Low-Topped Supercell Images from Last Wednesday

Last Wednesday, May 11, in northwest Kansas was a bust chase as far as tornadoes were concerned. But the prairie sky offers compensations that are blue-ribbon prizes in their own right if you’ve got an eye for beauty.

Here are some shots of a couple of low-topped supercells taken in the Atwood/Oberlin area. These storms dumped some marble-sized hail and exhibited visible, though not strong, rotation. They were lovely to behold, sculptures of moisture shaped by the wind and lit by the light of the waning evening. Atmospheric dramas such as these are the true panorama of the Great Plains. Like a run-on sentence, the treeless landscape stretches off into limitless sameness, leaving the sky to provide punctuation, energy, and color.

April 22, 2011, Saint Louis “Good Friday” Tornado

Saint Louis, Missouri, has been hit a number of times  by tornadoes over the years, most notably on May 27, 1896, when a violent tornado claimed 255 lives. Last Friday my friends Bill Oosterbaan, Kurt Hulst, Mike Kovalchik, and I witnessed the first EF4 tornado to strike the metro area in 44 years.

I use the word “witnessed” loosely as we really didn’t see much of anything. Bill observed wrapping rain curtains just to our west, Kurt and Mike saw a couple power flashes, and I captured a feature on video that may have been the funnel cloud, but mostly what we saw was a whole lot of blowing rain and brilliant, nonstop lightning. Judging from the lack of any other videos that show a clearly defined tornado, our experience was typical. If anyone was in a good position to see the condensation funnel, it was us, and perhaps we would have seen it had the storm struck an hour earlier. But I suspect the thing was too rain-wrapped for good viewing even in broad daylight.

The storm initiated southeast of Kansas City near the triple point of an advancing low. Poised at the northernmost end a broken line that backbuilt southwest  into Oklahoma, the incipient cell split and the right split grazed eastward along a warm front draped over the I-70 corridor.

We first intercepted the storm south of Columbia outside the town of Ashland. At that point it was getting its act together and was already tornado warned. The sirens sounded right next to us as we stood and filmed, but the storm had a ways to go before it finally went tornadic. Where we stood southeast of the updraft base, the air was dead calm–not even a breath of inflow, nothing but the year’s first mosquitoes to remind us that spring was well underway south of our home state of Michigan.

Keeping up with this storm would likely have been much easier had we not chosen to head back to I-70, where eastbound slowdowns hung us up and golfball hail on the north end of the supercell clobbered us. The storm organized beautifully for a while on the radar, but there wasn’t a thing we could do about it with traffic crawling along. Thanks to Bill’s great driving, we eventually did get clear, but by then the storm appeared to have turned to junk.

Just goes to show how deceptive appearances can be. Shortly after we had written the storm off, the radio announced the first reports of tornado damage in New Melle, and from then on, the reports continued. As fellow Michigan-based storm chaser L. B. LaForce put it, “I got a good look at the base just south of Innsbrook and it looked like crap. It tightened up shortly thereafter.”

Indeed it did, as strong and continuing radar couplets bore out. Dropping south on US 40 to get a better view of the storm, we parked by a cemetery and  finally got a good look at the action area to our southwest. Against the dirty orange backlight of the fading sunset, a conveyor of low clouds flowed from the north into an area of murky blackness bristling with lightning. Unquestionably this beast  meant business and intended to transact it along the worst possible path: right through the heart of  northern Saint Louis.

Along its 22-mile path, the tornado inflicted its most widely reported damage at the Lambert–Saint Louis International Airport. It’s a miracle that no one was killed or seriously injured at this location. That may very well include us. We had exited I-70 in order to get a look at the storm, or at least try to, and by the time we were back on the highway the radar showed that we had compromised our safety and needed to git, fast. It was at this point that Bill thought he saw the rain curtains swirling, and Kurt and Mike observed what looked like power flashes. Hard to say, given the intensity of the lightning. What’s certain is that we missed the tornado by the skin of our teeth, because the radio announced only minutes later that Lambert Field had been hit. The bear had been breathing down our necks. Funny thing is, I’ve driven through much worse conditions at night. But conditions can change in a heartbeat, and in this case they wouldn’t have changed for the better.

