Our target for today was the booming city of Tonkawa, OK. We set up shop in a neighborhood park and watched the convection bubble up as we waited for something worth chasing.

Storms were popping up on the dryline to the west, and around 3pm we ended up quickly moving southwest through Enid to Lahoma to catch one of the storms. We had to punch through some rain and a little pea-sized hail, but once we did we were greeted with a nice wall cloud.

After we got a good look at the wall cloud we went back east to stay ahead of the storm, but ended up in a swath of nickel- to quarter-sized hail and had to pull the car up under an over-hanging roof of a random building. When there was a short break in hail we escaped to the south and enjoyed the view from afar.

We allowed the storm to slowly catch up to us and when it did it had a decent velocity couplet. You can see a lowering in the distance.

It was moving almost due east and we had an east road that allowed us to keep an eye on it. We would pull over and watch until the rain/hail caught up, then move farther east. You can see the precipitation erase our view before we moved forward:

We followed the storm until it lost its rotation. It still gave us a pretty view:

We had another enjoyable chase, and also got our first glance at the TIV on the trip:

The Joplin Tornado Day

I am realizing that the more exciting/difficult the chase, the less pictures we have. It is tough when we have such a small crew and are working hard to stay on the storms. Not to mention the fact that during most of our chases our storms have merged with others into a nasty glob and/or line, making it difficult to stay in the money spot. Regardless, here is a belated recap of the Joplin day.

The most favorable conditions for tornadic thunderstorms were in SE KS - NE OK - SW MO. The only chase-friendly terrain would be SE KS. So we set up shop in Cherryvale, KS and tried to wait patiently...

However, I got restless and impatient and we took a brief jaunt south, but only to return to Cherryvale minutes later to get into position on the beginning of the Joplin storm. Thinking back I am disappointed that we ever left Cherryvale, because we could have been some of the first people on the storm.

It ended up being a difficult chase and we (along with most chasers) were forced to the western side of the Joplin storm when storms popped up on either side. Here is a radar snapshot including storm chaser locations. I think it is 10 minutes before the tornado if the report we read was correct. We are the large blue circle and the other chasers are the red dots. The Joplin storm is to the east, with its new buddies to the west and south. (You can also see that we aren't working with the best radar software. Never again will I chase without GR Level3.)

When we were on the storm we were able to see a lot of rotation, and (as you well know) the cell moved east and dropped a significant tornado in Joplin, MO. This Washington Post article includes a chaser's perspective on the storm from my friend (and master's advisor) Grady Dixon.

We, along with most chasers, then set our sights on the western cell.

We saw this wanna-be funnel, which I am sure would have been scary to an innocent bystander.

After the western cell escaped us to the east we tried to get south and east around the linear cluster of storms. The roads were hilly, twisting, and tree-lined, we lost data, and we began to get hit by hail. We retreated back west for our safety (and the safety of the rental car) and called it a day.

It took us a little while to get on the road, as cops were directing traffic and not letting anyone take the interstate toward Joplin. On our way to Tulsa we listened to the Joplin radio stations and heard the horror in people's voices as they searched for information on their loved ones. Our thoughts and prayers are with them as they put the pieces of their lives back together. As we drove we watched the sun set on the western side of the line of storms as they continued to move east. There was obviously still strong convection on this side of the storms. We had a tough time getting a good picture of it, but snapped a few with our phones as we drove to Tulsa. As with most of our pics, it was much more impressive in person.

marginally... awesome!

Today was only supposed to be a marginal chase day, but proved to be a rather exciting non-tornadic chase. We traveled northeast out of Wichita towards Emporia when "the" Topeka storm was in its earliest stages. We caught up to the storm when we hit Emporia, got gas and a few snacks, and got back on the road. However, long embarrassing story short, a wrong turn turned into an hour-long adventure on dirt roads. When we finally got back to the interstate the storm was well ahead, and we were ready to throw in the towel and concentrate on a weaker storm to the west. I texted a fellow chaser with the news and wished him luck, but he responded with "get here if you can." For the next half hour we quickly (but carefully!) made our way to Topeka. As we got closer we began to see the structure of the storm, and snapped a few quick pics:

We arrived just in time to see this impressive view from the interstate. It loomed over Topeka for a good bit, but thankfully never touched down.

As we drove up the interstate the rotation was eerily close, and we were forced to pull over and wait for the storm to move away before we could exit and get in better position.

We then followed the storm through the backwoods of Topeka until dark. We were unable to get too many pictures because our three-man team was busy navigating and driving through most of the chase. As far as we could see the storm never spawned a tornado.

A big thank you for the WKU chase crew for helping navigate the Kansas back roads. This was our view for the last hour of the chase:

a picture-perfect chase

When we woke up in Salina an MCS was making its way over eastern Kansas. Once again we were required to head west if we wanted to see some clearing. We followed a similar route as the day before and waited. Our two favorite spots were a pretty, little park in the Town Square of St John and this bird refuge. You can see the biologists were quite at home:

Around 3pm we left St John and made our move on one of the southern storms. We were excited to finally see the beginnings of a thunderstorm as we moved west:

At that point it was clear that everything was becoming somewhat linear, so our plan was to stay on the southern edge. We followed our original storm for a couple of hours, before retreating south two consecutive times for stronger storms.

Kaitlyn and Emily got their first taste of chaser convergence on the last storm. (They happened to be in a lot of our pictures, including this one:)

When we started losing daylight we sat under an overpass and let the final storm's core blow over us (just dime-sized hail) and then enjoyed the show that nature put on for us. (Note: All of our pictures were taken with an iPhone or iPad, so the quality isn't the best.)

Finally, we finished our day with a storm chase tradition- the Wichita hooters. Sorry guys, we don't have pictures.

Poor visibility and a poor bird

The entire drive from St Louis to central Kansas consisted of status clouds and statiform rain as far as the eye could see (which is pretty far out here). When we reached our target, Salina, KS, it was still under a stratus deck and was only 65 degrees. This was disheartening so we moved a little south and west toward Great Bend hoping to see the sun. From there, with the help of the Western Kentucky University chase group, we picked a storm to go after and followed it until around 7pm when it seemed to fizzle out (it later restrengthened but not until after sunset). Visibility was poor all day, and by the time we were on the storm it was difficult to even identify a base or the rotation from our vantage point. It was somewhat disappointing, but we at least got used to working as a group to navigate the chase, and got some decent lightning and wind gusts. There were a couple of tornado reports from the storm that we were on, but they are questionable.

The highlight of our day was probably when our car killed an endangered species. This was not uneventful as we are all animal lovers. It stayed with us for a couple of hundred miles before a bump in the road freed it from the car's grill.

A salute to the poor Great Prairie Chicken.

First leg down

12.5 hours, 6 states, and 785 miles later we are in St. Louis. We got to see the skyline at night but weren't able to get any good pictures of the arch. (This is what we saw, if you are wondering). We have to head out early this morning to finish our drive to Kansas so we can get here:

Still only a slight risk for today.

Thank you Doup and Tress for being our magnificent, gracious, charming 6-hour hosts in STL!

Racing to The Plains

It looks like there could be a decent set up on Thursday, so we will have to get west quickly to take advantage of it. We plan on leaving Farmville around noon on Wednesday and making the 12 hour trek to St. Louis. From there, we will have to get up early on Thursday to make it to Kansas for the afternoon convection.

If things look like they will set up farther south we could take a route through Memphis to Oklahoma, but right now the northern route seems more promising.

The 1200 mile "Race to The Plains" will make for a tiring start to the trip, but hopefully our excitement (and the promise to sleep in Friday) will be enough to keep us moving.