Chase Log: 2010: Week 1

5/03/10, Christian County, IL (2 Funnels)
5/03/10, Coles County, IL (2 Funnels)
5/04/10, Bremer County, IA (2 Tornadoes)

Details:

4/30/10

3 tourists/chasers, Nick, Justin, Nate and I meet in the afternoon at my house and take off for KC. We are already in a Tornado watch box. As we cross northern IL there is a line of storms that we will have to drive through. We have some lightening and a bow echo that we drive through, the bow was weak, but some very nice cloud formations, a whales mouth, some interesting virga.

5/1/10

In KC we pickup our driver and our other tourists/chasers. We leave at 8 am for Arkansas/NE Texas. On the way I decide that Arkansas, near Hot Springs is the target area for storms to fire. We drive east on 40 to 7 and then south. Well I have driven through Arkansas several times, but I have never chased there. On 7 we drive through the Ouachita National Forest. Very scenic but not chaseable. We get to Hot Springs, eat and gas up. Then storms start to fire. The first severe t-storm warning is for our cell and we are in a tornado watch box. Well the cell is moving more of a north direction. This would take us right back into the forest. So I decide to head south to some storms that are near El Dorado, AR. While we are heading south there is a tornado warning for Jesseville on route 7. That was right where we had driven through the forest, oh well. While driving south more cells fire all around us. I'm leading us south to the larger storms, at one point we were surrounded by 5 tornado warnings. One as close as 1-2 miles away. Unfortunately the forest was just to continuous to see anything. We did finally see an updraft and some scud sucking. Quite a bit of excitement but no tornadoes, the trees killed us. We sleep in Pine Bluff, AR.

5/2/10

Repositioning day. Drive to Memphis for lunch and a Blues festival. Stop by Gibson guitars manufacturing plant and look at guitars. Head to St. Louis for a BBQ Dinner. Finally stop is Litchfield, IL.

5/3/10

Start with changing the oil on the van, getting fuses at a local Ford dealer to fix blown power fuses. Then head north on 55. Storms start to fire early, cu, Tcu. We drive east on 104 and are under the updraft of a cell, the storm gets severe warned and a small funnel dips just 10% down from the updraft base. We are on the north side of it, and need to get a little south. We ended up in Taylorville getting some pea sized hail for a few minutes. We took a little jog south that got us out of the hail and kept right next to to updraft base. The wall cloud strengthened and the rotation was evident along its base. Then Nick yelled out that he saw a funnel, this is it. His video showed a funnel half way to the ground. We kept on this storm for a while and it pulsed a time or two. Then we worked our way south and picked up another developing cell. Then in Mattoon twin funnels dropped 10%. We followed that storm to Ashmore, IL where it weakened. There was a cell near St. Louis that was coming out of MO we targeted next. Down 57 to 70 west. Near St. Elmo we saw two very well developed wall clouds. We watched them as the came directly towards us. Then the storm started to gust itself out. It formed a great shelf cloud and updrafts kept trying to organize but the storm ended up collapsing. 7+ hours of chasing, it was a long day. We caped it off with a steak at Lone Star Steak House in Effingham, IL. Where we stayed for the night.

5-4-10

We hit the road for Waterloo, IA. I figure with the dryer environment in our target area that storms will form later and that we will wait for the storms to come to us and look for bows or notches. Well the first light showers in NW IA blow up and die quickly. The form an ouflow boundary on Doppler Radar. After about an hour more showers develop on the north end of the outflow boundary and they are due west of Waterloo, IA. They are moving ENE, so will just pass north of our target. By this time(late afternoon) we have arrived in Waterloo. After watching the showers intensify on radar, with ouflow pouring out the back end of the line, I decide to take us straight north on 63. Well as we get close the Line which is not looking great visually, but better on the radar, we pull over to get a quick look at the storm. Well Bruce and then Nick point out a column of dirt that is spinning underneath the inflow and lowering of the storm. We get in the van and drive closer to see it. It stays together for 5 minutes and crossed 63. By the time we get up under the updraft it has dissipated. It was fairly large and tall off the ground. We have a local pull up in pickup truck and was freaking out. Was that a tornado? he asked twice. I wanted to confirm it was rotating, so I asked. He replied yes, I told him it was a tornado. Then while we were watching that updraft move away from us you could see that the updraft was rotating, up into the mid levels. Then behind us on another updraft and another landspout tornado developed. Everyone was more fascinated with the rotation just to our east. Just at about that time some weak outflow started to hit us and we headed south. Along the outflow a little while later when it started to get stronger we did have a gustnado form and we chased that a little to the southeast. Another good chase day! We stayed in Waterloo, IA and hit another Lone Star Steak House for a steak dinner.

5-5-10

I decide to skip Indiana/Ohio today for KS/NE tomorrow. So we reposition to Kansas City, MO. We go out and celebrate Cinco De Mayo.

5-6-10

We leave at 9am for western Kansas. The problem with today is weather the moisture will get up to the warm front during the day time. We end up out by Hays and then head west to Oakley. We wait in Oakley for a while then head back east to Wa Keeney. Well in town a chaser convention is going on. Vortex 2 is there. Well they all head north, we head south on 283 then east on 4. Well there are towers going up just north of the warm front to our south. That is where the moisture is and hopefully some jet energy will spill over south. After waiting for an hour or two, It just didn’t happen, storms just could not fire. Well, I figure the moisture will hit the warm front just south of Salina and a storm will probably fire after dark. Our other choice is we can go chase some storms along the NE/KS border in a dryer environment. I chose the KS/NE option. We head north on 183 to 36 west. Well we end up on a severe thunderstorm that has showed some weak rotation, but just mostly hail. On the GPS I noticed that we were a half a mile from Nebraska and a couple of guests had not been to NE. So we made a run for the border, stopped for a little while and then headed back south. Well on the way south we got into some hail golf ball to ping pong ball size with a few silver dollars mixed in. We kept moving south on the storm and the hail turned to rain. We stayed in Hayes for the night.

5-7-10

I inform the guests that there will be no storms that will be near severe limits they decide to change flights and head back early, since we had a successful week already. So we head to KC to the airport and say our good byes.