Chase On! - Chase Accounts

"CHASE ON!!"

Here are the accounts of my storm chases. Highlighted (linked) chases have more in-depth information on a page specifically for that day.

1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003

2004

2005

2006

1990

7 June- First chase ever! Ran around the rural countryside of Wabaunsee County in the Rodness-Mobile. I was in between storms that were affecting the Emporia area and other storms that were around Topeka and Lawrence.

1991

1 March- Thunderstorms moved from Osage Co. KS and intensified as they entered Shawnee and Douglas Co. Numerous funnels and wall clouds seen by KU Severe Storms Intercept Project (KUSSIP), with one tornado photographed near KPL by group other than myself and Matt Foster.

21 March- Target: Joplin, Mo. (infamous "Butthole of the Nation" chase). Moderate risk of severe weather and a tornado watch issued. Groups observed heavy rain and gusty winds, but no severe weather.

26 March- Didn't chase, but maintained communications at the KU Weather Service as hail storm hit Lawrence. Widespread damage to cars and buildings on campus and in Lawrence.

27 March- Night chase. (Midnight to 3AM) Tornado Warning (radar) for Douglas Co. Wall cloud sighted by group about 1/2 mile north of US-56/75 junction in Osage Co.

11 April- Target: Kingman, KS. Severe Clear chase. High risk in SC/SW Kansas. Tornado Watch #118 issued by 5PM for this area. Cu hit cap and died...complete bust!

17 April- Target: Burlingame-Harveyville, KS. Slight risk, but no real tornado risk. Severe thunderstorm watch issued by early afternoon.

26 April- Target: Council Grove, KS. High risk for eastern 2/3's of Kansas. I saw my very first tornado on this day in Wabaunsee County!

28 April- Target: Lawrence and rural areas of Douglas Co. Severe Thunderstorm Warning for the county. 1.5" hail on the ground near Lone Star Lake. Hail fog, rainbow and mammatus seen after getting back to Lawrence.

16 May- Target: Florence, KS. Moderate risk with Tornado Watch in SC Kansas. Ended up in Cassoday and Thrall in N. Butler and Greenwood Co. At one point was under a Tornado Warning but no tornado sighted. On the way back, we met up with our other team in S. Douglas Co. Enroute to Lawrence, a drunk just missed our chase car, but totalled Kevin Polston's car. Minor injuries were involved, but everyone came out OK thankfully.

26 May- Target: impromptu chase north of Topeka. Headed to Jackson Co. and intercepted spectacular wall cloud.

15 June- Target: Lawrence. Severe Thunderstorm Watch. Tornado Warning for Leavenworth and E. Douglas Co. (based on possible funnel clouds in/near Lawrence). Hail and street flooding noted, but the big story was lightning which struck Hoch Auditorium on the KU campus. Ensuing fire destroyed the building, causing $12 million in damages.

10 July- Target: Wabaunsee Co. Impromptu chase. Slight risk/Severe Thunderstorm Watch. Storms intensified in W. Wabaunsee Co. Heavy rain and gusty winds noted, with numerous and close CG's.

3 Oct- Target: Ottawa, KS. Slight risk. Initial development took place from Emporia to Ottawa. No severe weather experienced, just pea-sized hail and heavy rain.

29 Nov- Impromptu chase on the way home from internship at KTKA-TV in Topeka. Tornado Watch in effect. Core punched in SW Shawnee Co., but no severe weather experienced.

1992

8 March - Target: P28 (Medicine Lodge, KS). Ended up in Alva, OK, where we were greeted by 1" hail. (Infamous "I wanna go west!" quote by Jim Phillips) Upon getting back into Kansas, saw nighttime tornado east of Kiowa.

11 May - Chase into Central KS. Made it to tornado watch area, but saw nothing interesting.

16 May - Target: SUX (Sioux City, IA). Large hail up to (at least) golf ball size and within Tornado Warning. Never saw it.

15 June- Target: NC Kansas. Mother of all supercells! Massive inflow and tornadoes. A good time was had by all. (picture below is mammatus we saw miles from main updraft of storm!)

7 September-Labor Day Chase to Ottawa, KS.

1993

6 May- NE Kansas outbreak. Bad decisions led to playing catch up with the fast moving storms. Started in TOP, got out west to St. Marys before getting back to Lawrence. Didn't see a single tornado.

