Normally, I find it no problem to wrap my arms around a blog posting, particularly when it comes to the topic of tornadoes and storm chasing. But last week…well, where do I begin, and where do I stop? Thursday and Friday in Kansas were simply incredible. Staying at a hotel in Hays, the four of us–Bill and Tom Oosterbaan, Jayson Harris, and I–had a perfect base of operation. From there, it was simply a matter of driving a mere handful of miles west and then shuttling south and north, back and forth, watching large tornadoes form a conga line along the dryline.\r\n\r\nHow many tornadoes did I see? I lost count. Plenty–more than enough to make up for all the lean times marked by long miles and many a busted chase. Highlights include a photogenic, rapidly rotating wall cloud on the outskirts of Dighton, and a large, strong tornado that crossed the road within a quarter-mile from where we were parked east of Oberlin. Unfortunately, I wasn”t able to capture the latter on camera; what I wound up with were several shots of a rain-streaked windshield with a black curtain in the background. But the wall cloud came out beautifully.\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nHere”s another wall cloud with a clear slot from the day before, south of Oberlin. This one put down a multi-vortex tornado shortly after.\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nI didn”t think anything could beat those two days, and indeed, Saturday in Nebraska seemed to confirm that life was about to head back to the usual chase busts. We did see some nice wall clouds, and when the TIV (Tornado Intercept Vehicle) pulled into the gas station where we were parked, that created a photo op of a different kind.\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\nBut no tornadoes. Overall, I figured the show was over. And I was satisfied. I could have headed back to Michigan at that point and been more than happy with the two best chase days I”d ever had.\r\n\r\nThen came Sunday in Iowa.\r\n\r\nWe were parked near Hope, Minnesota, hanging out with chasers Kurt Hulst and Dave Diehl, waiting for storm initiation and wondering what, if anything, was going to come of the Storm Prediction Center”s moderate risk. Then the first of the updates came–a PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) statement for our area.\r\n\r\nAt that point, though, we were discussing dropping down into the higher CAPE in Iowa. So when the SPC issued another PDS, this one for Iowa, that cinched it. Off we went, headed south. The Minnesota storms had begun to fire, and now the first convection in Iowa was showing up on GR3. Other cells popped up below it. As we drove, the southernmost cluster began to consolidate, forming a massive supercell as the northern cell waned. This was our baby–but could we get to it before losing it to the Mississippi River?\r\n\r\nStairstepping down to the southeast for an intercept, we could see a strong velocity couplet on the radar, which continued to steadily increase in size. Base reflectivity showed a beautiful hook. This thing was becoming a monster!\r\n\r\nWe were directly east of the storm, a good ten or fifteen miles from the circulation, when something went whap! on the windshield of Bill”s Suburban. Ah, crap! I thought. Hail. Not unexpected, but never welcome. Then I noticed the brown smudge on the glass. That wasn”t hail, it was debris. Now it was all around us, falling from the sky–scraps of plant material, cloth, cardboard, mostly light stuff…but suddenly, here was a piece of corrugated sheet metal clanging to the pavement and getting dragged along by the wind. Damn. This couldn”t be good. From the looks of it, we were getting pelted with bits and pieces of a community somewhere off to our west–debris lofted into the mid- or upper-level jet and carried downwind miles ahead of the advancing tornado. \r\n\r\nWe had no idea at the time that the storm had all but obliterated the town of Parkersburg, inflicting EF-5 damage and killing five people. But we knew we had something serious on our hands.\r\n\r\nWe intercepted the storm just outside of Fairbank, where a new wall cloud was organizing as the Parkersburg tornado occluded to the north. We tracked east with the new circulation, staying maybe a half-mile to its south as it took a right turn and produced a massive, roiling, dusty wedge that gave the southern edge of Hazleton a glancing blow. This beast looked every bit of a mile wide.\r\n\r\nI”ll let the video of this tornado speak for itself–not the best resolution, but it gives you the idea. Please indulge my overuse of the words monster and WOOOWWWW!!!!! I freely admit I”m a rank amateur when it comes to videography, and this was truly an impressive spectacle.\r\n\r\nAlso, a somewhat bewildering one. I”m reminded of the Tri-State Tornado of 1925. Most people never recognized it as a tornado; reports described it as a fog rolling along the ground, with tree limbs in the air. We thought of that as we viewed this turbulent, low-visibility behemoth. At times, it looked like the entire wall cloud was on the ground; at others, we could make out a boiling mass of dust, with what appeared to be multiple vortexes. Truly an unforgettable sight.
