| May 11 2005 |
| Tornado at sunset in far southwest Kansas. |
| Myself, Justin, Grant, and Shanna Collins left
Tulsa at 10 am, with Dodge City, KS as our target. We met up with Steve
Bluford and Brad Smith at the Applebee's when we arrived. The best
threat for tornadoes was supposedly in northern Kansas, but we didn't
believe it. A warm front was along the KS/NE border, and a dryline from
Goodland, KS to the south. We were about 99% sure the storms along the
warm front would travel north, cross the boundary, become undercut, and
turn into a blob of crud. They did. I'm not sure if I would ever choose
a warm front over a dryline in May, but everyone else did, so this left
the dryline to us. That's fine as well. |
| After watching all the grungy, widespread, no
capped storms to the north for hours, a few storms developed along the
dryline at last. These however, were also traveling north. We knew the
first storm to actually travel north-east, rather than north, would
tornado. So, we sat 35 miles east of the storms, watching them develop,
travel straight north, and die away. Until about 8:15pm. |
| These are video captures from a Sony VX2100,
after sunset. The quality of this camera is amazing, especially in
low light situations. When possible, I added the captures that also
included lightning, but a lot do not. |
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| A couple of storms developed rapidly, and these
actually had north-east movement. We intercepted the first cell near
Laykin, and it appeared to be weakening rapidly. We got some brief
nickel to quarter sized hail as we punched through the weakening core,
to get the view of the storm of the day to our south! Here we have
passed beyond the first storm. The shear markers (coffee cans as we call
them) are 26 miles to our south. No tornado warning yet. |
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| Beautiful structure to this storm. Officially the
best we have seen in this crummy chase year so far. |
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| The lightning was amazing with this storm. We
were quite happy at that, since it was getting dark. Any tornado we may
get would look better with constant lightning. The sun has officially
set at this time. |
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| As we pull through the rain on the west side of
the storm, we finally see a wall cloud with strong rotation to our east.
Time to go!!! The rotation tightens up, and a funnel lowers. |
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TORNADO! Time is 9:06 pm CDT. This road we have turned down to drive up
to the tornado is AWFUL! Three inch mud is difficult, even with 4WD.
Aljost had to stop and find another road. Instead, we traveled at a
whopping 15-20 mph max, to try and get right up to it. Wasn't going to
happen today. If these roads had been paved, I get chills thinking how
close we would have been. |
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| The tornado passes to the north, and we get closer to take a north
option. Again, we are sliding all over the road, and Steve and Brad are
having an even tougher time behind us. These images really don't need
much explanation. The brighter ones are back-lit by lightning, which was
nearly constant. |
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Tornado begins to rope out. Again, back-lit by lightning where possible. |
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| Power
flash caused by the tornado hitting power lines. When chasing at night,
power flashes can sometimes be the only way to know if a tornado is
actually in contact with the ground. |
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| As we
approach the damage path, the local sheriff has stopped amongst some
downed power lines. He made no attempt to stop us, and we proceeded
slowly to get away from the lines. Lightning shows the some of the
damage. This tornado had high end F2 damage, thankfully missing the
farmhouse by 50 yds. If the home had been hit, the damage rating would
have likely been higher. DDC NWS surveyed the area
the next morning. |
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| To our
north, the wall cloud and a little RFD can be seen. The lightning begins
picking up again. |
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| We
head north towards Garden City, KS. The lightning is going again, but we
never see any indication of a tornado again. Although a tornado was
reported near Holcomb, and Friend, KS, we were there and can say we
doubt it. |
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| The
structure of the storm is amazing as it moves to the northeast. |
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