Trevor
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Any lovers of severe weather here?
I've always loved severe weather, and in the second half of May I went storm chasing with my university's meteorology department.
Unfortunately we didn't see any tornadoes. We did, however watch the disaster in Moore, OK happen in realtime on radar. We were a couple cells south of Moore... probably about 25 miles away.
Anyhow... pictures!
Our first contact was just south of Wichita Falls, TX on our second day out. Snapped this photo as we were trying to dodge between two cells to get south of the line:
Our next set of chase days started out on May 18th or 19th. We had set up in North Platte, NE but ended up going back down into Kansas based on new models runs. We first sighted the anvil of our target cell in the mid afternoon:
We got our first intercept just southwest of Hays, KS. What you see in the photo below is the hook echo (on the left) and the wall cloud (on the right), where a tornado is trying to form. Fortunately, one did not - otherwise we would have witnessed Hays getting erased. This was a strong storm.
We tracked northeast with it along the rain-free base, and I grabbed a photo of the RFD clear slot and a potential tiny funnel.
The next day we set up southwest of Wichita, KS. We caught this really low, ground scraping wall cloud heading into Wichita, but we were forced to abort off the storm because of the metropolitan area. This storm produced a half-mile wide tornado that damaged parts of Wichita.
This is the hail shaft that was chasing us:
And a little bit of the really awesome storm front:
Later on, as we were running from the same storm cell as it moved through Haysville, KS, we saw the best green glow from the storm that we would see. It looked better in person:
The next day we were in southeast Kansas and caught this nice wall cloud. It almost dropped a tornado, but the storm cycled before it produced. That was our best chance for an intercept, but that's the way chasing goes. This would have dropped a tornado in a completely uninhabited area... pretty ideal.
The next day we set up just south of Oklahoma City. We were targeting the northernmost storms in a line of cells firing, but dropped off it when it weakened. Shortly thereafter, a couple cells fired north of the cell we had been on, and headed into Moore and produced the tornado that made the news. We were on a cell to the south that produced this incredible wall cloud. It's a fully lowered mesocyclone that is showing rotation even in the still photo. It was incredible to watch.
As storms started to line out, we dropped farther and farther south, ultimately crossing the Red River. This funnel was dropping about 200 yards off the driver's side of the car. It then retracted, briefly came back down, and retracted again. Still no tornado. That was the closest we got to a storm producing one, but again - it was just outside a small town and we were glad it dissipated. I shot this photo out the driver's side window one-handed, while sitting in the passenger's seat, doing 80mph in near total darkness. The photos not 100% sharp, but it's the best I could do...
On our last chase day, we set up just south of Dallas, TX. The storms quickly lined out, so we didn't really have much shot at tornadoes. I did, however, get a a photo of a nice storm front, complete with striations.
Anyone else into storms? You people who live out in the Midwest get to have all the fun...
Trevor
I've always loved severe weather, and in the second half of May I went storm chasing with my university's meteorology department.
Unfortunately we didn't see any tornadoes. We did, however watch the disaster in Moore, OK happen in realtime on radar. We were a couple cells south of Moore... probably about 25 miles away.
Anyhow... pictures!
Our first contact was just south of Wichita Falls, TX on our second day out. Snapped this photo as we were trying to dodge between two cells to get south of the line:
Our next set of chase days started out on May 18th or 19th. We had set up in North Platte, NE but ended up going back down into Kansas based on new models runs. We first sighted the anvil of our target cell in the mid afternoon:
We got our first intercept just southwest of Hays, KS. What you see in the photo below is the hook echo (on the left) and the wall cloud (on the right), where a tornado is trying to form. Fortunately, one did not - otherwise we would have witnessed Hays getting erased. This was a strong storm.
We tracked northeast with it along the rain-free base, and I grabbed a photo of the RFD clear slot and a potential tiny funnel.
The next day we set up southwest of Wichita, KS. We caught this really low, ground scraping wall cloud heading into Wichita, but we were forced to abort off the storm because of the metropolitan area. This storm produced a half-mile wide tornado that damaged parts of Wichita.
This is the hail shaft that was chasing us:
And a little bit of the really awesome storm front:
Later on, as we were running from the same storm cell as it moved through Haysville, KS, we saw the best green glow from the storm that we would see. It looked better in person:
The next day we were in southeast Kansas and caught this nice wall cloud. It almost dropped a tornado, but the storm cycled before it produced. That was our best chance for an intercept, but that's the way chasing goes. This would have dropped a tornado in a completely uninhabited area... pretty ideal.
The next day we set up just south of Oklahoma City. We were targeting the northernmost storms in a line of cells firing, but dropped off it when it weakened. Shortly thereafter, a couple cells fired north of the cell we had been on, and headed into Moore and produced the tornado that made the news. We were on a cell to the south that produced this incredible wall cloud. It's a fully lowered mesocyclone that is showing rotation even in the still photo. It was incredible to watch.
As storms started to line out, we dropped farther and farther south, ultimately crossing the Red River. This funnel was dropping about 200 yards off the driver's side of the car. It then retracted, briefly came back down, and retracted again. Still no tornado. That was the closest we got to a storm producing one, but again - it was just outside a small town and we were glad it dissipated. I shot this photo out the driver's side window one-handed, while sitting in the passenger's seat, doing 80mph in near total darkness. The photos not 100% sharp, but it's the best I could do...
On our last chase day, we set up just south of Dallas, TX. The storms quickly lined out, so we didn't really have much shot at tornadoes. I did, however, get a a photo of a nice storm front, complete with striations.
Anyone else into storms? You people who live out in the Midwest get to have all the fun...
Trevor
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