Spring and Summer 2010 Review coming soon, sorry we got swamped and got behind on the chase logs!!!

May 31, 2010

What an amazing day! Left Denver with a guest Katie Van Fleet and Corey Johnson. We got a large tornado near Campo, CO and we also caught 3 other tornadoes and a couple of funnel clouds. This was by far the best tornado I have ever seen.

Miles: 843   States: CO    Tornadoes: 4    Hail: Golfball

May 27, 2010

Made the journey to see my first Montana tornado. Although not in the dramatic fashion I had hoped, the storm of the day formed in the late evening and produced one short lived tornado near dark for me. Lasting about 30 seconds this rope tornado happend faster than I could react, and being about 10 miles away didn't help either. However it was still cool to see a tornado in a new state, no matter how dissapointing it may have been, near Prairie, MT around 845pm...

Miles:  964       States: MT/ND       Tornadoes: 1         Hail: None

May 24, 2010

Being lucky is often a big role in what you see on a given day. Today was that kind of day as we got on the storm of the day south/southwest of Faith, SD. With a target of Faith issued the night before I felt pretty good about this. We watched a rope turn into a stovepipe into a large cone and into a wedge or at the very least an almost wedge. We sat on a hill, shooting stills and video just down the road from a church, I made the decision, this was going to be a close encounter. We headed west on the highway and waited as we watched it moving north to the road. A small vortex happend and I decided to let it cross over the front edge of the vehicle due to it's size. Incredible power it had, I wouldn't have been surprised to find it was as strong as the large tornado. We went west and decided to let the large tornado go to our east, It crossed the road about 100 yards infront of us. It rolled a few of the large round bales around however we didn't see it hit anything else. A satellite tornado formed to it's west or just to our north about a mile after it crossed the highway. We headed east and north then to track this storm, this tornado lasted another ten minutes before several others occured from this same storm, from multivortex to stovepipe this was an incredible storm. We called it a day after we go north, missed a few tornadoes we found out but with the fog that we encountered the photo/video ops would have been comprised anyway...

Miles: 643  States: SD  Tornadoes: 5    Hail: Dime

May 23, 2010

Today I was joined by Corey Johnson for the first time this season. I couldn't let a tornado threat go unchased so I made us get on the road and get after it, we headed to northwest Kansas where our reward was not nearly as much as it should have been. Still we watched a wall cloud form and a weak rope tornado for about 2 minutes south of Brewster, KS. Overall the miles/awesome tornado ratio didn't line up, but it wasn't a complete waste, we headed north back to South Dakota for the next day...

Miles: 845   States: NE/KS   Tornadoes: 1    Hail: Half Dollar

 

May 22, 2010

South Dakota magic gave some real intense stuff for people who chased it on this day. May 22nd - an EF4 near Bowdle, SD was obviously the highlight of the day. However there was several other tornadoes, The first touched down was a nice large cone. The second was a stovepipe. The third was soon to become the Bowdle wedge. The crazy part about the Bowdle wedge for me was one of the few places that received damage I sat at, until it was about a qaurter mile away and said "well this place is in trouble and I gotta get outta here". Sure enough as I pulled down the road and up just as I got out and started shooting more video, I saw debris flying that had to be from the place. Thankfully, there were no injuries. The fourth was a nice elephant trunk (50 yards away). The fifth was another elephant trunk (30 yards away!). The sixth was a rain wrapped rope/stovepipe. The seventh was a large tornado wrapped in the rain. Then we lost track as it produced a few more tornadoes but most were burried deep in the precip and with dark setting in. We called it a day.

States: SD    Miles: 530    Tornadoes: 7    Hail: Quarter

May 19, 2010

Another wild day in Oklahoma, in a setup of storm development reminded me of the 10th almost exactly, original target was again, Wakita, OK. Got on a nice supercell southwest of there, however today storms would be HP again so there was alot of rain, hard to see, this storm produced three tornadoes that I was able to see myself. Tracked it to I-35 and then said to heck with it as it was getting even more wrapped in rain and even more impossible to chase and see anything. Blasted south to the supercell that again appeared destined to slam into Norman and the same areas impacted on the 10th, however this time it would go on without a tornado. The storm to the south however produced a tornado near I-35 so at dusk again I dropped south. This time however it was a much closer encounter as I tracked it east into a small town just east of Pauls Valley, the sound, and the wind changes, and increase in speed (from about 25mph to 70mph) lead me to believe I was definately NOT sitting in a good spot, caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a dark area in the rain, very much shaped like a cone, a few times just outside of this town, thought a very rural area I don't know that any damage was done but certainly what appeared to be a tornado on the ground for a few moments. The storm quickly weakened and I headed home to Yukon.

