TORNADO ALLEY 2006!

FOR THE OLD FOLK: WX = weather

We start with some non-storm photos. We were having fun sight seeing since the severe wx pattern is currently behaving wrongly with a massive death ridge hanging over the entire west/central plains. Bill said, when looking at the ridge on the model "AUGH, I hate looking at this ridge - if the dictionary had a definition of 'death ridge', they should show this picture." The Omega blocking patterns looked set to be in 'til at least Friday. It gets MUCH better though!

Day 0

Stayed in OK, had a talk by Chuck Doswell - good guy who knows a lot of stuff but knows little about TORRO - completely bagged it saying we're moving in the wrong direction and we have no basis to say we get more tornadoes than anywhere else in the world. The problem is, he made it sound like we were saying we get MORE than anywhere else - that's not what we are saying - we get more per square mile than anywhere else because the amount of tornadoes we get is massive for our size. I put him right on that... Otherwise was interesting and he showed some of his research work, charts and graphs explaining the best time for storm chasing!

Day 1

Visited Twister Museum in Wakita, OK - then passed through NM to Trinidad, CO - this was cool - if Andrew is reading this - your TORRO id card is still on the board :)

The museum is like tiny, like Lorraine (my sister)'s apartment - but had some good stuff in it.

A nice way to kill some time at least..

Day 2

In Colorado, took some nice scenic pictures - the pic on the left: Dave (went last year) then Brian (guide/deputy tour director) and then BILLY BOY!!! (tour director)... The picture on the right shows Miguel (from Vegas, also went last year) standing by a nice pretty lake at around 9000 ft up. We continued to go upwards before coming down behind a cattle truck which moo'd - possibly being driven by a cow as it was going SOOOOOOO SLOOOOOWWW.

Today (17th May) things seem to be a bit better as the low moves slowly over California. We will begin to be seeing better moisture in the next few days over OK, KS and NE with southerly winds hopefully being drawn into the area by around Saturday/Sunday. Bill said that even in May when the ridge is so prominent, usually when we get some convergence and moisture we may get some tstorm activity even if it isn't as likely as when a trough is in place. We should probably get nice looking cumulonimbus as well as a few lightning shots at least before the wx pattern behaves better next week.

We visited the Great Sand Dunes National Park - THIS WAS WEIRD but awesome. Very hard to walk on and I was crrream crrrackered! Sat on a very dubious log and waited for everyone to return back from the big dunes. Saw some virga (precip not touching the ground) coming off some nice cloud structures and a few dust devils to the surprise of Bill considering the conditions - just proves anything can happen here in the Great Plains...

This little chappie posed for us about 12ft away!

He was sooooo cute!!! Tried to get another pic of him but someone scared him away.

He kept coming closer and seemed so friendly. We now know what the bird was: a Western Tanager, apparently!

Keith got some good video of him. I am looking forward to seeing that - but I was pleased with how my pic turned out considering I was quite far away - I recommend Image Stabiliser lenses!! 

Day 3

Visited the Royal Gorge via some rapids and saw some mammatus from a rather boring cloud structure. The storm had some lightning in it but wasn't all that great and was dying down so we didn't bother chasing it much to the sadness of Drew who has taken around about the same amount of photos I did last year (up to this point) and we haven't even seen any storms yet! I can't wait to see his face when we see a Supercell and a Meso.

The Royal Gorge was huge and we went over the bridge in the van - slightly worried about the weight of the van over the wobbly wooden bridge floor!

<-- It's a VERY long way down - that's a river below!

Day 4

After staying right near Mum and Dad's friends from Colorado (around 2 roads up!) Bill gave us all the option of going to either WalMart or Best Buy - he had to go to Best Buy to get a projector so he could project his morning orientations to everyone and show everyone the charts. I bet those of you who know us, you can guess who went where! Keith went to Best Buy (snore) and I went to WalMart to get some goodies. I came out with a box of honey buns, a packet of wafers, 2 chocolate milks, one regular milk, a notebook and a Sprite. I made a note in my notebook that evening of all the meals I have had - 2 jacket potatoes, grilled cheese sandwich, chicken and dumplins a chocolate mousse, and potato soup. It's great here - there seems to be always SOMETHING on the menu I can have.

In the hotel in the evening, I did laundry which cost me $2.00 - it would have cost me another 75c but Scott (our driver) had some time left on his dryer and let me use it up. I did dressings whilst I waited for the laundry to finish and then wrote what I had learnt in the van that day - which mainly consisted of the next few paragraphs.....

KBWI 201955Z AUTO 19090G99KT 8SM +TSRA BKN090TCU OVC120 35/30 A2952 RMK RAB39E48 SLP995 P00588 600877 T03580298 10386 20294

The above load of numbers and letters are coded weather obs from various stations which show up on the Baron (Threat Net) system - radar etc that Bill has in the van. The above numbers are completely made up to show you all what I have learnt. Bill kept asking me to decipher the obs and eventually he gave me an A! :) This is great practice for our DIY chase next year when I shall have the baron system.