The seriousness of the damage inflicted by this tornado didn’t sink in until a while later when reports, photos, and YouTube videos began to filter in. EF4 damage occurred about a mile-and-a-half west of the airport. At Lambert, the damage was rated EF2 and resulted in closure of the airport. A photo of a passenger bus hoisted up onto the roof of an airport building demonstrated the power of the winds.

The Saint Louis NWS report on this event lists two tornadoes, the first a brief EF1 that did damage in New Melle, followed by the long-track, EF4 monster that chewed through Saint Louis proper, beginning along Creve Coeur Mill Road near Griers Lane and dissipating across the Mississippi River south of I-270 and west of Pontoon Beach, Illinois.

Why did the storm wait until it was just west of Saint Louis to begin spinning up tornadoes? The best explanation I’ve heard is one that was offered on Stormtrack. Evidently the warm front had moved north of I-70 on its western side, where the low initially lifted through Kansas City. But farther east, the front sagged southward through Saint Louis, backing the surface winds. The storm, moving eastward through the warm sector just south of the warm front toward an inevitable intersection, finally interacted with the front itself and began to ingest the enhanced helicities. Suddenly, boom! Tornadoes.

Farther east into Illinois, although it continued to be tornado warned, the storm gradually weakened and lined out, leaving Bill, Kurt, Mike, and me to enjoy a spectacular light show for much of the ride home. I finally clambered into bed around 5:00 a.m.

The stormy weather continues unabated down south. As I write, Bill is chasing down in Arkansas north of Little Rock. Judging by his position on Spotter Network, it looks like he may have bagged a tornado. Guess I’ll find out in a while. I wish I was there too, but this week is spoken for. I have a gig tomorrow afternoon, and then Mom goes in for knee surgery on Wednesday. So I won’t be chasing through the weekend. After that, we’ll see what the weather holds. This has become an active April, and now we’re coming up on May. I can’t wait to hit the road again!

Preparing for Chase Season 2011

Last night I pulled the trigger on a new Panasonic HDC-TM700 camcorder from B&H. I feel a bit of angst in saying this as I’m not in a position where I can easily afford the $750 this pooch is costing me. But neither can I afford to pass up the opportunity to do some chasing for local media, and I’m hoping that this year will furnish enough action that the camera will pay for itself fairly quickly. The old adage, “It takes money to make money,” applies here.

The Panny is a lot of camcorder for the money, too. It has gotten consistently rave reviews. And my buddy Ben Holcomb, who does some great work, has been absolutely delighted with his TM300, which is the predecessor to the model I’ve ordered.

Besides storm chasing, I can also use the camera to make video clips of my sax playing. That will greatly enhance my ability to publicize myself. So, all things considered, I’m telling myself that I’ve made a good investment at a time when money is tight.

With the new camcorder on the way, a HAM radio license is also in the works. For the past two weeks I’ve been studying using Ham Test Online, and this Friday evening I’ll be heading to the Red Cross building in Grand Rapids to take the test. I don’t know why it has taken me this long. I plunked down my $24.95 for the 2-year study subscription over a year ago, and then I procrastinated and procrastinated. Finally a switch flipped in me, though, and I moved from indifference to saturating myself in the HAM material with nigh-obsessive focus. With added incentive from my friend Duane of a free hand-held unit, I’m ready to rumble this Friday and will soon have a valuable new communication tool for storm chasing this spring.

Still to do: get a dash mount and maybe an el-cheapo, used camcorder to go with it. Register for live chasing with Chaser TV. And that’s about it. At last, after all these years, I’ll finally be equipped with everything I needed to not only chase successfully, but also record my chases with good video and still images.

Now if we can just get some storms!

For the Birds

The little fellow you see here paused long enough for me to snap his photo, but his repose was fleeting. Inaction is a concept foreign to goldfinches when they’re in feeding mode, which is pretty much from sunrise to sunset. (Left click on photos to enlarge them.)