Miles: 633   States: OK   Tornadoes: 4    Hail: Golfball

May 18, 2010

This day was a good day and a bad day. Bad part was all the rain, good part was still captured three tornadoes! Was on a cell in the Texas panhandle early, ended up tracking it east and for a long while near Dumas and Channing. Captured three tornadoes with it, very HP supercell, eventually I let that go after playing hail intercept for a while. Bailed west, at this point it was already almost getting dark but I saw a nice supercell in the northwest corner of the TX panhandle. It paid off, one nice stovepipe illuminated by lightning, if only for two seconds, it was still an amazing sight to see and worth the jaunt across the panhandle at dusk.

Miles: 703   States: NM/TX    Tornadoes: 4     Hail: Golfball

May 12, 2010

Things look decent on May 12th for tornadoes but they went linear rather quickly, initial target was Wakita, OK again much like on the 10th, ended up jumping NW into KS, did intercept a few tornado warnings but nothing to show for it. Headed southwest and intercepted a tornado warning along I40 just before dark, nothing to show for it either but alot of miles of effort...

Miles: 697   States: KS/OK   Tornadoes: 0    Hail: Quarter

May 11, 2010

Another day in Oklahoma, looked like southwest OK would be the place to be, a nice supercell started going up around 5pm near Hobart, however this storm would not survive as the cap would win out. Took a chance and headed northwest to a new towering CU field. Ended up on the storm of the day near Woodward, about 10 miles west. It went tornado warned and we captured a rope tornado touching down for about 10 seconds in a field. Certainly not the day we were looking for but at least we didn't come up completely empty handed.

Miles: 419  States: OK   Tornadoes: 1     Hail: Half Dollar

May 10, 2010

What an incredible yet tragic day May 10th was! Tracked a supercell that fired up near Wakita, OK initially... The storm produced a quick tornado at first, which actually had two funnels dancing around each other. Quickly moved east as this storm was moving 45mph, it dumped one of the wildest multi vortex tornadoes on the hwy just south of Wakita, 4 well defined vorticies started dancing around each other! By this time I was within about 200 yards of this and had another tornado touch down just to my left, on three different occasions. Then as I continued east I looked behind me and saw 2 more tornadoes a large wedge and a stovepipe off to the northwest. Due to the amount of traffic it was hard to stop so I didn't get much if any decent video of those two but I was already feeling pretty good about what I had seen so far. Ended up leaving this storm for a storm further south near Perry and bagged two tornadoes on it, one which passed right over the seven winds casino, also encountered some 4.00" diameter hail on that very storm. Sadly this was the same day the tornado ripped through Norman, OK in the middle of the afternoon...

Miles: 431   States: OK    Tornadoes: 8    Hail: Softball

May 6-7, 2010

Most of the chase logs are seperate because they are spread out over diffferent time frames, however on May 6 I sat near Wichita all afternoon and storms didn't fire til about 9pm... tracked them east to Kansas City and then followed the system as it screamed east and ended up near Van Wert, OH for supercells on the 7th... ended up with a nice gustnado and worked with TornadoAttack the first time this season... pretty dissapointing for that long of a drive but it is what it is...

Miles: 955    States: KS/MO/IL/IN/OH   Tornadoes: 0    Hail: Half Dollar

May 1, 2010

Miles: 215    States: TN/MS/AR   Tornadoes: 0    Hail: None 

April 30, 2010

Miles: 502    States: AR    Tornadoes: 0    Hail: None.

April 29, 2010

Miles: 477    States: NE/KS   Tornadoes: 1    Hail: Dime

April 24, 2010

Drove all night from near Omaha, NE the evening before. Ended up just east of Yazoo City, MS and almost got mowed over by the devastating tornado that ravaged the city. A very sad day over all, it was hard to hear what was happening and had happened in Yazoo City but throughout the day we encountered 8 other different tornado warned storms, none of which produced that we were able to witness...