OK, so, from the beginning. Wx obs at Baltimore Washington International Airport on the 20th at 1955 Zulu time the automated wx system says the wind was blowing at bearing 190 degrees at 90 knots with gusts at 99 kts. Visibility is 8 statute miles with heavy thunderstorms and rain. The temperature is 35 C and the dewpoint is 30 C with broken cloud (towering cumulus) at 9000 ft and overcast at 12,000 ft. Rain began at 39 past the hour and ended at 48 past the hour. The Altimeter reading is 29.52 inches of mercury. Sea Level Pressure is 999.5 mb. Total precip in the last hour was 5.88 inches and in the last 6 hours - 8.77 inches. Accurate temp and dewpoint reading is 35.8 C and 29.8 C (dewpoint) with maximum temp 38.6 C and a minimum temp of 29.4 C

Again - the above was made up to show you what I learnt :) I wish it were true though - for here LOL.

Day 5

Our first chance to see a storm which had better potential than the recent mushy short lived type cell arrived today with a couple of lows around the western side of the U.S. bringing some moisture return to the mid-west. Dewpoints are still not fantastic but they are tons better than they have been with southerly and south-easterly wind flow bringing that much needed moisture back to us as opposed to Northerly flow.

Unfortunately something in the Pacific is keeping the amazing trough to the west and it still hasn't moved even much into California. Hopefully though by now the ridge is beginning to weaken slightly bringing some moisture inflow into our areas but nothing as great as we'd hope. Bill, Brian, Brad AND Scott who have all been chasing here for many many years have never seen this long a time with no storms - the ridge has hung over tornado alley for almost 2 weeks and the lulls typically only last around 5 days and even then you get some decent storms like we had last May.

The most exciting part for me as a storm chaser today though, was when Bill was looking at radar, saw a potential supercell 100 miles north and he said to Scott (our driver) "It's moving slowly toward us. Shall we go for it?" I just have so much admiration for Bill, knowing where to go (so we're more or less in the vicinity - especially at the moment where anywhere and anytime something may or may not happen) and also going for something which is so far away just to get his tour group a storm.

Unfortunately as we approached, the darn thing died. We could see it losing its shape and it was also losing its purples on radar. So, we stopped at SE Wyoming to take pics of it and the other weak storms around to try and get lightning and a nice sunset view.

 #

We then headed back to NW Nebraska where our rooms were booked at a Days Inn motel. We had dinner at a little diner on the way at 10 pm where there was the hugest kitchen person and equally huge platefuls of food.

The pic on the right is Scott (our driver) sporting his famous cowboy hat. Scott is great with animals such as deer, turtles and cows, but he kills birds when driving. He does great cow impressions which are all about the moo. Scott is a real cowboy. Thanks for making the trip fun Scott.

We finally got into our motel rooms at around midnight where there was a wedding group who were being incredibly noisy in the hallways so not many people got a good nights sleep. This is proper chasing and about time too. 

Day 6

Again, things are beginning to improve as we get dewpoints in the 50s finally as opposed to 20s and 30s and humidity is a lot higher as well as far more southerly wind flow rather than northerly. However, that dangit ridge is still over the plains suppressing any major activity. But, with all the other parameters in place as well as decent CAPE for a change around 2500 j/kg the day's orientation gave us all depressed storm chasers some hope for supercells.

Had lunch in Applebee's and then hit the road to Scotts Bluff rock haven national park to kill time whilst the atmosphere gained energy and the ground got some decent heating.

Unfortunately today, things popped up maybe too early and killed off a lot of the heating so any decent sized cells didn't quite make it.

We chased a cell for a while which seemed to have supercellular properties after dying down and then increasing again. After trying to take some impossible lightning again Bill said "Next stop - the hail core". YAY - but all we got was rain as it began to fizzle out. Bill did warn us of a lightning risk when we stopped in a field to take photos, a couple of people sat in the field to minimise the risk - I guess we were close enough to be struck since we could hear the thunder where we'd stopped.

The Brazilian TV crew drove right into the field right to the top of a hill and got out to film - all I am going to say is it's a good job they didn't get their umbrella out. Keith and I tried to take some photos of the lightning but again, it was in daylight - we really need a storm to sustain its energy until after dark to increase our odds of getting a good lightning shot like last year. We then stopped at a Best Western to see if they had any rooms and they did. Their rooms were really nice - Keith and Scott were happy because they had wifi - in fact they had little routers in each room! I was happy because they had a fridge so I could keep my cereal milk cool and chocolate milks cool until I filled up the ice box with ice the next day. MacGyver Keith quietened a very noisy inverter fan (that powers the monitor display in the main van) with some of its engine oil, some hand soap, stripey insulation tape and Brad's penknife multipurpose tool!

A daytime lightning photo (finally!) by Keith.

