think this may be my first tornado in March.
Ill post pics and vidcaps and perhaps a brief timelapse on my website at http://www.texhomastormchasers.com
Memorbale things about this chase were.
1. Happy Cows arent jsut in California
2. Amazing rotation at times
3. Not alot of really large hail reports. Golfballs largest maybe?
4. Very early chase hours
5. The quickest tornado touchdown I have ever seen
6. Amazed how people will block overpasses when there is only pea size hail
7. The Indian Nation turnpike under construction and a 13 miles detour
8. The newly "fixed" road on I-44 near Elgin drains VERY pourly. Hydroplaning there was horrible. Had to do about 45 mph to keep her on the road.
9. Road networks once out of Ada to the East are not very good along with hills and trees galore.
10. My forecast was pretty good. I figured we would have a better tornado producer South of I-40 but oh well. I was unconvinced it had even produced earlier but after viewing video I can "kinda" count this as a First tornado of the year tornado but I still only really count the ones you can look at and say " Oh my god! Look at that tornado!" ;-)

I also saw what was actually a very humbling scene in Chickasha. They had a funeral procession for a fallen firefighter who I believe was killed in duty last week or so battling grass fires. There were TONS of firetrucks, police, & utility trucks all driving beneath two extended ladders from two firetrucks that created an arch. When this occured it also completely stopped raining at the exact time. It was as if heaven actually was opening up for someone.

[Daniel Christianson]

No tornadoes today for me -- and not much of photogenic anything due to the persistant cloudcover. But a really fun chase, nonetheless, especially considering it was in my back yard. I started out by driving west a bit on I-80 and waiting at a rest stop just east of Goehner, between Lincoln and York. I got the impression that the dryline storms out west were going to be completely linear, and I noticed that convection was trying to pop from an area basically overhead to points south into Kansas. So I dropped south. Eventually, a supercell formed south of Beatrice, so I headed back east to HWY 103, then dropped south to Crete. As I was doing this, the Beatrice cell was really getting wound up, and given the fact that everything was tearing along at 50+mph, I only just barely got NE of the cell on HWY 33 before the core could catch me. This was actually pretty cool, as CGs were dropping left and right around me about once every 2 or 3 seconds -- and they were really, really close, close enough to get the 'radio hum' before the strike. I stopped about 2 east of Roca to watch the 'meso' (not too impressive looking) roll by and to get in position to try to close in on it (briefly) once I had a clear shot at the inflow area. Unfortunately, the storm started falling apart at around this point. Still, it was the only game in town at the time, so I tailed it by taking the grid roads to the north. While I was doing this, I noticed another cell forming to the south. To be honest, I didn't have a lot of hope for it, as it had plenty of crap convection surrounding it, but the original cell I was on was limping into Lincoln like a wounded deer, so I decided to "try" to get east before the core of the new storm overtook me. Drove east on Hwy 2. No luck, but at least I only caught the blinding rain and wind part of the core, not the hail part. It seemed pretty clear, though, once I got to Syracuse, that the storm I was positioning for wasn't going to make the cut. I munched out on Slim Jim's & Strawberry milk as disorganized storms marched overhead. Once it was clear the the squall was going to march in and finish the day, I decided to go and try to meet it somewhere picturesque, so I took HWY 2 back to Lincoln. Got to the outskirts of Lincoln just before the squall did, and let me tell ya -- it was one of the more visually frightening things I've ever seen. I knew I wasn't in danger, but it looked like something out of one of those Apocylpse movies. I sat in my car with my jaw dropped as I watched a massive, impenetreble fist-like curtain of rain sweeping across the horizion towards me. I mean you could really see it coming. I parked next to HWY 2, and boy was it was making the traffic on HWY 2 freak out! Once it got right on top of me, I could literally see the power of the downdraft -- the rain flying horizionally several thousand feet overhead, and then whoosh! The car rocks as the gust front hits and the visibility goes from 5 miles to 5 feet in just a couple seconds. It was all over in five minutes, but wow! I'll never get the image of that squall coming in out of my head. It's one of those things that's so surreal that you wonder if you're dreaming.