Miles: 892    States: TN/MS/AR/AL   Tornadoes: 1    Hail: Dime

April 23, 2010

Miles: 688    States: NE   Tornadoes: 0    Hail: Pea

April 22, 2010

Had the chance to chase on a great day today. SPC - Moderate Risk - 15% Hatched Tornado threat. Target was Clarendon, TX... storms fired just west of there. Intercepted a great storm which produced two tornadoes one right after the other... that storm moved north and became a bit of a rain wrapped mess, as we headed back to get to the next storm in line it was producing a tornado near Goodnite, TX and we witnessed that from a distance... tornado #3... then as that storm neared it dropped a very quick funnel, which was 3/4 of the way and may have touched, only lasted about 20 seconds and am not counting that one in the total for the day. As the storm became violently rotating just north of I-40 there was definately a potential that a multi-vortex tornado made brief contact but the contrast was poor so I will refrain from counting that as well. However as we closed in as we tracked it north a nice rope came down for about 10 seconds in what appeared to be another multi-vortex type scenario. Then as we turned around we went a mile or two and parked, and it again produced another tornado and then it got lost in the rain. That was the final of the day... tornado count for today was 5 as best I can tell I try to be accurate and not count things I can't confirm however I would believe there may have been more as those were two very active storms....

Miles: 352    States: TX   Tornadoes: 5    Hail: Dime

April 21, 2010

Miles: 681    States: TX   Tornadoes: 0    Hail: Dime

April 13, 2010

 

April 11, 2010

Not much to say, low risk day that yielded a few storms, half dollar size hail near Amarillo then storms lined out after that and didn't do much for me.

Miles: 322    States: TX   Tornadoes: 0    Hail: Half Dollar 

April 4-5-6, 2010

Just decided to group the three day tornadoless journey together, covered alot of ground for little reward, although it was fun to be out chasing with Tyler Costantini, Jordan Hamilton, and Chris Wilburn for the duration (also met up with Kory Hartman, Randy Cooper, and SevereStudios KC, along with Scott Bennett and his chase partners from ChaserTV). April 4th in west central Missouri was a sunburn day as storms didn't start til sunset, a wall cloud around 9:00pm was all we could muster up... April 5th was in northeast Kansas and again we had to wait til sunset, made a beline from Rock Port, MO but was never able to get to the tornado warned storms while they were at their peak, did get some very nice lightning and storm video from a developing storm in southeast NE however with just a touch of daylight left... April 6th in southeast Iowa left everyone dissapointed, what looked to be such a promising day by afternoon once again ended up as not so much of a tornado day as a hail and wind day, encountered some damage in Grinnell, IA almost immediately after the storm passed, after clearing some debris from the road so myself and several other motorists who stopped behind me could get past, I observed power out along with large amounts of nickel - quarter size hail and some serious street flooding...

Miles(3 day total): 1,752    States: MO/KS/NE/IA   Tornadoes: 0    Hail: Quarter

April 2, 2010

Headed to northeast Texas after seeing dime size hail at the house in Yukon, OK from morning squal line, complete bust in Texas, no storms, met up with Kris Hair and Gene Yates, chatted about the time wasted, and went home... better luck next time!

Miles: 683      States: OK/TX           Tornadoes: 0        Hail: NONE

March 27, 2010

I had hopes for this event after the dissapointment on the 24th. My hopes turned sour the day before as model runs trended worse and worse, then the night before models started to look better and low and behold at midnight the SPC throws a 5% tornado threat across Arkansas with a mention of surface based storms and isolated tornadoes in southeast KS, southwest MO, northeast OK. Game on. Things never panned out as everyone had hoped... we did see some decent storms, and alot of us got suckered by radar images depicting nice supercells wrapping up that should be producing tornadoes... turns out it was a big let down, storms wouldn't ever get surface based and best myself and my chase partner for the day Mike Scantlin could muster up was a brief funnel less than halfway to the ground and a few nice structure shots...

