Category Archives: Storm Chasing

Overall our storm chase trip from May 18-25 was a blast. Photography opportunities did not arise as often as I would have liked, but it was still a very memorable outing with 3 tornadoes observed. Two tornadoes were very puny, and were not photogenic at all with poor contrast due to such low cloud bases and high dewpoints/haze. We did observe the Reading, KS tornado, however it occurred after dusk and obviously there was too little light for any photo ops. Margie and Jennifer did catch some brief video of it as it was moving just north of Emporia, and we were able to pull a few digital stills off of the video. Lightning illuminated the tornado briefly enough to see it was a robust and powerful one.

Below are some of the other images I captured on the trip.

Crepuscular rays beaming from fragments of cumulus and stratocumulus on the plains of central Kansas. Image taken on May 21, 2011.

Updraft base of a left splitting supercell in central Kansas, just southwest of Emporia. Image taken on May 21, 2011.

A North Texas supercell on May 22, 2011. Feeder bands and a "Beaver's Tail" were present among this storm. Rotation was not overly apparent under the updraft base.

Very weak and brief tornado observed near Okeefe, OK on May 23, 2011. This may have actually been a landspout, as rotation was not visible among the updraft.

Another weak and brief tornado that was observed near Fairview, OK on May 24, 2011.

We tracked a splitting supercell Saturday from just northeast of Wichita toward Reading, Kansas. The left split of the storm offered more visible features, and continued to draw our attention to it throughout its lifecycle. Both cells propagated near each other along virtually parallel paths and had little separation between each other. Often times the right cell looked anemic compared to the left counterpart, including a quick span right before dusk. Finally, as the right cell continued to collapse, a new cell developed southwest of it and underwent rapid growth. This occurred just before sunset, and made for some great light hitting the towering storm. I set up my tripod and fired off 3 quick shots in hopes of doing an HDR image. Here is what I came up with.

A thunderstorm undergoes rapid growth on the plains of eastern Kansas on May 21, 2011.

By the way, this was the same storm that eventually dropped a tornado just north of
Emporia and then caused a lot of damage in Reading as it moved east. By this time it was almost completely dark. Margie was able to capture some video, so I may post some digital stills at some point.

So, here are a few more pictures from the Memorial Day supercell that we chased across SE Colorado and the Western OK panhandle. We actually missed an EF2 rated tornado just prior to our arrival to the target area, just near Springfield, CO. Upon our arrival to the storm we saw this funnel cloud develop, a satellite of the longer duration tornado that we had just missed.

We repositioned farther south and east and got to enjoy a long view of the base of this monstrous supercell that slowly jogged SE along a surface boundary, a feature that helped keep rotation going with this storm.

The storm kept cycling, and lowering wall clouds and rotating scud.

It was so close to dropping a tornado at this point, but the rotation just wasn’t quite strong enough. Rain-cooled air also seemed to keep getting ingested into the updraft.

After another cycle had ended and another wall cloud and funnel had dissipated we decided to make the jaunt 15 miles north back to Springfield for a much-needed pit stop. On our return back to this relentless storm we had to encounter the associated rain and hail, partly due to limited road options and partly due to some sub-par navigation on my part. Most of the hail stones were pea to penny sized, but unfortunately a few quarter to golfball sized stones also fell and scarred up our jeep.

When we finally got through the rain and hail, we came upon the view below.

It then crossed U.S. Highway 385, and fortunately the sheriff was able to stop all traffic from being impacted. As it moved east of the highway it briefly began to chew up a bit more dust just off of the surface.

I believe this is looking a bit more west northwest, but we were greeted with a double rainbow while the tornado continued east. The lower half of the tube became difficult to see; the condensation funnel only extended about halfway down to the surface at this point, and little evidence of a dust or debris whirl were evident over the recently rain-soaked fields.

Somewhere about this time the tornado became obscured with the backdrop of rain and hail farther east, and a new tornado developed as a more dominant mesocyclone took over. This new tornado took on a white color throughout the condensation tube which only briefly extended all the way to the surface.

After the second tornado became more obscured and seemingly dissipated, we continued on farther south and east into the Oklahoma panhandle. About 2 or 3 miles west of Keyes, OK we observed this third tornado that also exhibited a white, and seemingly dust free tube over green wheat.

This third tornado had cycled far away from the dominant mesocyclone which you can see to the right of the below image.

The storm continued to jog southeastward to the Cimarron and Texas county border in the OK panhandle. Rotation remained evident right up until dusk, but no wall cloud or any other lowerings developed. I took this shot before the sun set with striations and rotation visible.