Just outside my sliding glass door, a blizzard of finches descends on my feeding station early in the morning, and the party continues throughout the day. Other wild birds join in the melee–chickadees, white-breasted and rosy-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, sparrows, and a male and female downy woodpecker. Occasionally a shy junco or two will put in a brief appearance, and a big bruiser of a bluejay flits in now and then, brashly announcing his presence with a cry that lets the whole neighborhood know he’s here, and whacks away at the suet with his wedge-like beak.

When killing frost signals the last gasp of the growing season, then, like a changing of the guard, the plants come in off my balcony and the bird feeding station goes out. Two tube feeders–one filled with wild bird mix, the other with black oil sunflower seed–hang from the station’s metal arms in company with a bag of thistle seed for the finches. This year, determined to attract a woodpecker or two if I could, I also hung out a mesh onion bag full of suet and slapped a couple more hunks out on the balustrade. It’s as a complete a smorgasbord as any bird could hope for, and the response has been supremely rewarding. It has included, I’m happy to say, the woodpeckers–a sprightly gentleman with a red bar across his head, and his consort, a perky little lady without the bar, each showing up when the other isn’t there and gorging with mighty singleness of purpose on the suet.

During the winter months, the feathery circus out there on the balcony reminds me that life goes on even when bitter winds blow. Today I tripoded my camera by the sliding door, intent on capturing a few images from the carnivalia. With so many birds thronging the feeding station, you’d be surprised at how difficult it can be to get a decent shot. These are not creatures who like to sit still, let alone pose for the camera. The bright-eyed goldfinch to your  left complied for about a second, long enough to look coy and unspeakably cute. It’s not for nothing that a bunch of these little guys and gals is called a “charm.”

The woodpeckers and nuthatches were more demanding. I had to wait for them, and they had a way of showing up when I had walked away from the window. I did finally manage to catch them at an opportune time. The nuthatches are a favorite of mine, part comedian and part acrobat, with no apparent sense of up or down nor any regard for the law of gravity.

Talking about the weather has for me never been synonymous with shallow conversation. There is a time of year when I find few topics more fascinating. Unfortunately, winter isn’t

that time. Music, too, inexhaustible though it may be as a pursuit, has its limitations for me as a focus for blogging. In a word, I just don’t always have musical or weatherly stuff to write about, and I don’t like stretching too far for material. It’s a big world, filled with all kinds of interest and plenty of alternatives when subject matter gets thin. The birds are at the window day in and day out, chattering, flitting, quarreling, and consuming black oil sunflower seed with marvelous rapidity. They deserve a nod if not my outright gratitude. When snow cocoons the northwoods and whirls across the parking lot, they make me smile, and they’ll see me through till spring.

So this post is for the birds.

Or had you been thinking that all along?

Lightning Storm over Caledonia

The day after my October 23 chase out in northwest Missouri and southwest Iowa, thunderstorms blew across West Michigan. Watching the MCS move in on my radar, I decided to try my hand at a few lightning photographs. I had learned a few essential tips since my last attempt, and this looked like a fantastic opportunity to see what kind of a difference they made.

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The photos shown here were shot from the balcony of my apartment in Caledonia. Click on them to enlarge them. They may not be National Geographic quality, but they’re not bad. Fact is, one of my photos that night was my best lightning shot ever. Unfortunately, I accidentally erased it only minutes after I took it. You could hear my screams of anguish and bonking of my head against the wall all the way to Sam’s Joint.

What you see on this page are just compensation prizes. They’ll do, though. They’re mementos of what was probably the last lightning any of us around here will see this until next spring. Snow is in the forecast a few days hence, and with two months before it officially starts, the long winter is already winding up the mainspring and getting set to unleash.

Late October Chase Bust

After 1,200 miles and a busted chase in northern Missouri and southwest Iowa, I returned home at 2:30 in the morning. Why on earth, you may wonder, would I travel all that way to watch storms that never did more than produce weak wall clouds and a bit of hail? What madness possessed me and my chase partner, Bill Oosterbaan, to go storm chasing this late in the year anyway?