Now, I saw no tornadoes today, but I still had an awesome time. Between the wondergul squall and the challenge of getting in position (even though the storms died), I had a good chance to shake down my equipment setup and have fun doing it. Plus, the usual chase magic was following me around. For example, at the gas stop in Syracuse, the clerk who was ringing up my Slim Jims seemed really distracted... and then she suddenly got this huge smile and blurted out to me that her sister, who has had cancer for the last 3 years, just called her and told her that her cancer was in remission. Outside, the last storm had just rolled through and the sun was poking through the clouds for the first time of the day. Yeah, it was a pretty cool chase.
[/b]




Im getting ready for Ok/KS in about 4 hrs from now.. i been driving all night and caught an HP supercell near NEB City im pretty sure it was a brief one .... i observed hail to the size of marbles... id say if any size exactly about Dime Size.... other locations in MO and IA i had pebble .. to tiny hail but heavy rain... got a few nice pic i was upset ot be to west of the tornadic sp' thatd had come up through Fillmore Co mo producing tornadoes i dont know if this was reported but just about 3 1/2 miles north west of Lamoni there was a brief touchdown im pretty sure it was a tornado... i mean i was looking at the lightning flashes west of me, ouside of lamoni, the SP was tornado warned... ill have to go back through video but im pretty sure there was a brief tornado touchdown, i headed off in that directiona d found alot of mud covering the county road on P-64, also there were some trees knocked down, i assume it was the circulation hoever i couldnt confirm an acutal touchdown.. i didnt see any debri on the ground... it was diffacult to tell with heavy precip falling... also when i had turned up towards Ellston many metal signs had been bended over and 3 were laying in the road... maybe it was staright line winds.. or a brief touchdown.. i saw from lightning flashes waht appeared to be a long skinny funnel.... cany anybody confirm a touchdown if you were on the cell????



http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j31/nedanne006/DSC03904.jpg


http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j31/nedanne006/DSC03902.jpg


http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j31/nedanne006/DSC03901.jpg
CORRECTED( added pic


Im nto good at sticthing photos heres the storm i encountered near Nebraska City , it quickly gulped me over with heavy rain, hail and wind.... it was pretty awsome to see before it got me ;-)

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j31/nedanne006/hpnebcity.jpg


Im exhausted goodnight"


Long chase day for me ... not to much excitment but i had a feeling the storms in MO would have tornado potential after dark i followed one storm all the way to North of Osceola and gave up.... now for the long drive in a few hrs.... here's just a a few quick shots from the digi( ok i got ahead of myself today is only FRI... yawns... i can sleep woo hoo"

[Brian Stertz]

Thursday's blasting supercells left me tornado less as flashbacks from the 3/12 chase (daytime) started replaying before me. Had 2 incurions on fairly strong circulations near Goddard KS and Florence KS where it came close but no cigar. At Florence (Marion Co. KS), did see some spectacularly lobed and sheared 2" hailstones which fell to our north while we watched the broad circulation approach from near Whitewater. I am just now salivating of the hopes for much slower moving tornadic supercells for Saturday. Hopefully the calendar change from March to April will drop the storm speeds by a third or a half !!! Glad to see the intercepts for some chasers netted tornadoes Thursday. Glad to hear that Mike Peregrine is still with us to chase another day. That Savannah MO circulation looked incredible at times on radar so imagine the roar speaks for itself !! One more item of note: I guess the city of Sedalia MO is now the tornado bullseye for 2006. Yet another damaging tornado tracked into town last night.

[Melanie Metz]

To make a long story short I ended up in Cloud county Kansas at initiation, chased a tornado warned cell just before the line filled in, drove through the hail core just before tennis ball sized hail was reported on the cell, chased another tornado warned cell further east from Morris county into Pottawatomie county and ended up watching the line book NE. I saw a decent wall cloud before the line filled in but it was quite obscured by rain. Other than that, a couple ragged bases, cool mammatus, and dark stormy skies! No tornado but it was fun! Good to be out again. Here are a few pics from my day.

