May 23, 2008 Chase – West Central Kansas

As soon as I woke up I was talking with AAA, towing companies, and service stations. I had may car towed and being worked on, and back in Hays eating lunch by 11:30. The cause for the failure was a corroded positive cable preventing any power from reaching the vehicle, also some vacume tubes were replaced causing the engine to idle slightly rough, cost excluding towing was $100. The car was wet but, not too bad. I got another late start this day due to the car getting repaired. As I was walking back to the service station I saw that the discovery/dow/tiv group had a crew setup on the sidewalk pointing down mainstreet. I walked by on the sidewalk 2 feet away down the street towards where they were filming wondering what exactly it was they were filming. Then came the Dow/Tiv/Vortex group in a parade down the street. I hit the road about an hour later (picked up the car, cleaned up a bit, and loaded up). I immediately headed for Hill City trying to avoid the hordes on I-70 looking for more mature storms. Horribly saturated dirt roads, horrible contrast (no sunlight), and had a few dozen people around within an hour or so, I headed back to Wakeeny(sirens were going) to take a quick peek at the storm damage I had seen earlier from the previous evenings ordeal. I then headed onto Elis, NE where the sirens were also going off.  I checked out a couple of escape routes.  Two tornado warned cells one after another were stacked up like airliners as if they were on final approch into some unknown airport.  I was SE of Elis for the first one, it was getting dark the East winds were blazing away.  I tried to keep a decent eye on the immediate wind direction and speed for the winds around me, getting dark losing coms, kind of a hilly area I just could risk it where I then proceeded back to Hays, NE.  I am not sure what happened to the first cell, if it had still be producing as it passed to my west I did’nt see it.  The second cell I beleve put down the tornado that crossed I-70 blowing a couple semi trailers over.  I saw chasers on I-70 for the next hour in static positions either that or the cell tower they were all using was lost.  As I drove into Hays, law enforcement, fire, etc all had taken up static positions all over the place, the sirens were sounding, everything was closed down and I wanted to eat.  The next cell was very obviously going to miss Hays, by at least 5 miles and I was hungry for some steak but, they closed the steak place I had gotten a coupon at earlier in the day ;(  EVERYTHING, was closed, the gas stations, everything.  A couple dozen stranded travelers, locals taking shelter were in the lobby of my motel, I figured I would sit down and watch TWC with them along with my live Nexrad on my lap, once to TOR warning expired everything would magically re-open.  It didn’t I ended up at some breakfast type place, it was filled with chasers reviewing their tapes but, I guess the Applebee’s was the place to be that night.  I did’nt recognize any obvious tornado’s, I saw a couple of heavy almost black precip shafts at a mile away that could have easily have been wedges but, I doubt it.  I have not looked at the tapes yet but, I feel comfortable in a zero count for the day.  I did get video driving into 4 Kansas towns with thier tornado sirens going off FWIW which was a bit unusual  (I am usually not it town when they go off).

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May 22nd, 2008 Chase – West Central Kansas

I arrived in Hayes, KS the morning of May 22nd. A deep low pressure had moved into place and was expected to stay in place by an Omega Block thru Saturday combined with Memorial day it would have meant 4 days of chasing within a state or two. I was able to finagle myself into a room early, checked my e-mail, current conditions, and took a quick nap. Around 1:40 the first disaster struch, I dropped my laptop on the ground from about 2 feet, it landed on the cord, the cord pin was totally mangled and I was afraid the power jack inside the computer was also messed up. I grabbed the phone book and headed out to radio shack, picked up a universal power suppy (really expensive, does everything though) and it worked great. I will have to send my laptop in for jack repair at some point (2nd time, first time I dropped it though). This gave me a late start, I then went 30 miles West on I-70 after convection began maybe 45 minutes earlier, about 45+ miles to the SW along the dryline. The first two tornado warned cells that passed did not produce tornado’s, they did have lowerings at the updraft, and possibly were producing on their approch (I had a pair of binnoculars as I was under one cell I would peer thru the binnoculars at the next cell behind it). The third cell did produce a nice rope just as it crossed I-70, as well as the next cell.

