May 12th, 2010: Central Kansas Chase

Another disappointing chase. I started the day in St. Joseph, watching the progress of a warm front in Kansas and southern Missouri as it moved northward. The front stalled out along I-70 and the only clearing that was taking place was in southern Kansas.

I made my way towards Lawrence, Kansas. I stopped for data just outside of town. A tornado watch was issued for central and southern Kansas. It became obvious that eastern Kansas was not going to do anything with all of the crap-vection and clouds in the area, limiting instability along the warm front.

I teamed up with a fellow storm chaser from Topeka and decided to head south and west. We met up at a gas station along I-35 and Hwy 75. There were tornado warnings on a couple of supercells that had formed in south central/central Kansas. It was a little surprising to me that these storms got their act together, after initially looking like linear, outflowish junk. But they did, and we made a plan to head west of Emporia and try to get close to the line of storms.

The storms looked pretty good for a while, but as we got closer to Emporia, they started to lose their supercellular characteristics and turned back into linear junk. Just great. We had come this far, so we decided to continue and just try to see whatever we could. We stopped in Florence just ahead of the line of storms. Nothing looked good, and we didn't even have a very clear view of the storms. We waited for a while and finally it looked like the end of the line segment to our west was growing in strength and would head directly for town. It wouldn't have much of a tornadic threat at all, but maybe it would be interesting to look at, we thought.

We headed a few miles south of town and pulled off on the top of hill (in the Flint Hills, if you are on the top of a hill you can see forever). The storm was producing outflow clouds that I have seen referenced as a "whale's mouth" because of the way they slope back upwards on the backside of them. There was a decent hail core on the southern end of the line and it skirted past us to the north.




We took the opportunity to take a few scenic pictures and headed back to Florence. We saw a report of 1" hail from the sheriff in town, and he was right. There was a pretty good amount of 1" hailstones. I'm glad we decided to head south since we were in my truck...


All in all, another disappointing Kansas chase this week where being out of position ruined any opportunity of seeing a nice supercell storm. It looks like my chasing opportunities will be slim until I moved to east Texas in a couple of weeks. Not sure how many opportunities I will have after that... stay tuned!

I'd like to thank my chase partner, Zach, for joining up with me and providing radar/data and Mike Johnston for providing nowcast support.

May 10th, 2010: SE Kansas Chase

I finally graduated school! There has not been any interesting weather occurring in Iowa when I've had any time to chase. Now that I've finished school, I have a couple of weeks before I move to Texas and start my new job!

I teamed up with Scott Bell and chased the extremely hyped severe weather setup in SE Kansas and Oklahoma. We left Maryville, MO before 1 PM, after Scott could get away from work. It is always best to get to your target area well before storm initiation, but it doesn't always work out that way.

We were targeting Wichita, KS. We got on the interstate and headed southwest. Storms began to blow up in SW and SC Kansas, and eventually NW Oklahoma. And the race was on, with 45-55 kt storm motions to the NE.

We decided that we needed to target the supercell in Oklahoma that was going to cross into Kansas, as in our position was about our only option. We could have went west into Wichita to chase a supercell west of town, but decided that chasing in a metro area would be a bad idea. That storm ended up being choked off by other convection before we could have ever been close.


Our storm looked fantastic on radar (well, actually all three supercells in SC Kansas through NW Oklahoma looked amazing at one time or another). As we approached the storm and got into position near Longton, KS on the southeast side of it, it died. In the picture above, our location is represented by the yellow dot with a circle around it, to the northeast of the storms. You can tell that our storm just to the southwest of us is started to die. It was ingesting cool air as we were on the cool side of the warm front. We were too late. We couldn't even see the storm visually due to low clouds blanketing the sky.

We headed back north and got munched by a line of severe thunderstorms that had fired along the dryline. Nothing much to note, except for heavy rain. We did notice some of the most interesting feeder bands I've ever seen that were feeding the line of storms. The clouds were literally forming from condensation rising off of the ground, right out of the trees. If you enlarge the picture below, you can see it lifting off of the trees down the hill. These clouds were then sweeping towards the severe storms to our west, feeding them. It was very creepy.


Later we sat northeast of Emporia, KS and watched a linear severe warned storm. It had some cool structure (best of the day by far) and was a nice treat to an otherwise disappointing chase.

2009-2010 Iowa Winter

Well, if you were in Iowa this winter, you know it was one of the snowiest we've ever had in the state. It is definitely the worst that I can remember (granted, I'm not THAT old just yet :-P).

The first blizzard came a week into December for the Ames area. The storm dumped around 13" of snow and 40+ MPH winds. Here's my poor truck braving the cold...


The next storm was the Christmas Eve/Day Blizzard which I endured back home in southwest Iowa. Our town reported 15.5" of snow. We ended up with a lot of big drifts, after having only been hit with the prior storm a couple weeks prior. This storm snowed us in for 2 days before our neighbor came to dig us out!



