Day 6 of our 2016 tour had a very high likelihood of storms and tornados- a 15% risk was issued which is very unusual.
However the conditions were not favourable for discreet supercells to form instead lots of storms were possible across a large swathe of the Mid West which made chasing very challenging.
We spent most of the morning heading North and West around a large storm system in Central Kansas. Severe storm and tornado warnings were going up all over the place, but we tried to stay disciplined and avoid the draw for the early storms to wait for something better to fire up East of the dry line and West of the out flow boundry the central storm system created.
The western edge of the central Kansas storm system, not sure I've ever seen such an angry sky!
View as we skirted West the storms towards our target area for the day.
We kept heading South before eventually finding several possible severe warned storms to chase. We spent almost 30 minutes chasing a storm tracking North towards Dodge City before deciding it was moving too quickly for us and targeting a new storm to the South into the Oklahoma Panhandle.
Target for the day
Chasing this storm became as much about road selection as anything else- masive hail was reported so we had to make sure we didn’t head into it at the wrong point or we could have been in trouble!
This was a good sign we were in the right place.
Shortly after this our storm was tornado warned. And we were in exactly the right spot, just north of a town called Ashland which had its Tornado sirens blaring!
Tornado warned
After this storm moved north we called it a day and headed for Dodge City.
However we were still treated to some stunning views on the way home.
Sunset in Southern Kansas
A perfect end to a fantastic week of chasing or is it!
As far as chase days go you can’t get a bigger contrast between Tuesday and Wednesday.
After the multiple tornados on Tuesday Wednesdays chase was always going to be slow in comparison.
We managed to find several storms but none really got going and became severe warned. The only show in town was to the North of our target area and very hard to call.
This was our first target of the day
Our chosen storm had all the properties of something that would be severe warned but like all the storms in Wednesday after a promising start it just didn’t get going.
We chased down Bob's road tracking the storm to the north
Shortly after this the storm collapsed
After this storm collapsed we went South where a couple of storms were firing up. We weren’t alone here either, plenty of chasers were with us even some guys from NOAA
NOAA chasers
The Southern storms did the same getting organised throwing out some lightning and then fizzleing out.
They were however really quite pretty.
The outlook for Thursday is much better so here’s hoping we get a little more excitement back in our lives.
Tornado risk for Thursday as of 8 am!
Stay tuned for some Northern Kansas/ Southern Nebraska chasing.
Simply amazing is the only way to describe yesterdays chase.
At least 10 tornados and a good possibility we got ourselves caught in a tornadic circulation!
We started in Amarillo and based on some excellent forecasting by Dan once again we headed East to Oklahoma and the town of Woodward.
After the set up drive which was incidentally one of the most picturesque parts of Midwest I have seen we decided to head to Buffallo OK. Once in Buffalo we encountered a chaser convergence with at least 10 other groups waiting at the same truck stop as us!
After linking up with Jock and Lisa again the waiting game started.
At around 4pm I spotted the start of an anvil which would become the monster we chased for the day.
In was standing under this tree as a result of IHOP's generous policy on coffee to go! If nature hadn't called I wouldn't have seen this to call it!
The video is a little taste of our intercept North.
Once we got to the storm and had a clear view of the wall cloud it was looking very good for Tornados.
First view of the wall cloud
Shortly after we arrived a tornado was on the ground.
First Tornado
Tornado number 2
Tornado number 4
Tornado number 5
As well as the tornados themselves the chase driving over dirt roads was quite a bit of fun!
As the afternoon went on it continued to produce tornados! I am not sure if I got a photo of all of them but read on to see our quite exciting end to the chase after more tornado photos.
A very faint picture of number 6 you may need to squint!
Look at where my hair is tallest and you can see a tornado!
We're pretty sure this is tornado number 7
Number 8
Number 9
Number 10 possibly a Iittle late on the photo as I can't quite see the circulation on the ground.
After all this excitment we wanted to chase the storm north, to keep seeing tornados but also to escape from the approaching hail core to our South.
This was taken 10 minutes after the video below.
The following video was the most exciting and nerve wracking experience of my chaser career, shortly before I started recording we had zero visibility and hail traveling at 70 mph horizontally, there’s a very good chance We were hit by tornado number 11 based on the conditions.
We escaped to the west but learnt a valuable lesson when it comes to navigation- what appear to be freeway on ramps aren’t always freeway on ramps! Had we been able to get on the freeway we would have been well away from the hail before it hit.
After escaping West of the storm we got some awesome views of the storm from a distance.
Just beautiful
To put it simply this was the most awesome display of the power of Mother Nature and memories that will last a lifetime. The rest of the week Will have to be pretty spectacular to come close to matching this.
To round off the day we had several beers shared stories and reminisced about the shared experience We just had.
Thank you to Dan, Jock, Florian and Lisa for making this the most successful chase of my life!
Today’s chase was a little more sedate than yesterday but the challenge of navigating across minor dirt roads and the genuine fear of being hit by severe hail kept it very interesting.
We started the day in Amarillo with a large area of enhanced risk across most of Western Texas, it looked like the odds of a storm were higher South so we set our sights on Lubbock initially.
When the SPC (Storm Prediction Centre) issued a tornado watch We decided keep heading South toward Abilene.
As the models updated we decided to stay around Snyder TX and wait for storms to fire up along the dry line. After a couple of hours waiting our patience paid off.
Storms started firing West of Lemesa and we got a great view of several storms just starting to develop into the classic anvil shape of a supercell.
As we chased our first target for the day and stopped to get this photo a storm that was barely visible on radar just West of Ackerly started producing lightning just as our original target started to lose mommentum.
As this storm grew we started a game of cat and mouse tying to find roads to get us in a good spot to watch, this included several miles putting the 4 wheel drive through its paces on dirt roads.