1 June- Long Island, KS supercell. Chased with Matt Foster. No tornadoes, but a simply gorgeous storm!

3 June- Bust chase to OK with Matt.

8 June- Chase to Lawrence. Encountered pea size hail, but that's it.

13 June- Great supercell near Wamego, KS. Great structure, but fled town 5 minutes before tornado reported.

1994

9 April- Target: SC KS/NC OK. Chasing the warm front near KS/OK border. VORTEX was there. Saw impressive storms...ran from storms as they chased me! No tornadoes.

25 April- Bust chase to Salina.

24 May- Multicell storm south of Lawrence. Pea-sized hail...that's all we saw.

1 June- Marshall Co. (KS) storm. Great shelf cloud...VORTEX present.

12 June- Stanton/Cuming Co., NE Supercells. Best storm of the year...perhaps ever. Beautiful and most colorful storm structure with cool striations!

1995

7 May - Bust chase.

3 June- Childress, TX storm.

7 June- Ottawa, KS storm.

1996

24 March- Headed west of TOP towards oncoming line of storms by Alma and Wamego. Not much seen from our vantage point, but weak tornadoes did occur to our north in Pottawatomie and Brown Co.

3 May- Chased the warm front near Burlington. Atmosphere remained capped. End of story.

8 May- Target: SLN. Videotaped "turkey towers" north and west of SLN, while mian action unfolded shortly after dark. Big storms were located just north of the KS/NE state line. (Tornado struck BIE this night.)

9 May- Drew a target area around SLN-CNK-MHK, along warm front. Reached SLN, and got suckered in by storms N of HUT. Meanwhile, tornadic storms developed between SLN-CNK, just west of Clay Center. Lesson learned: stick with your forecast!!

23 May- Bust chase south of CNK.

24 May- When in doubt, head to SLN! Actually started in TOP, headed to EMP and then west of US-50 to McPherson to catch storms. Ended up west of Lyons to videotape impressive time-lapse sequence of approaching shelf cloud. Followed it (er..it followed me) all the way back to TOP. Live phoner with KTKA in Fort Riley.

26 May- Target: Strong City. Crappy chase...saw some flooding near MHK, but that was it.

31 May- Matt Foster and I team up for one "not even close to being exciting" chase through FRI to near SE of Saline HS. Heavy rains the main story.

5 June- Two part chase. Mid-afternoon storm took me to Burnett's Mound to watch. Nothing exciting. Second part of chase took me to near I-70/K-99 intersection. Meanwhile, storms go up well E of me, with a tornado at Lake Perry and heavy rains in Lawrence.

1997

24 March- Carbolyn-Osage Co./Shawnee Co. storms. Great time-lapse of storm development. Possible wall cloud near FOE, but hard to tell for sure.

7 May- Ottawa/Dickinson/Morris Co. supercell. Target: Clay Center. Radar indicated tornado NW and N of Abilene. Got out of position, but managed to get SE of southeast-moving storm! It followed us all the way to EMP, but did not see any tornadoes.

22 May- "Warm up" chase with Matt and Jim Cox to NE of SLN. We chased in the "Gray Ghost." This was a great practice run for what was to follow on...

25 May- Harper Co. tornadoes. Target area: P28-PNC-END. Forecast right on track as storm exploded along the dry line west of Anthony. Bagged 3 tornadoes this day! (tornado below is the first one we saw this day)

1998

27 March- Unexciting (bust) chase north of ICT to around McPherson.

5 May- Target: ADM. Ended up just south of Red River, into NC TX. Cap remained strong. Storms fired in SC OK, and managed to get there in time. Nothing major to report.

6 May- NC OK chase. Got pictures of fantastic shelf/roll cloud formation, but a rather uneventful chase.

8 June- Central KS chase. Managed to see nice storms but no tornadoes. Matt Foster and I got blasted by strong RFD as we traveled (er...raced!) south of Florence.

21 September- SLGT risk chase into NC OK. Bust.

1999

26 April - Medicine Lodge, KS tornado

10 May - Another chase towards Medicine Lodge, then a jog up to Stafford County, where I intercepted storms near St. John. The best action was one county to my north, in Barton County.

31 May- Hey, we're starting to make a habit out of this. (Chasing on Mondays and all.) We made it to Woodward, OK, and then headed south. Of course, the wedge was north, near Sitka, KS. However, we saw some tremendous mammatus clouds at sunset!

2000

7 March - "Super Tuesday" Chase.

8 May - Bust chase into OK. (No report)

2001 - A Chase Odyssey

6 April- Bust chase. Target area was east of Arkansas City, in Cowley Co., KS. I placed myself along a nearly stationary front, within the tornado watch area. Nothing much to see, except for on the way down. I saw some elevated garbage north of the front which produced one lightning bolt. None the less, it was a good opportunity to check out how my Magellan GPS Companion would work.