On the way back to Ames a few days later, I stopped at a rest stop about 30-40 miles west of Des Moines. Instead of a huge blizzard, they had one nasty ice storm there.


I got tired of taking pictures of snow, so I don't really have very many others. It was a brutal winter! I ended up being in 3 blizzards and many other winter storms as well. The worst part of the winter was the below average temperatures. In a normal winter, the temperatures will rise above freezing every once in a while, melting away at least some of the snow throughout the season. This winter, we did not rise above freezing after the first Blizzard in December, allowing each storm to pile on top of the previous one. We spent much of this winter with 15-20"+ of snow on the ground!

I am glad that we have finally risen above freezing and have experienced plain rain for the past few days. I am ready for spring and severe weather season!! I would not be surprised, though, to see at least one more blast from "Old Man Winter" before winter is officially over. We'll see!

June 21st, 2009: Grundy Center - Waterloo Supercell

I apologize to anyone who has been waiting for me to post updates or see what's been happening lately.

Here is my account from the June 21st, 2009 Grundy Center to Waterloo chase -- My best chase to date!

I was heading back to Ames from southwest Iowa. I knew there was a potential for activity in central/northern Iowa that afternoon. As I approached Des Moines, I noticed storms going up to the north and shortly afterwords, tornado warnings were being issued. I made the decision to head north and try to catch the storms.

Here is a picture of the storm as I was heading north on US65 somewhere near Zearing, IA.


I then took Highway 175 to the east and tried to catch up with the storm. The road put me in perfect position to just get by the southern edge of the storm, without getting into very much precipitation. Somewhere east of Eldora, IA I was finally on the southern edge of the storm. Here is a picture of the mean-looking precipitation core from the "hook" part of the storm, as I am looking to the northeast.


I continue driving east and ended up making it to Grundy Center. I was in great position to view the storm as I saw on the west side of town and had a great view to the west, northwest, and north. The storm tried very hard to wrap up here. I got out of my air-conditioned truck to take some pictures, and was reminded of a very important storm chasing lesson: bringing your cold camera outside into hot, humid air will cause your lens to fog up! D'oh! Thus, many of my pictures at this location are very foggy. Stupid me. One must always remember to turn down or turn off the A/C as you are approaching a storm you want to photograph!

Here is a picture of me on the west side of Grundy Center looking at the beautiful storm wrapping up to my northwest. You can see the clear slot and wrap-around precipitation very easily.


Things began to get a little more interesting as the storm continued to wrap-up. In this picture (starting to get foggy), you can see a funnel cloud forming in the center of the picture.


Here is another foggy picture as I tried to zoom in on the funnel cloud. There was a lot of rotation and I was sure that I was going to see a nice tornado form. It came really close, but I could never see condensation all the way to the ground, so I couldn't tell if it actually touched down or not. I don't remember seeing any reports of an actually touchdown here. But man, it was close!


The storm was moving to the east, and precipitation was starting to close in, and my view was becoming blocked. It was time to move. I headed east through town. The highway began to turn a bit farther south than I wanted to see, so I had to pick a gravel road to get back to the north.

I don't have a GPS or any fancy navigating equipment, so I have to be careful when making navigational decisions close to a dangerous storm. One wrong move could end up positioning me between a wall of hail/rain to the south/west, and the area of circulation (bad place to be under!) to the north. Thankfully in most parts of the state of Iowa, we are lucky to have a grid road system, so there are usually east/west and north/south roads every mile.

I chose a gravel road and blasted to the north. The storm was quickly approaching from the west, with the hook threatening to overtake me. There was no road at the first mile. I just barely made it to an intersection at the next mile with enough time to take a picture of the precipitation and area of circulation, which were both under a mile away.


I zig-zagged my way through gravel roads staying ahead of the storm. While the storm was still clearly rotation, it looked less-ominous than it did near Grundy Center. It finally began to look better which gave me renewed hope that it might produce. Here is a picture looking to the northwest at a nice wall-cloud.


A little bit later, I made it to the southwestern edge of Waterloo. The storm was looking downright nasty again to the north/northwest.


On the other hand, with the sun beginning to set, there were some beautiful views off to the west.


The wall cloud was rapidly rotating at reminded me of the scene near Grundy Center earlier. I had a bad feeling that there would be a tornado ripping through Waterloo.


THANKFULLY, the storm lost steam after this, and I never heard of any reports of a tornado here. I tried to find a way to follow it to the east for a bit before it got dark, but the road network through town and around the south side was a big pain, and I called it quits for the day.

All in all, it was an awesome solo chase. I got to see a very beautiful storm come very close to producing a tornado several times. The beautiful views that this storm gave more than made up for not seeing a tornado today.

I wished I would have left home a couple of hours earlier so I could have been on the storm from birth. The storm did produce several weak tornadoes before I was able to catch up with it. I don't believe any touched down after I caught up with it.

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Again, sorry for not posting this sooner! It has been a nasty winter around here, and I'll try to post some of my various blizzard/winter pictures from Iowa soon.