For one thing, the setup actually looked promising on paper. You can read all about it in my previous post, but the long and short of it was, the right ingredients looked to be in

place. For another thing, look: it’s the end of October, and in view of the fact that I’m probably not going to see another chaseworthy setup within a day’s drive for the next four or five months, I’ll take what I can get. I grasped at a slimmer straw than yesterday’s for my first chase of 2010, and now, at the end of the year, it was nice just to get out, hit the open road one last time with my long-time chase buddy, Bill, and take whatever came our way.

I might add that, had we actually gotten a tornado or two, Bill and I would have looked like storm chasing geniuses, the guys who score on a day when other chasers stay home. Talk about my status as a chaser going up! “How did you know?” everyone would ask. I’d just smile sagely. “Instinct,” I’d reply. “You get to where you can just sense it in your gut.”

Excuse me, I seem to have been dreaming. As I was about to say, dropping south out of Des Moines down I-35, we headed toward a small convective cluster in northwest Missouri near Maryville that was trying to get going south of a weak warm front. The shear was present to help these storms organize and you could see them doing their best, but  evidently the instability

just wasn’t enough to really inspire them. Firing toward the end of peak heating with rapidly waning insolation, the storms may have choked off the CAPE with their own shadows. Maybe a little more moisture would have done the trick, maybe a little better heating, but whatever the case, the storms never offered much more than some weak wall clouds and a bit of hail.

Our first storm actually looked promising for a minute, exhibiting a decent wall cloud that

looked like it actually might intensify. But that never happened. What we were left with for our long drive was an enjoyable afternoon and evening roaming through the hilly, autumnal landscape of Missouri and Iowa, doing one of the things we both love best–following the sky, chasing the clouds.

Sandhill Cranes

The GFS continues to show hopeless ridging throughout most of October. I hardly pay any attention to the long-range forecast models these days, just mention this as a note of idle interest. A trough does finally seem to shape up around 300 hours out per the 6Z run, and it could make life interesting within reach of Great Lakes storm chasers on the 27th and/or 28th. But I don’t have the heart to wishcast that far out; I just don’t believe it’ll happen..

As for the saxophone, I’m extremely pleased with my personal progress. But while I’ve been practicing a lot, my sessions have involved material I’ve already covered in previous posts, and I’d imagine the results interest me far more than they would you.

Lacking anything of great import to write about concerning either jazz saxophone or storm chasing, my radar is scanning for a topic that’s at least conceivably related to either of those two interests. Yesterday’s earthquake in Norman, Oklahoma, would do well except I wasn’t there. I hear it was a loud one, but I’ll leave the reportage to those who actually experienced the shakeup. As for me, I need something closer to home. Like sandhill cranes.

Here in Michigan, now into November is the time of year when the cranes congregate in great numbers in suitable locations that offer nearby sources of both food and cover. Sometime next month they’ll take off for warmer climes in southeastern Georgia and Florida. Meanwhile, this ridging that has quashed the so-called “second season” for storm chasers has provided glorious weather for the sandhill cranes and sandhill crane watchers. The Baker Sanctuary northeast of Battle Creek and the Phyllis Haehnle Memorial Sanctuary near Jackson are well-known staging areas for massive numbers of the birds. However, I’m fortunate to have a location much closer by where over 100 cranes hang out, foraging in a field across the road from a marsh where they shelter for the evening.

Mom and I went out there Sunday evening. It was a blessing to spend the time with my sweet 85-year-old mother, watching the sandhills feed; listening to their captivating, ratcheting calls; witnessing their sporadic, comical, hopping dances; and waiting for them to take off and fly overhead en-masse into the marsh at sundown. Here are a few photos for you to enjoy.

July 22 West Michigan Supercell and Lightning Fest

I haven’t seen a storm like last night’s storm in Michigan in a long, long time. Man, what a beauty!

Non-stop lightning, much of it appearing to be positive strokes that lasted for seconds at a time, along with a veritable feast of anvil crawlers, made for a photographic smorgasbord. Plus, the storm structure–as much of it as I could make out at night, illuminated by the incessant lightning–was truly impressive. If only the storm had arrived an hour earlier, when there was enough light to really see the thing!