I repositioned East. This is when my car died, total electronic failure. The electronic locks, windows, the little dinger when you put the keys in, everything was dead. I grabbed my backup jump start battery out of my trunk and placed it on my battery nothing. I asked the guy behind me (might have been a vortex/rotate guy) who had a much larger battery, no good. I really was not about to call a tow truck with a supercell factory sending tornado warned cells thru the area every 15 minutes(I had AAA Plus& cell service), of course I did’nt want to leave my car either with the passenger side window halfway down in the path of hail and tornado producing storm cells. At the same time I did’nt want to get left out their by myself and have a mile and a half wide wedge come around either. About a dozen vehicles were in the area but, they would all be gone as soon as the area cooled down. I joined Lucas from Salina who allowed me to join him for the rest of the evening. We headed North after a new cell we had been watching pass about half way to Hill City I swore I saw a fantastic tube on the ground, I figured we would get a break in the trees so we continued on but, we never re-acquired it(thier was a ‘fork’ in the road, the left side was dirt and saturated, the right was a county maintained gravel road). Saw alot of disorganized but, very dynamic movement along the still dry gravel and dirt roads. At Hill City it was getting dark and we decided to head back to I-70. Our radar was not updating for 20 minutes (actively working on the issue, just going thru a process of a reboot at the time). We knew thier was cell directly in our path with massive VIL’s and hail aloft. We were getting some nowcast information and decided to turn around if the hail got to large. We had a couple of small hits and found a hail shield(gas station) in the town of Wakeeny. The cell was tornado warned a tornado had been spotted, I had ‘heard’ the hail core passed the town to the South East but, given the hail I stepped out of the vehicle and looked around. I pointed at what looked like a rapidly rotating rainshaft (it was dark) to the SE (obscured by the gas station), all at once 4-5 cars full of people went running into the gas station, I felt horizontal hail it my back as I ran inside (the winds shifted from a E @ 10 to W @ 70+ suddenly as well (RFD, microburst, etc). Not sure what it was, we hearded in the tornado (refrigerator) shelter, as soon as we rounded the corner the windows blew out, and the station lost power (backup kicked in). No damage to the SUV(I was told, nickle sized) we also had another SUV blocking the hail from the West. I debated going back to the car but, storms were still going and even worse it was dark out. Hays was eventually was hit at 2am with storms, maybe a little pea sized hail, but, lots of lightning difficult to sleep thru.

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May 1st, 2008 Chase IA/SD

Tony Perkins and David Drufke and myself headed to Sioux City, IA around 10:30am. We took the Saturn Cruiser, good ride, decent ride and not horrible gas mileage. I took the scenic route through IA versus a more direct route stopping to take some photos along the way. Passed though a huge wind farm, not only were they growing corn everywhere but, they were generating kilowatts of energy. Aside the road we passed a large stack of propellers(20?), seeing them up close they are huge. We were around Cherokee, IA as MD756 was issued at 3:28pm and continued on towards the warm front. We stopped in Hinton, IA and began heading North East right around the time Tornado Watch 243 was issued(4:35pm). Two cells had popped up just over the border in NE soon to be crossing into SD near Springfield, SD. We continued N/NE as we had expected more cells to form along the boundry. Around 5:30pm we had stopped for some time looking at some nice crispy looking fresh updrafts (one after another) but, just not becomming organized. We were still expecting the line to build Eastward into better conditions, higher instabillity, and better moisture as we made our way North. Eventually blasted to intercept the nearest tornado warned cell in SD. MD759 was issued at 6:36PM. We caught up to a large cell South of Parker, SD at 7pm as the Rock Valley F2 tornado set down further down the line into IA as we had expected. The Rock Valley tornado travelled 13 miles over a 25 minute period, the tornado was estimated to be up to a quarter mile wide but, missed that one. We followed the Parker cell and watched some rapid motion at various times but, nothing highly organzied. MD762 was issued at 8:02PM followed by MD763 at 8:28PM pointing out the continued hail risk/possible Severe Thunderstorm Watch from near Sioux Falls, SD to the Twin Cities. Photo to follow..

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