Thursday, May 27, 2010

rain 052710


Slow moving popup showers, 2.5 inches of rain in a couple hours, flood warnings!!!

Yeah, I need a good storm.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

partner pics 05122010




partner pics 05102010


These are some of the pictures my chase partner, Nichole Conard (http://www.redrockphotography.com/) took from Monday's chase.


05122010 Chase Log

Wednesday's storm forecast wasn't as apocalyptic as Mondays and looked to squall out quickly. 

Needless to say, when this storm blew up, it exploded and had several tornado warned cells out west and up north.  These storms were a little more visual than Monday's with less high level moisture obscuring the clouds. 

We made it out near Colwich and moved up to Bentley where there was a tornado warned cell.  The wall cloud was very visible west of town. 


Unfortunately, shooting into an area heavy with moisture obscures definition.  
 I was able to get on the radio with Entercom radio and KAKE TV with reports.  The wall cloud has very slow rotation and little definitions coming out of the bottom of it, but didn't produce any strong funnels.



The wall cloud dissipated fairly quickly and reformed creating a rather large funnel that showed and dissipated. 







There was an impressive storm in Goddard that was building that seemed to pull a large amount of moisture and updraft from this storm quickly.  The storms seemed to fight a little for power and ended up squalling out. 

We made it back to town see another storm coming in.  It wasn't impressive until around 8pm.  A severe thunderstorm can through and caused a large microburst in Towanda.



By the way, this is the new chase vehicle.




Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Chase log 05102010

What a week it's been.

The storm on the 10th had been forewarned by almost a week by the National Weather Service.  It is the only time in my 34 years in Wichita that I've ever seen a River Festival day canceled due to possible weather.  The predictions were bad enough that Emergency Management was scrambled.  We were very lucky that we lacked afternoon heating that kept the tornadoes from forming.  The storm I chased went right through the heart of Wichita and right over my house.

I left thinking about Belle Plain down south, there was a large thunderstorm with a massive hook echo that had several chasers on it.  We left heading south, then a call from my brother-in-law made us go west.  We ended up in Clearwater then shot south of Viola.  Their was so much humidity aloft that the haze obscured any sort of cloud definition. 


Needless to say we found the wall cloud.  At first I thought this was inflow due to the sheer size of it. Until it was fully rotating and heading towards us.  Cold wind was shooting into the storm about 45 to 50 mph.  Then as the cloud moved overhead, the wind suddenly lifted and we were in silence.

 The wheat was going every which way and we were looking at funnels coming together and falling apart.  The strange thing was we were watching rotation in the wheatfield along with it.  We never "saw" the tornado, but it was there in the field with us.

Luckily, the entire storm seemed to be rotating and the wall cloud moved out from over us and away.  At such a high rate of speed it was impossible for us to keep up with the storm.  They were warning that funnels were spotted near the airport in Wichita.
The storm was followed by a deluge of rain and hail.  We drove back into Colwich, nearly needing to stop due to visibility.  By the time we took K-96 to I-235 in Wichita we had sunlight to the west and one of the brightest rainbows I've seen.


Sunday, May 9, 2010

Preparation, timing, and waiting

The reports for tomorrow are becoming more intense.  Anytime you start getting outlooks like this, it usually means something major will occur.  I know the broadcasters have been busting at the seams to report this, but even the National Weather Service seems a little worried about this.

There are so many variables that go into forecasting like this, that pre-warnings can go largely ignored.  I know I've talked about high risk days that ended with pictures of pretty clouds with no substance.

The energy and moisture are in the atmosphere, winds are shooting every different direction with height (sheer), the timing will be the dryline and cold front colliding.  This may start in Northern Oklahoma and end up crossing the border and affecting South Central or Southeast Kansas. 

We will see what happens, hopefully I'll be in the middle of it providing pictures.  Maybe Vortex 2 will make an appearance.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Monday?

I've stopped living with perky optimism years ago.

NOAA says it might hit the fan Monday and now we look to be ground zero.  Stay tuned.

Seriously, what else am I going to write about this time of year.

Friday, May 7, 2010

Sunday Night into Monday Morning

Potiential

watch it unfold and impress your friends:

http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ict/?n=webbriefing

Thursday, May 6, 2010

nothing

Tornado drought, storms up north.  Pfffffffffffft.  Got a good lightning pic after standing in a field for almost an hour on Sunday.  Maybe next week will bring something. . . anything.  The storms up north didn't look like that but as I'm writing this they just became tornado warned.