Chase Log: 2007: Week 2

5/22/07, Trego County, KS (1 Tornado, 3 Funnels)
5/22/07, Graham County, KS (1 Tornado, 1 Funnel)
5/23/07, Hutchinson County, TX (1 Tornado, 5 Funnels

Details:

5/21/07

WG Leaves Chicago area at 5:30 am.   Head out on 88 to 80 west.   Western Nebraska/KS border is our target for the day.   As we are crossing Nebraska on 80 a line of thunderstorms snakes north to south from Wyoming into Colorado and down into Western Kansas.   Lines are not good but storms out in front of lines are good and that is what we look for.   Some Isolated storms start to fire between Goodland Kansas and Burlington Colorado.   So WG gets off of 80 and go south on 283 and then west on 6/34 into McCook, NE.   WG follows these storms but then break off because of darkness and head back south to McCook and stay there for the night.   Later WG finds out that after dark when that cell interacted with the line that we mentioned earlier that a tornado was produced by route 80.   So WG were on the right track, just ran out of daylight.

5/22/07

WG are heading to Scott City for today.   WG gets there early in the afternoon and just start watching the weather.   Around 3pm we discover how great of a forecast we made today.   WG hit the IP(Initiation Point) right on the head.   Cu fires right over head we start heading east on 96 to stay ahead of the developing storm.   It is extremely interesting to go from clear skies to fair weather Cu to Towering Cu to Super Cell, Huge Mesocyclone tornadic supercell thunderstorm.   WG goes up 23 then to 4 east.   Then down some dirt roads and make it to 283 north.   North of Wakeeney we have a rotating wall cloud that starts to produce funnels.   WG follow’s the storm north and it just can’t bring the rotation to the ground.   Just south of Hill City it starts to gust itself out.   So we head south down 283 to the trailing storm which then took over about 20 minutes later.   That was enough time to go back down 283 to get into better position on the storm now targeted.   First as it was organizing it produced a nice wall cloud, then it was a beautiful Meso that formed(See storm pictures).   Then one tornado touched down and then lifted.   Then another tornado was produced.   WG was chasing on the cluster through the evening with several more funnels and tornado warnings on dirt roads east of 283.   The chase was over we thought and ended up going to Hays for the night at sunset.   Well it just would not end again. The sirens went off in Hays and there were power flashes in the distance.   After an hour and half of observing the sky. Seeing wind, rain, hail to golf ball size.   We ended up having a microburst hit Hays, causing some minor damage, but a bit of excitement.   It knocked some roofing off of the Hotel that WG was staying in.   I was outside with the hotel security the whole time keeping their staff informed of the storms progress.   The winds I would estimate were about 90 - 100 MPH.

5/23/07

Wednesday was successful but frustrating.   WG went to Liberal KS and saw towers going up to the south through east about 50 miles away and tried to make my way through two towers.   WG was delayed by construction for 20 minutes and it cost us.   WG was trying to head down 83 into Perryton and was just a little too late.   I tried several times to work my way around the storms but was unsuccessful.   Tornado warnings started to come out for the south side of the cells that I was on.   Finally I went SW down 15 and then down 207, just barely got between 2 storms. Some marble size hail and 60 mph winds.   East of Borger I watched a wall cloud grow into a very nice meso.   Following it back north and on some side roads, paved and unpaved, It produced 4 funnels and a rope tornado through Hutchinson County.   Later the next day I found out that all of the roads I was trying to go down initially south of Perryton were all flooded out an closed south of Perryton.   One bridge was even washed out.

5/24/07

WG traveled up to Denver, CO.

5/25/07

WG went into the Rockies and were panning for gold near Idaho Springs.

5/26/07

Heading for Kansas and things are not looking good.   WG was hoping that some energy from a follow up short wave would dig further south.   That didn’t happen and Kansas is just in for some heavy rain producing storms.   We catch some isolated storms and a couple of wall clouds between Topeka and Salina but nothing with any good tornadic characteristics.

5/27/07

WG is heading home.   Now just onto local chases over the summer.   It has been another fantastic chase season.