May 27, 2019

From my morning storm chasing forecast email list:

"Day 1 Today: If you're in the High Plains, you're looking at the I-76 corridor most likely. First initiation by the airport and maybe the front range. Risk of these storms getting undercut by cold air up by Cheyenne and these storms own cold pools. CAMs hint at robust supercell tracking up I-76, peaking in the 21z to 23z timeframe. Again, risk of storm dealing with cold pools and then the impinging boundary to the north that is currently sagging south from Nebraska. The tornado show might be just as the storm approaches the boundary with backed surface winds and moisture convergence on the boundary, before it goes elevated a ways after crossing it. Modest instability, v shaped temp profiles, decent T/Td spreads for starters, storms may be gusty and cool with laminar grungy features, not unlike yesterday later in the day. Tornadoes will probably be smaller ropes if you can squeeze one out of the setup. Low risk of supercell bust, low reward.

Conditional secondary target further east toward the KS border if you can get a decent discrete updraft there rather than a cluster like yesterday.

Highly conditional target of Colby to Hays, KS near a dryline bulge. Big CAPE, great hodos right at 0z, some lingering capping and what looks like lack of lift on the dryline may keep this target quiet. A lone supercell if it went up in the environment would be the show though. High risk of bust, high reward.

More secondary targets down the dryline into Texas where initiation looks more likely below modlevel flow. Kind of wish I stayed south this weekend."

Monday, May 27 was our first day of team operations for the 2019 season. Brindley and I had been out on the Plains for ten days at this point, chasing for our own personal goals, but were finally scheduled to meet up with Drs. Anton and Tracie Seimon. We had been chasing with “Team Woodchuck” since 2016 on a scientific mission to study the low level wind field of tornadoes using photogrammetry from multi-perspective video.

Joining us this year for the first time in our research effort was “Pecos Hank” Schyma. I reached out to Hank at the 2019 DuPage Severe Weather Seminar to see if he would be interested in joining our research project and doing some coordinated storm chasing with us. Our research goal requires that we obtain high quality, close range tornado video, and Hank is one of the very best when it comes to that. He eagerly joined our group and we were all excited to have him.

We all met up at a little coffee shop in Goodland, KS, kicked over the forecast on the stairs of the Motel 6 after packing it up, and then departed westward into Colorado for a High Plains target.

We handed “the conch” to Anton on this chase, meaning he was in charge of picking targets and leading the chase for the day. With decades of formal meteorology and High Plains storm chasing experience we gladly defer to his expertise when we find ourselves on the upslope. Anton is a master of finding subtle features, a hidden pocket of moisture or a backed surface wind, identified by a single METAR, and knowing the regional geography intimately such that he can foresee how the scenario plays out. On this day, Anton had us hanging out well east of the popular target. A tongue of moisture was working its way toward Limon, and that was guaranteed discrete supercells to northeast according to Anton. Most other chasers were pushing further west toward targets more prominently advertised by the numerical forecast models.

And then the waiting began. Hours went by as we loitered in fields that were deserted except for the occasional white tail deer or pronghorn.

We watched cumulus stream overhead and begin to thicken. The moisture was there. We just need storm initiation now.

The Front Range lit up with a line of storms. A dominant supercell quickly picked up a tornado warning and Spotter Network reports started to come in. It’s difficult to sit in one place under blue skies while, a couple hours away, storm chasers are filming tornadoes. We were confident that our target would fire next, however, and that our storms would be the better option: more discrete and less likely to be undercut by a surge of cold air from the west. The storms to the west looked like they might quickly congeal and so far the tornado reports had been for brief spin-ups.

The down time gave the team plenty of time to catch up, get to know Hank better, share stories, and discuss plans for the chase.

Being watched suspiciously by the locals:

Storms finally popped just to our southwest as Anton had anticipated. They were high based and clustery and took quite a while to organize, not the exploding, dominant supercell that I had hoped for. Not yet at least...

We watched the bases organize, and after several minutes we could see they were consolidating into one dominant cell. A nicely textured and well separated rain free base extended to the south, although it still looked quite high and wasn’t showing any signs of a lowering yet.