Thanks much to Peggy for nowcasting!

http://www.twistersisters.com/images/033006/metz_033006_01.jpg

http://www.twistersisters.com/images/033006/metz_033006_03.jpg

http://www.twistersisters.com/images/033006/metz_033006_04.jpg

http://www.twistersisters.com/images/033006/metz_033006_06.jpg

http://www.twistersisters.com/images/033006/metz_033006_02.jpg

http://www.twistersisters.com/images/033006/metz_033006_05.jpg

[Philip Flory]

My report is pretty close to Brian's above..

I left Wichita around 11am and targeted the storms moving up from NW OK that were beginning to show signs of maturing on radar. I was eventually greeted by the storm about 15-20 miles SW of ICT. My first reaction was to notice the huge beaver tail that was feeding into the storm from the S. Over the next 10-15 minutes the storm seemed to rapidly strengthen both in person and on radar and it quickly became svr warned. Eventually, I managed to get a up close look at a lowering that seemed to pretty rapidly develop, observed some fairly strong rotation for 5 minutes or so and was pretty sure I would hear a tornado warning coming over the radio but to no avail. The rotation abruptly stopped over the next few min, I have a feeling the storm over S Sedgwick county at the time which was strengthening played a role in limited inflow into our main storm at the time. I decided to target the storm down by Clearwater that was over 60dbz on radar now. I managed to get into West Wichita near the airport when I began to encounter some pretty large hail, over the radio I heard a report of near to over golfball sized at the airport so I immedietly found a carwash and took cover as the area was slammed by near golf-ball sized hail. I let the storm pass on to my NE and was able to capture some great structure shots on the back of the storm. I eventually followed the storm all the way into Marion county without much luck. I decided the storms to my SE were moving to rapidly and I decided to head back west for the tornado warned line of storms out near Hutchinson. I arrived in Newton and headed just west of town and observed a pretty organized slowly-rotating wall cloud that persisted for a good 20 minutes but failed to produce. I called it a day after this and headed home.

Ready for some slower-moving sups tomorrow..

[Mike Mezeul II]

Started the day off yesterday near Ada, stuck with that storm until we almost reached McAlister. We ran into some half dollar sized hail a few times and watched a brief funnel but nothing too organized. We then decided to check out the cells firing further south near Gainesville (since it was on the way home) and saw some of the nicest structure all day, unfortunatily it was at night. We interecepted the first cell that became tornado warned and moved through the Pottsboro area. It had a great bell shaped updraft too it, a consistent wall cloud, and produced a few funnels, but nothing appeared to touch down. As that cell moved away we decided to grab a bite at Hooters. We then heard that the second storm that was moving into the area had just become tornado warned. We jumped on 75N again then to 121 NE. We were able to observe a brief lowering, but yet nothing more. All in all a fun lil way to start off the season, onward to Saturday now!

here are some quick video grabs

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b275/mmezeul/March302006CentralOklahoma010.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b275/mmezeul/March302006CentralOklahoma013.jpg

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http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b275/mmezeul/March302006CentralOklahoma019.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b275/mmezeul/March302006CentralOklahoma020.jpg

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b275/mmezeul/March302006CentralOklahoma026.jpg

[Mikel Shively]

I intercepted a tornado-warned cell as it was exiting Cloud Co. KS and entering the Northwestern part of Clay Co. I saw no real rotation at all. It looked pretty nice on radar, with scan to scan mesos, but I never saw much rotation period. Thanks to GPS and SA I was able to keep up with this storm for about 20 miles, in western Washington Co, where I finally lost it, but I was never able to see much rotation with this particular storm. While not seeing any thing, I still had a good time, and it was test of the gps and radar, which went without a glitch.