4 June- Target area was between Newton and McPherson. Ended up about 5 miles N of Moundridge and watched development. Eventually headed east and watched as successive wall clouds developed between Walton and Peabody. No tornadoes this day.

23 August- Chased with Jana to just outside of Andover, where baseball-sized hail was reported. In addition, numerous power pole were brought down by straight-line winds along US-54. We stayed just west of the main precip core, and saw some wild cloud action!

2002

11 April- I set my target area in the WLD-PNC area. Ended up traveling a bit farther west...then back north into Kansas once I heard about the (landspout) tornado near Pretty Prairie. Of course, I missed that particular event, but I got some cool photos of a severe storm with a shelf cloud that was heading toward Harper. (first picture, or P1). Eventually, I got some more photos near Rago of some fuzzy mammatus clouds at sunset (P2). As I traveled back toward ICT, I tried my hand at nighttime lightning photos. Most of the flashes were in-cloud, so the pictures didn't turn out as cool as I would have hoped. Therefore, I won't post them here. Total distance: 271 miles.

18 April- My target area was near Langdon and Turon, KS (NW of Kingman). That plan was altered as I headed out into the field. I ended up going north on K-17 through HUT and to the NE around the McPherson area.

The first picture was taken at 6:26pm, at Arapaho Rd/K-17 (3 miles SW of Inman). This was roughly 4-5 minutes prior to the tornado report 4 NE McPherson and/or 4 N Galva (probably the same tornado). Obviously, I could not see that feature from my vantage point, but it was an impressive looking storm!

The second picture was taken at 7:44pm, 4 miles east of Elyria. This wall cloud persisted for a while but never showed any signs of rotation. Occasional small pieces of scud cloud would rise into the wall cloud. (Author's note: Looking at the radar archives later, I was in the hook!) I estimate my distance to the wall cloud between a mile and a mile and a half, perhaps less.

The third and forth pictures are of another wall cloud that was in the western part of McPherson Co. and ultimately prompted another Tornado Warning. Picture #3 was taken from Cimarron Road/22nd Av. in McPherson Co. The view is to the west. While wall cloud #1 was gusting out and falling apart 2-3 miles to my north, this wall cloud west of me had a nice gap between it and the precipitation area. If you look closely, you can also see a small inflow band/tail on the SE side. To avoid the heavy precip (hail?) with the first storm/wall cloud, I had to go south on 22 Av.,
back to I-135, then jog back NW to Commache Road (McPherson Co. Road 445). This put me in position to go west toward the second storm/wall cloud. The fourth picture is from just SE of Groveland. There were reports of funnel(s) near Windom (to my NW) but I could never see anything from my vantage point. Total distance: 204 miles.

2003

24 April - "In Search of Cold Air Funnels." An upper low was slowly moving through the Southern Kansas on this particular Thursday afternoon. Unfortunately, I didn't see anything very interesting but took a few pictures.

30 April - Butler/Cowley Co. Chase.

2004

3 June- Target: Burlington, CO. Only chase of the year for me. I saw an interesting wall cloud with a storm that was tornado-warned. This was the view just west of the city. Nothing touched down though from my vantage point.

2005

5 April - Target: Butler County, KS. After finishing my day's work at WeatherData, I intercepted the storm east of Douglas, in the southwest part of Butler County (picture 1 at 6:43PM). Brief possible "lowering" in storm but nothing dramatic (pictures 2 and 3 at 6:52PM). Storm eventually produced nickel-sized hail near Leon, Kansas at 7:07PM, but I was not there in person. Neat updraft tower developing as seen from Rose Hill Road and US-54 (picture 4 at 7:17PM). Other cool shot, this time of the sun behind clouds around a half hour before sunset (picture 5 at 7:23PM). Finally, near sunset shot of our now distant storm, as seen from just west of El Dorado. It also had a bit of mammatus, too! (picture 6 at 7:54PM)

18 May- Target: Harper, KS. After finishing my shift at WeatherData, I headed southwest of Wichita to see development near Attica. I never saw any lightning with this, so I can't call it a storm (picture 1). On the way back home, I took this lightning picture of a storm over Wichita (picture 2).

4 June- Target: El Dorado, KS. High risk day but storms were rapid movers. We got on tornado-warned storm in Butler County, southeast of Leon. It had a nice rain-free base but we saw no tornadoes.

2006

21 September- Target: Wichita. Only chase of the year as fast-moving, tornado-warned storms moved across the city. Brief funnels were reported but I missed them.

2007

Any chase accounts to follow here.

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