I had just finished doing a couple of interviews down in Dunlap, Indiana, for the book I’m writing on the 1965 Palm Sunday Tornadoes. My meetings

required me to forgo chasing a supercell that moved through the Battle Creek area as the warm front lifted northward, and I was curious to find out what had happened with it. Pulling into a parking lot, I fired up my computer, opened GR3, and gaped. A line of supercells was advancing across Lake Michigan from Wisconsin. The first one in the line looked great–SRV showed definite rotation–and, headed on an ESE trajectory, the storm was poised to make landfall around Saugatuck. Winds there were almost straight easterly, and they were beautifully backed across most of lower Michigan. Hmmm…what did the VAD wind profile look like at Grand Rapids? Dang, sweet! How the heck did that kind of setup wind up in Michigan?

The storms weren’t moving terribly fast, around 25 knots. Could I make it in time? I was bloody well going to try. There was no denying the rush of adrenaline now galvanizing me, thrusting me into chase mode. I hit US 20 and headed west past South Bend, where the highway merged into US 31 north.

I still had a good 40 miles to go by the time I connected with I-196 near Benton Harbor. I wasn’t sure whether I’d catch the storm by the time it made landfall. Maybe I’d be better off playing more to the east. But I decided to take my chances, and that turned out to be the right move. I couldn’t have timed it better.

As I approached M-89, the eastern part of the storm had made landfall, but the radar showed the rotation still out over Lake Michigan. It wouldn’t be there for long, though, and, having shifted its trajectory south of Douglas, it was now heading straight at me.

Bingo! This was exactly what I’d been hoping for. Leaving the Interstate, I headed east along M-89 and found a nice, open field a mile down the road, just west of 66th Street, 4 miles south of Douglas and 4 miles west of Fennville. Then, turning my car around to face the incoming storm, I parked and grabbed my camera out of the back seat.

The lightning in this beast requires superlatives to describe it. There seemed to be a never-ending supply of high-voltage CGs, delivered with the unbridled, over-the-top enthusiasm of a 4th of July fireworks finale and accompanied by the incessant grumbling of thunder. There were times, as the lightning cells moved past me and surrounded me, when I felt like I was sitting inside an immense flashbulb–a flashbulb that kept firing again, and again, and again. Oh, man, what an extravaganza of pure, searing power and beauty! I’ve done my best to capture it, but my skills as a lightning photographer fall far short of what this storm had to offer. Now, my buddy Kurt Hulst, he’s Da Man when it comes to getting fantastic lightning shots, and I know he got some last night. Me, I seem to have a problem getting a good, crisp focus at night, but I try.

By and by, the flickerings began to illuminate a cloud feature I’d been looking for: a hint of a beavertail off to my northwest. It’s location confirmed what the radar was telling me: the storm’s mesocyclone was moving straight at me. I was in a perfect location–and all this time, standing out in the field near my car, I had yet to feel so much as a drop of rain.

The mosquitoes were thick and nasty, and I was getting eaten alive, but viewing at my position was excellent. Farther east, I’d be getting into thick woods, and since the storm wasn’t exactly rocketing along, I stayed put until the meso got too close for me to be able to distinguish its features. Then I moseyed east a few miles.

I parked again for a few minutes at 63rd Street and noted that what had begun as a stubby beavertail had rapidly grown into an enormous inflow stinger. To my northwest, I could see what appeared to be a large, low wall cloud–hard to determine exactly what it was or what it was doing at night, but it looked convincing enough that I called it in to KGRR.

I tracked just ahead of this storm all the way to Plainwell. M-89 proved to be a perfect route, angling southeast along roughly the same path that the storm was taking. On the outskirts of Allegan, I stopped long enough to grab a few radar images. On this page, you can see a nice vault on the base reflectivity, and pronounced rotation on the storm relative velocity. (The circle just southeast of the town center marks my location. Ignore the marker with my name farther to the southwest on SRV; it’s old, an archive from when I dropped off of Spotter Network.)