[Skip Talbot]

Scott Kampas and I intercepted tail end charlie northwest of Salina, KS. The storm exhibited a wall cloud with some rotation, but failed to produce. A large linear line went up soon after so we blasted southwest after a discrete, tor warned cell north of Wichita and intercepted it near Council Grove. The storm had a large RFD clear slot and occluded base. The road network went to crap and we lost it (it was starting to rain through the updraft anyway). We headed to Topeka for data and grub and saw that conditions were still favorable in the area so hung around. We caught a few severe warned, but linear storms around 4pm that kept firing over the same location. Left at 1:45am Thursday monring and home in Bolingbrook by 2:30am Friday morning. We busted tornado wise, but the storms we saw had a great struture over great terrain (I love Kansas!).

[John Farley]

Though unable to chase due to a conference I am attrending in Omaha, I got to see a good storm anyway - watched a rain-wrapped meso pass right over, or perhaps just west of, downtown Omaha. The sirens blew in the middle of a session and the meeting area was evacuated by hotel personnel. I managed to find a place where I could see out just as wrapping rain curtains obscured the tall buildings in downtown Omaha. (The hotel is just northeast of downtown Omaha.) At my location, the wind and rain quickly swept over and blasted in from the southeast, shifting soon to the southwest as the meso passed a mile or so west of my location. Wind - probably wet RFD - overturned a semi at the intersection of 80 and 480 just southwest of downtown Omaha. I would guess the meso that passed over downtown was the same one that earlier produced the tornado in Papillion. There was also quite a bit of straight-line wind damage on the south side of Omaha.

The hotel folks did a good job of getting people out of meeting rooms, but from there things kind of broke down. Some were evacuated to a laundry area on the lowest floor, but others were allowed to stand for quite some time near large floor-to-ceiling windows, not a good place to have been if the hotel had taken a direct hit.

[Scott Olson]

Targeted Nebraska City, NE and arrived about 2:00pm. At which point there was the earlier storms moving just north and south of me and then the storms associated with the front a little further west. I decided to go east and intercept the storms further west. At around 3:00pm I arrived in Douglas, NE and saw a nice shelf cloud and quickly approaching storm. There was a lady walking down a dirt road with her dog, I grabbed my camera and took a couple shots.

Suddenly you could see rapidly approaching white curtains of rain (like a tsunami) and a speed of at least 60kts. I ran out to let the lady know but it was but by the time I turned around the the curtains had traversed nearly a mile and slammed in with at least 60kts force. I then jammed out of Douglas east for about 20 minutes through heavy winds and rain until I emerged in front of the storms again. I should also mention the storm appeared to have bow charestics. As I was in front of the storm I saw a lowering west of Nebraska City just to the north of the highway I was on. I didn't see a tornado there but I saw that it was in the prelim reports as a tornado but I don't remember there being to much rotation. I was chasing without radar so I just kept going east and into Freemont County Iowa. Here the storms looked more quasi-linear and the one to my north actually looked quite healthy with a wall cloud at times. This would be the case for the next couple hours as I raced east to stay ahead and stopped briefly to take some pictures. At the time the Montgomery County storm was tornado warned I could see the impressive lowering (nice rounded base too) but lost visual after a couple minutes. As my highway turned slightly south (between New Market and Bedford) I was treated to yet another Tsunami of wind and rain, this time it was easily 70kts and jack-knifed a horse trailer behind me. I then did a big loop at about 6:30 after a half-hour of an entirely linear and outflowish appearance and headed home.

Not a bad chase and certainly a lot of fun, as the storms took on a more ENE motion they became difficult to keep in front of and required nearly constant driving. I observed a lot of damage on my way home, including two overturned semi's, four power crews (Omaha) and a car wreck with ambulance and wish the best for those who have suffered injuries.

http://img514.imageshack.us/img514/2999/dsc001403mi.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/6776/dsc001363qg.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/6808/dsc0014210ks.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[Jim Cross]

Chased in southern kanasas along hwy 166 most of the day.Started out between Ark.city and Cedar Vale and moved east along 166 as the day progressed.Near Cedar Vale watched a storm come up from the south that intensified as it was crossing 166 and with out a good road option to the north i watched as it blasted north and became tornado warned.Father east near Niotaze another storm intensified as it crossed 166.I headed east along 166 then north on 75.As i was heading north on 75 towards Independence i saw a cone tornado near Elk City Lake.After getting through Independence i never could catch back up with the storm.There was alot of emergency vehicles north of Independence near hwy 400 but i never seen any damage.Called it a day and headed back towards St.Louis.