The storm drifted off to the northeast and went north down our paved highway to keep up with it. Our path converged with that of the storm and we found ourselves directly underneath the updraft base. I was guiding us in with my street level mapping software and brought right up to the edge of the forward flank downdraft to keep a tight position. I didn’t think much of it at the time. The base still seamed sky high and there wasn’t a hint of rotation yet. We were discussing on the radio what we should do next as there wasn’t another paved east option that would keep us in view of the base, so keeping up with the storm in the short term would entail many miles down questionable dirt roads. We were leaning on going the long way around, north and then to the next east and catching back up with the storm later. That’s when the storm suddenly spun up a snaky rope funnel cloud overhead. Rising scud condensed along with it like it was trying to form a wall cloud and undergo tornadogenesis all at the same time.

The funnel caught us off guard and all three teams scrambled to either get a camera on it or figure out our next move. My decision to keep a tight position meant that the funnel cloud was almost directly overhead, which was a fairly alarming position to be in. Looking around, there didn’t appear to be any sort of ground circulation associated with it.

We dropped a mile south to the next intersection. The funnel lasted only a few seconds and was long over by the time we collected ourselves. A rear flank downdraft clear slot was carving out the updraft base, which I hoped was our cue that the show was just getting started. We began organizing ourselves over the radio to get into deployment positions.

The base started to move off of us to the northeast, now fully front lit by the clear skies to the west. A lowering rapidly condensed, getting dangerously low to the ground. We scrambled to setup cameras, anticipating an imminent tornado show.

Hank was still up at the previous road, nosing in closer beneath the lowering while Anton moved just down the road from us. We wanted to space ourselves a bit so that we’d have different camera angles for photogrammetry work.

The lowering had rapid upward motion, but the rotation was not as pronounced. Still there appeared to be a point funnel cloud located in the center of the mass with some dust action at the surface. Hank noted intense yet tiny dust circulations near his location. It was difficult for us to confirm if it was a tornadic circulation, rooted to a cyclone aloft, or if it was just a gustnado and the entire lowering was simply being kicked up by a big RFD surge.

We let the storm drift away, getting this last shot before moving to go after it. We stair stepped a mile east and the north to get on the long and winding dirt road that led eastward. It was soon apparent that the lowering was getting blasted apart by outflow. We’d have to make for the longer play and hope the storm could cycle and regain its inflow not before we could catch it again on the paved north between Wray and Holyoke.

Our three teams grew farther and farther apart as we traversed the dirt road, each taking a pace as fast as they comfortably could. Cows in the road became a landmark to test our radio range, which turned out to be about a mile if we had line of sight.

We lost the storm on our jaunt that took us miles and miles east and then miles and miles north. We took a shortcut to bypass much of Holyoke and then were moving east for the intercept, coming up behind the storm. By now it had transitioned into a beastly high precipitation hailer. That wasn’t good for our tornado chances, but it was the lone dominant supercell in the area now and our only play. Meanwhile, the chaser horde that had been playing further west had jumped off the congealed line and made it east toward us. The roads were now packed with chasers going in both directions, either trying to drive around the storm or through it. Crossing the Nebraska state line, we came into the back end of the storm. The ground was littered with hail, and big white hail shafts loomed just ahead.

We attempted to punch through it but of course hit the hail barrage. We tucked in next to a couple huge grain metail grain silos until the larger hail subsided before we cautiously continued east through the storm. The ground was blanketed in an eerie yet mesmerizing hail fog.

We picked up a few stones over the severe threshold and then were blasted by roaring straight line winds, but we finally were able to punch through the southern rim of the storm near the town of Imperial, Nebraska. Epic structure stretched overhead as we pulled ahead of the updraft base, and we scrambled to gain ground to the east so we could get into position to shoot it. Meanwhile, “Woodchuck” held back, the severe winds made them leery that a mesocyclone was cycling overhead and they didn’t want to drive straight through it.

Several miles east of Imperial, we pulled off the highway and setup for structure shots. Woodchuck caught up with us a few minutes later.

The supercell was beautifully sculpted.

We all stood back and watched the beauty until the light and best structure began to fade. The chase was over for coordinated team chasing at dusk, so we called and started heading east toward McCook for a room.

Brindley and I checked into our room in McCook. The storm was still raging to the north, discrete in clear air and now transitioning from an epic structure show to an epic lightning show. We headed back out and went a few miles north of town to get away from the city lights and find an empty, dark road.

The storm produced copious amount of cloud to cloud lightning in gorgeous twilight.

We were joined by a couple other groups of chasers who had the same idea and homed in on the ideal location.

I shot time lapse stills and Brindley captured single long exposures. We stayed for almost an hour until the electrical activity faded and the storm drifted away. The evening was balmy, filled with a chorus of frogs as the wind rustled the Plains grasses.