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruajHhFhbEw
Miles: 438      States: MO/OK/KS        Tornadoes: 0        Hail: NONE

 

March 24, 2010

Slight Risk was issued by the SPC for the day, I looked at models myself and saw maybe a glimmer of hope for a tornado near San Saba / Brownwood, TX... So I was on my way. Needless to say small storms formed and quickly turned into large lines of non-severe storms with 30 - 50 mph winds and pea size hail. This happend basically from the OK/TX border to the MX/TX border... I tracked south trying to get to an area of untapped energy near San Saba, TX... an isolated storm however blew up as I was on my way and soon died out leading me to believe the atmosphere was still very capped. I kept on my way to the area and ended up capturing a tail end storm which didn't do much of anything, strong outflow gusts of 40 - 50mph was about all I ever found in my tracking of this storm. Needless to say it was a very uneventful chase... However I did meet www.vortexchasers.net team, nice people, and I was glad to see I wasn't the only one out chasing this dissapointment of an event...

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ny7xX39mB8
Miles: 586          States: TX/OK           Tornadoes: 0          Hail: Pea

March 10, 2010

Great debate was opened up as to where myself and Michael Ratliff would head today. With so much success near the low on Monday the 8th it was hard to play east of there especially considering the terrain. However we decided at the last minute to track up 44 after meeting briefly with Denton Sachs and Derek Masingale we started charging up 44 with an intended target of Neosho, MO as it appeared storms firing to our east would be the main storms for that area. Sure enough as closed in on the Missouri border we got our first tornado warning and observed a nice wall cloud west of Neosho. Hail also covered the ground appearing to be nickel to dime in size. We let that storm go and headed for a new tornado warning to our south as storms were moving 45mph or more. We ended up capturing another lowering with little motion and ended up losing daylight as we stopped just shy of the Arkansas border... No tornadoes but still nice to have two decent early March chases back to back...

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeNgMx7kOWY
Miles: 381        States: OK/MO        Tornadoes: 0          Hail: Nickel

March 8, 2010

Ended up checking out the morning convection as it went SVR down by the TX/OK border near the radar site in SW OK... headed back to the northwest as I felt round two was already starting in northeast Texas and it was only a matter of time before it built further south... sure enough a nice storm developed and we got a nice base, larger than quarter hail (which we reported and apparently got disregarded because it was never Severe Warned), we were already pleased, then while checking out the hail we got a tight area of rotation formed into a quick funnel and went back up, now we were real happy, we weren't expecting much! Little did we know as we got back into position to follow the storm it soon had a rope tornado all the way to the ground! That lasted for about 2 1/2 minutes and lifted.... then the monster came, about 1 minute after the first one lifted the next one came down and got big and got strong, it stayed strong too as we watched on a hill about 3 miles away, we decided to get closer... at one point we noticed multiple vortices and twice it had a satelite tornado (the one never touched that I saw so I guess a satelite tornado and a satelite funnel are in order)... We soon came up on a house that was, well, gone. Three chase vehicles and one local firefighter/EMT of somekind were already on the scene and confirmed the lady was OK and we continued... This was about 4 miles southwest of Hammon... as we neared the town it appeared the tornado had weakend considerably, infact it seemed to weaken as it hit a shed about 2 miles southwest of Hammon... We were trying to position ourselves to have a chance to get very close to it at that point... However, we soon noticed how rapidly it was intensifying again so we laid back a little and soon it started taking roofs and throwing debris and before long it was fully in action again and we watched in horror as we saw entire roofs being thrown around like nothing... Thankfully as we soon found out the southern homes were seperated from town so not as many homes were damaged as we had thought, we checked on a family who was trapped by the debris from a nearby trailer house in their storm shelter (good for them) and continued back to check in town, we soon realized this town was VERY well prepared and saw well over 20 vehicles with EMT/Police lights swarming three of the other houses, we alerted a local resident the people in that shelter were ok and got out of Hammon asap as we felt we were in the way... We watched tornado rope out just outside the town of Hammon... we talked about it the whole way to a Days Inn in Clinton (very nice they let us sit in the lobby and use WiFi so keep that in mind if your ever down here)... we found out from The Weather Channel there was no injuries in Hammon...

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCBUAh7PHI8
Miles: 267     States: OK   Tornadoes: 2    Hail: Half Dollar