A little farther down the road, I pulled aside again where a large, open stretch afforded good viewing. The mesocyclone was clearly visible, with a formidable-looking flange on the north side, nice striations, and an impressive inflow band circling in overhead. I hung out at that location until the lightning drew too close for comfort, then hopped back into my car and continued east.

At Plainwell, I dropped south on US 131 past the Kalamazoo exit, caught M-43 west for a mile or so, then parked in a parking lot and let the storm’s southernmost edge blow past me. The storm was still tornado-warned, but the radar indicated that it was weakening–cloud tops lower, VIL not as robust. North of me, just on the other side of M-43, a sheet of rain cascaded out of the wind-blown darkness into the luminous orange domain of the street lamps. Within half a minute, it was upon me, and for a short while, I sat and enjoyed the blast of downdraft and deluge. The rain that I had managed to elude all night had finally caught up with me.

Finally, as the storm bowed out on its journey eastward, I drove back to US 131 and headed for home. I stopped again for a while at the Martin exit, long enough to see what would become of another supercell that was moving inland from the Lake. It, too, quickly bowed out, but, in keeping with the tone of the day, it lit the after-midnight sky with a bombardment of lightning.

It was good to finally pull into my parking lot, climb the stairs to my apartment, and step inside. It had been one heck of a day, and I was ready to call it a good one and hit the sack.

As nasty a storm as it was, why didn’t the Allegan County supercell drop tornadoes? The storm earlier in the afternoon had produced at least one tornado near the Battle Creek airport; why not this one too? After all, it and

its compatriots had peppered Wisconsin with tornadoes prior to crossing the Lake and heading for West Michigan. All I can surmise is, CAPE was an issue. Winds certainly appeared favorable for tornadoes, and F5 mesoanalysis indicated 1 km helicities ranging from 150-250 across the area as late as 1:00 a.m. The RUC model sounding for KGRR maybe overdoes helicity, but it’s interesting to see what it says about instability. All I can think is that daytime CAPE–whatever it may have been; I never took the time to find out–petered out after sundown, and the shear alone wasn’t enough to spin up tornadoes. That’s my guess as a non-meteorologist, and I’m ready to get other insights and opinions from more knowledgeable heads than mine.

Whatever the case, last night’s was one heckuva storm, and the kind of chase I don’t get to enjoy too often in Michigan. It was nice to finally get such a great opportunity.

An Independence Day Double-Header: Summer Weather Is Here

It’s July 4, Independence Day. Happy Birthday, America! For all the problems that face you, you’re still the best in so many, many ways. One of those ways, which may seem trite to anyone but a storm chaser, is your spring weather, which draws chasers like a powerful lodestone not only from the all over the country, but also from the four corners of the world.

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This has been an incredible spring stormwise, but its zenith appears to have finally passed for everywhere but the northern plains. And right now, even those don’t look particularly promising. That’s okay. I think that even the most hardcore chasers have gotten their fill this year and are pleased to set aside their laptops and break out their barbecue grills.

Now is the time for Great Lakes chasers to set their sights on the kind of weather our region specializes in, which is to say, pop-up thunderstorms and

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squall lines. The former are pretty and entertaining. The latter can be particularly dramatic when viewed from the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, sweeping in across the water like immense, dark frowns on the edge of a cold front. If you enjoy lightning photography, the lakeshore is a splendid place to get dramatic and unobstructed shots. Not that I can speak with great authority, since so far my own lightning pictures haven’t been all that spectacular. But that’s the fault of the photographer, not the storms.

The images on this page are from previous years. So far this year I’ve been occupied mainly with supercells and tornadoes, but I’m ready to make the shift to more garden variety storms, which may not pack the same adrenaline punch but lack for nothing in beauty and drama.

July 4th is a date that cold fronts seem to write into their planners. I’ve seen a good number of fireworks displays in West Michigan get trounced by a glowering arcus cloud moving in over the festivities. But tonight looks promising for Independence Day events. Storms are on the way, but they should hold off till well after the party’s over.  That means we’ll get two shows–the traditional pyrotechnics with all the boom, pop, and glittering, multicolored flowers filling the sky; and later, an electrical extravaganza, courtesy of a weak cold front. A Fourth of July double-header: what could be finer than that?