[Mikey Gribble]

Well, yesterday's chase was slightly better than getting kicked in the junk, but not by much. We started off in Wellington, KS and got on the storm that went tornado warned in Butler county. We managed to stay somewhat on the storm all the way up to West of Emporia, but we fell behind several times during that period. The storm had tornado warnings continously throughout this period. It got a few lowerings that looked like they could possibly produce, but it never quite got it done. We finally broke off the storm and moved back to the West to intercept a cell that was slightly ahead of a line segment coming off the dryline in central Kansas. The storm had a confirmed tornado about 5-10 minutes before we got to it. When we stopped ahead of the storm it had a decent looking horseshoe updraft base. As soon as we got out of the car to take pictures though, you could feel rain cooled outflow from earlier storms being drawn into this storms inflow. Shortly after that the updraft took on a shelf cloud appearance and we called it a day. On the way home Jay got a flat tire and it was timed perfectly so that we had to get out to change it right as the squall line moved through. It wasn't too bad though, just a little bit of rain. I met Ryan Shirk and his brother in law who caravaned with us. They made for good company and it was a pretty fun day even though we didn't get a tornado and the storms were moving >55mph (I was being sarcastic when I said it was comparable to being kicked in the junk). Hopefully tomorrow will bring better slow moving storms. Congratulations to everyone who bagged a tornado yesterday. It was a tough setup to forecast and chase and you should be proud if you managed to get a tornado.

[Brian Emfinger]

Chased with Scott Bell today. We targeted the area southwest of McAlester and by the time we got there (we left about 230 from fort smith, ar) the storms that had been in s central OK came right to us. We got in good position near Gerty and saw nice rotation.
http://realclearwx.com/images/330200602.jpg
click here for video time lapse of storm - http://www.realclearwx.com/gertystorms.htm

we got a little too far behind after it crossed the n-s hwy 75 and we got a little lost trying to follow a dirt road e to hwy 31...we came out at Stuart and by that time a new storm had formed NW of McAlester so it all worked out. We saw very little rotation in the updraft and by the time we got caught up again after McAlester it was dark. We got on hwy 31 and now the trying to find a decent vantage point in the mountains game began....it was sooooooooooo fun. We followed the storm all the way into Fort Smith and nearly the whole way the wall cloud was pretty sustained albeit changing forms. This is from Quinton, OK looking ENE.
http://realclearwx.com/images/330200604.jpg
and about a hour later s of Spiro looking N
http://realclearwx.com/images/330200605.jpg

[Simon Brewer]

Well, my chase experience mirrors Mike Hollingshead almost perfectly, just without the good XM data.

I almost never have radar, I didn't have a weather radio nor a scanner, and Jim Bishop could only nowcast for me sporadically, so it was pretty much like an old fashioned chase from the 80's by going off my meteorological knowledge, intuition, and experience.

Mark McGowan was with me and we got 4 separate tornado warned supercells: first one was northeast of Salina, second was southwest of Topeka somewhere, and the other two were in Southeastern Kansas near the Iola area.

We didn't get to the storm near Iola in time for the Buffalo tornado (big thanks to Rocky Rascovich for telling me about the storm near Buffalo in the first place), but the rain-wrapped meso crossed SR 54 directly west of us by about half a mile near La Harpe; now we had, what I considered at the time, the best possible position to view a tornado when the storm passed by La Harpe, KS. All I could see was a well defined low-hanging, rapidly-rotating, rain-wrapped wall cloud with dark condensation fragments hanging near the ground, but I never saw a tornado. Maybe we were way too close and it was more obvious further away, but I didn't see a tornado near La Harpe.