As the storm moved East it started to drop a lot of large hail which can be game over if it takes out a windscreen so we cautiously tried to skirt the southern edge of our now severe warned storm.
This was the storm as seen via Doppler as we drove along its southern edge getting hit by hail
As we did some pretty large hailstones started falling on top and around us!
The white bits are hail stones with a diameter around the size of a quarter. None of us fancied the head injury associated with going to collect some!
This storm continued to move East and dropped a lot of hail, some of which took us by surprise on the drive north after we decided to call it a day!
On the way back to Amarillo we came across another very photogenic supercell north of Tahoka.
Low level winds were picking up a lot of dust
After a couple of stops to enjoy the view we decided to head back to Amarillo in order to have a good set up for tomorrow’s storms.
3 days into the trip we have had 3 very different chases.
Saturday was very pretty, Sunday was very exciting and Monday was an off-road adventure!
Tomorrow is looking like we’ll be leaving Texas but the question is Kansas or Oklahoma.
Yesterday was one of the most exciting chase days I have ever had and once again it was thanks to some excellent forecasting by Dan and a little help from A couple of other chaser friends Jock and Lisa. Read on for a taste of what it was like.
The forecast yesterday was described by one storm chasing blog as a “crapshoot”. We had a tough call picking our target area as it was a choice between NW Kansas/ SW Nebraska or the Texas Panhandle with no obvious benefit to either we went South since if all else failed we would end up in a good place for todays chase.
First stop on the drive South was Liberal Kansas home to Dorothy’s house from the wizard of OZ.
There was no sign of the house just her mailbox presumably because the house is in OZ....
After a quick pit stop in Liberal we kept on heading South until Amarillo where after a short break for lunch and a quick look at the models we decided to head South towards the town of Tulia TX. It was in Tulia that we spent most of the afternoon, the dry line which was moving East was our target for the Day so we had to play the waiting game and we weren’t alone.
Spot the storm chasers! They are the people in cars with lots of antennas on the roof.
After a couple of hours and a few short scouting drives East and West to check out the sky we were joined by Jock and Lisa who helped us make the call to head East towards a couple of storms that had already fired up- it turned out to be a good call!
This was our storm for the day just north of Turkey TX
The storm we were chasing was pretty messy so our only choice to see some action was to get up close and personal We pushed on North into the belly of the beast.
First stop was at the intersection for the road East to Plaska Lodge where we saw a funnel cloud rotating a few hundred meters to our North.
We met a chaser later in the day who was a bit braver than us and saw the same area of the storm put down a tornado around 2 miles away from where I took the following picture and video.
This rotated across from us to the North- exciting!
After the wall cloud rotated over us we found ourselves right in the core of the storm for the first time this trip. This experience was pretty intense and definitely got the adrenaline flowing!
We were right on the edge of a tornado warning. Compare this screenshot to the one further down the page to see how quickly the storm to our South developed.
After this got a little itense for us we headed back toward Turkey to get a look at the storm from a slightly safer distance.
You can see a gustnado spinning down the river bed in this.
Now we had a choice, do we head back toward Amarillo for the night or keep the chase going and chase through to Childress? There was only one problem with heading to Childress We had to drive between 1 tornado warned supercell to our North and another severe warned storm to our South, we didn’t quite make it and got sandwhiched between both!
If you look closely at the blue circle (which is us) you can see purple on the radar this indicates the highest intensity part of the storm, the video below was shot at the same time.
The video below is what it was like from inside the core of the storm. You can also hear some pretty insightful commentary from me.
We didn’t get any further East after Jock spotted rotating couplets on the radar, instead we bravely ran away! Although the drive through the storm was pretty exciting too!
We found daylight after about 15 minutes of driving notice how light it is compared to the videos!
After bravely running away we had a spectacular drive through Palo Duro Canyon on the way back to Amarillo and a nice warm bed!
Thanks to Dan for another awesome day of forcasting and Jock for getting us right into the thick of it!
This year is a little bit different as we will be going it alone, me and 2 friends (one of whom knows what he’s doing) will be chasing storms without adult supervision!
The week has started with a bang, all the forcasts point to perfect conditions for severe weather in Tornado Alley.
First bit of luck was an upgrade to our car, we have some V8 muscle and 4 wheel drive to keep us safe.
The day started with a pretty easy set up drive to Goodland KS about 3 hours from our start in Denver.
Dan got us to the perfect spot to asses our next move with the models suggesting suggesting SouthWest Kansas. After a bit of lunch it was a drive due South to Syracuse where we started to see the first true Tower clouds of the afternoon spring up.
While in Syracuse we came across a few fellow chasers with much more experience than us, definitely a good sign. Shortly after the first storm of the day got fired up.
This was our first storm of the day just north of Syracuse KS
Because Dan had got us for the perfect set up location we were some of the first chasers on the scene as the little storm we had been watching developed into a supercell.
We tracked this north to just past Leoti KS.
After a very safe beginners core punch through some hail the size of marbles we were in position for our storm for the day and I am going to let the photos do the talking.
What started out as a few isolated storms consolidated for a pretty spectacular show.
The blue circle is us and the red box is a tornado warning
I think this is a safe distance!
As well as lightning it was slightly breezy!
We asked to move after this by some very friendly police officers.
After some lightning shots we moved north and got very close to a rotating wall cloud that produced several short lived funnels.
Can you spot the funnel cloud?
As the storm developed it became even more photogenic.
After deciding to play it safe and head south to Garden City for the night this spectacular storm had a few more surprises.
Show me your mammatus
Moonrise
A great end to a great day one. Slightly disappointing when we saw on facebook this storm produced a tornado but that is the art of storm chasing, wrong place right time!
