DAY 3 - Thursday May 30th 2013

Today is a NON-CHASE day. A coolish, but sunny morning in Liberal, Kansas as we make our way towards Denver, Colorado. We have about a 7 hour drive today to meet up with the rest of the crew for this tour.
It's amazing how flat and how much of nothing is in southwestern Kansas....

We encountered a small area of thunderstorms in northwestern Kansas that gave some brief heavy down pours and a few bolts of lightning. Some gorgeous VIRGA (precip falling, but not hitting the ground) from these clouds as well.

No sooner did I have my camera ready to take the shot above when a beautiful forked bolt of lightning came down in front of us. Just missed the shot by 1second.

As we entered Colorado, we began our slow climb upwards as we approached Denver. Denver is known as the Mile High City... as it's elevation is exactly a mile high above sea level or about 5300 feet. Landscape in eastern Colorado is exceptionally barren as you can see in the images below.

 

 

You really begin to notice the elevation in the city if you are not used to living there.

 

Checked into the hotel and waited to meet everyone from the tour for dinner.

 

We had to make it an early night as we have a long drive on Friday to head back to Oklahoma City as a severe outbreak is expected in that region. 

Storm Chase - Day 2 ... May 29th 2013

Day 2 started out in Kansas City, Missouri and our plan was to head west towards Dodge City, Kansas. SPC had issued a moderate risk of severe weather including a good chance of tornado development around that area later in the afternoon.
Storms were expected to fire up along and ahead of the dryline.

Tornado Watches were issued for a large area extending from the Texas Panhandle northwards to about central Nebraska.

After assessing the situation, we decided to head a bit further south to Woodward, Oklahoma. Another set of storms was brewing over the Texas Panhandle around Amarillo, Texas and heading eastwards. These storms were tornado warned at times.

Unfortunately the area we were in in Northwestern Oklahoma had a HUGE DATA HOLE. We went about 4 hours with no data available on the wireless so it was hard to know what was coming in terms of storm activity.
Once in Woodward, we were able to get data from the local McDonalds and noticed a large bowing segment on radar heading right towards our location. The area was under a Severe Thunderstorm Warning.

When the radar image takes on a bow echo like the left side of the image above, that indicates very strong winds associated with it that are literally pushing the precipitation ahead near the centre of the echo. Winds can gust in excess of 100km/h and can cause some damage.
A very pronounced shelf cloud was associated with the advancing gust front.

Once the shelf passed, winds became very gusty and the rain came down in sheets. A local storm spotter reported gusts of 60mph or 100km/h. We also had some small pea sized hail with this storm.
Temperatures dropped from 28°C to 15°C in a matter if minutes. Shortly after the storm passed, temps shot right back up to 30°C.

That was about the best action we got that day as all other storms around our area that had tornado warnings, had since diminished.

It was time to head north and find a place to sleep before the big drive to Denver, Colorado on Thursday. Once we got back into Kansas, we were in a pretty good DATA area... thank god.
Stayed the night in Liberal, Kansas at the Quality Inn. Liberal is right on the border of Oklahoma/Kansas

Storm Chase Day 1 - May 28th 2013

We left Strathroy, Ontario early in the morning on Tuesday May 28th with a long drive ahead of us. Our hopeful destination was Kansas City, Kansas which is about a 1400km drive or about 15hours.

Heavy rain greeted us just past the border in Port Huron, MI as we headed south towards Detroit. Temperatures were cool to start the journey at only 13 degrees. Once we passed Detroit and were on the southern side of the warm front... skies began to clear and temperatures shot up to the upper 20's along with rather strong winds.

As we continued south through Ohio, some convection greeted us around Lima. Nothing materialized out of it, but did lead to some nice pictures.

Our route took us to around Southern Ohio before turning west and going through Central Indiana and Illinois. The plan was to stick to a more southern route so as not to go through Chicago during rush hour .

 

We had quite a bit of trouble trying to get our WIFI Jet Pack up and running. Having data is essential when you are storm chasing as you need to be watching the radar. After about 8hours we finally figured out the data issue and we were up and running.

Of course once we got data up and running and logged into the radar application we realized there was a big tornado outbreak in Kansas.... if only we were six hours ahead of schedule we would have been witness to some large wedge tornadoes.
Here is what went through Bennington, Kansas on Tuesday May 28th

....but thems the breaks of storm chasing. Can't be everywhere at the same time.
The tornado was rated a EF4. Even though it had done EF3 damage, Doppler on Wheels measured EF-4 winds. Although looks like a monster... it did not do a great deal of damage (such as the Moore, OK twister only a week before), hence the lower rating.

Check out this video on YouTube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4ZAp9UhVNI&feature=player_embedded

Here is a radar capture of the tornado signature near Bennington, Kansas

Finally after about 16hours of driving we settled into Kansas City, Missouri at the EconoLodge... not the greatest hotel, but nonetheless sleep was needed in a big way
Apparently a severe thunderstorm went through the Kansas City area earlier that evening and gave some flash flooding to some regions of the city.

And this ends Day 1 of our storm chasing adventure.