Overall it was a nice day and it was incredible getting slammed by rotating rain-bands while the meso passed very near to our location

Big Rant About Lack of Radio Storm Coverage
And I don't know what the problem is, but all day long I was searching AM and FM radio stations feverishly (thanks to my lack of data during the chase) in eastern and southeastern KS and only a few stations that acknoledged the presence of tornadic storms let alone had decent coverage. I bet most locals just driving around in their cars were clueless to any apparent danger from tornadoes yesterday from the lack of radio coverage. I couldn't even find a station that regularly stated the warnings! One station from Kansas City acknoledged the fact that torndoes were occuring in southeast KS, but didn't go into any further detail, because they were not apparently in their main listening area even though I had incredible reception in Southeastern Kansas.

[Tony Laubach]

Verne and Michael Carlson, along with yours truely, intercepted a number of squall-line embedded storms from Smith Center, KS south and east into the Herington area. We jumped on two tornado warned storms; 1 near Miltonvale at the intersection of Us Highways 24 and 81 as well as another in the third squall line near Herington. We witnessed a disorganinzed wall cloud from our perch west of Miltonvale, but that's really about it for rotating stuff. We got bombarded with some quarter-sized hail a couple times and both of our vehicles fell victim to wind damage (Verne's magnets, my antenna).

Full report can be found here (http://www.tornadoeskick.com/log060330.html)!

[Heath Schroeder]

Just wanted to add to what Samuel Stone mentioned. I work at Target as well as the radio station listed in my signature. Anyways, listening to the station I work for talking about dust devils and such I went to my receiving door looking towards the 11th and K61 intersection where the report of the tornado was and I personally didn't see a funnel but like Samuel said, maybe a landspout like the Newton KS one back in January. Saw dust/dirt swirl up from the ground as it was coming towards the store and then it blew like there was no tomorrow then it knocked power out for about 30 minutes. No damage to the store but most of the cart corrals in the parking lot were blown across the parking lot. One cart slamming into my supervisors car. There were two people working on the roof of the store when the "tornado" went by. They both are ok. One said the wind blew him across the roof on his rear. That is all I saw of it. The tornado sirens went off about 3 or 4 minutes after the tornado went by. The tornado ocurred right on the dryline that was moving through the area. No rain or hail. Just came out of nowhere. We were battling 25-40mph winds all day. Of all things, when the storm moved through, it apparently knocked some power lines down east of Hutchinson which sparked several grassfires. The area bounded by 20 square miles (4th Street to the south, 30th Street to the North, Applelane to the west and the Buhler/Haven Road to the east.) Some homes were destroyed by the fires, last I heard was 5 and 5,000 acres of land burned. I know that is a little off subject as far as tornadoes but the fires were sparked by powerline down due to the storm that rolled through.

[Steve_Stuck]

The Sherman supercell was the last storm of the night along the dryline in North Texas. It was about 14 miles from my house, so my wife and I took a ride up Preston Road from Celina to intercept. The wall cloud was persistent, but hard to tell if it dropped anything. The last shot is an interesting 30 second exposure. Not sure if that's low scud or circulation on the ground without a visible funnel. In any case, it was great chasing so close to home.



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[Gabe Garfield]

Chased this day with Justin Walker, Brandon Lawson, Jeff Snyder, and Jana Lesak. Saw 5 supercells in almost 7 hours of pure chasing! No tornadoes, but excellent storm structure.

My chase summary and a few images can be found on my blog. (http://milewidenader.blogspot.com).

Gabe

[Bart_Comstock]

I as well had a pretty good chase day. I was on the cell that moved over Ada, Oklahoma in to Ft. Smith. It had some decent rotation with it. Oh, and btw, I just love starring at the side of mountains , nothing like a good tall tree line or a well placed hill to enhance my fun on a good chase.

You can find a full report of my chase on my blog. (http://bart-comstock.blogspot.com/)

Hey Brian, what does your chase vehicle look like? I was in that green Jeep with the light bar on top and the Skywarn magnets on the side. I would be surprised if we didn't pass by each other at one point.

[Mike Hollingshead]

Chase Account and Images for nc KS to se KS supercell. (http://www.extremeinstability.com/06-3-30.htm)

[Shane Adams]

My chase summary from this day is now online...

http://www.passiontwist.us/33006chase.htm