Day 7

Finally, today looks like it might be a pretty explosive day. A nice trough is now into Colorado drawing up some really decent moisture. OK, the dewpoints at CO are only around 54 but that's really good for high terrain. All we need today really are some backed winds to help turning with height to aid supercellular updrafts. Helicity is good today (an equation which works out the potential for rotation) CAPE is really good too (Convective Available Potential Energy) and that, along with the good moisture, decent wind flow, decent lower pressure and so on everything is in place for finally some really decent activity. We just hope the cap will break - we have some  Convective Inhibition (CIN) which is good to prevent the cap breaking too soon yet we don't have MUCH which will help the cap to break when we want it to. The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) finally used the word tornadoes and supercells in their forecast. Fingers crossed.

We then, finally got a really good cell to go up - it gained some purples on radar and was looking quite good. We just had to go north to intercept it. It never quite reached major supercellular status but it had beautiful structure and decent inflow for a time. We stopped to take photos, some of the other guys preferred to throw stones to try and hit power lines.

We then decided to track it some more after food at Subway. It was beginning to struggle a bit and it had slowed down considerably, possibly indicating that it might have been moving its movement -maybe trying to make supercell status. A died, orphaned anvil to the south side of the storm had grown into a shelf cloud which could have been sucked into the main cell to the North, which we were hoping it would do whilst we ate sandwiches at Subway.

Subway had ran out of wheat bread... who cares?! I had tuna and mayo on plain bread - the Brazilian TV crew took AGES to catch up and get their food as soon as they got it Bill said we were going! LOL - sometimes they would wander off and then not see we were leaving - its their loss, they should keep up, we're not missing storms for anyone. The best thing happened at Subway - Paul K from TORRO (Severe wx forecaster for P.A. Weather Centre and TORRO) saw me enter Subway and came over to say hi! I introduced him to Keith and then everyone else began asking questions about who he was, how mad it was that in all the states of the Northern U.S. we had to be at THE same Subway. He liked the look of the shelf cloud too and said he was going to go after that. I told him too that we wouldn't be long as it was looking promising. He said he was staying in North Platte that night - we were too! Nice to know we're all on the same wave length/ He thought that the next day looked really good - Bill thought so too. I really was happy to have bumped into Paul - I knew he was out the same time as us but I didn't expect us to bump into one another much. He commented on how rubbish the wx has been - nice also to know it has been the same for others out at the same time as us.

The weather today was much better - much better dewpoints - my Kestrel read 51 F but Bill's and the surrounding obs said 45 so Bill thinks my Kestrel reads high on dewpoint - I'll bear that in mind for future readings. He did play with it though to measure the wind speed. I had measured it at 24 mph then a few minutes later, Bill got it up to 29 mph. It was 90 F so Keith and I probably got a bit wind burnt when stood out taking photos of the developing cb and measuring wind. The large temperature/dewpoint ratio meant that our storm was incredibly high based but was still nice to look at. The precipitation helped to lower it slightly as naturally that brings up the dewpoint. After the precip began to fall dewpoint went up by 3 degrees.

RIGHT: A cute little turtle, taken by Keith with my camera - these little dudes were all over the place!

Anyway we got great lightning after having tea at Subway. Keith and I both got the exact same lightning bolt on camera. I took 16 lightning shots - about 8 I am really happy with. Keith had more luck getting lightning whilst moving, clicking randomly with his camera - how is that?! :) Below are 2 lightning shots taken by us. The one on the left is Keith's, the one on the right is mine. Keith thinks it looks like a tree. I can't wait to show Paul K these photos as it was the storm we were both on. I wonder if he got any good lightning shots from this storm.

We stayed in a Super 8 in North Platte, NE - very nice - fridge etc and very clean. Also had a microwave so was able to have a milky coffee before bed and a milky coffee in the morning - I don't do normal coffee here - I think it's the water in those hot machine things - it's gross.

I listened to NOAA wx radio in the motel room as the wx channel was saying we'd get storms overnight - plus when we arrived at the motel the radar was still showing some junky stuff headed our way. NOAA radio said that North Platte had broken a temp record that day with 93 F breaking the old record of 90 F. There was a severe storm watch for Keith County! That was near us.

Thunder started at 0130 Central Time and ended probably around 3 am - it was a really nice sound and lasted a really long time - I think I fell asleep to it when it had just passed over head.

Had a really funny dream about chasing with Bill, Keith and me in it, I made a mental note to remember it because it was really funny - now I can't remember it.

The Weather Channel noted a tornado occurrence in CO at around 1 pm (I think) but, there's no real evidence the damage was tornadic unless a site investigation proves it. I still have so much admiration for Bill et al - it is so so difficult this tour as to where to go for the best storm. Too far one way and we would never catch something up elsewhere - yet parameters and charts suggest other areas and other models have been overdoing moisture of late and overdoing CAPE so it has been unbelievably difficult for them to know where to target and where to hang out for something to pop off. Tomorrow looks like North NE possibly S Dakota.

Day 8

Hit the road pretty much instantly with no briefing. We had lunch at a buffet place - I had mashed potatoes (they were fake but yum) and gravy, a little bit of soup and hard horrible cheese. I had strawberry mousse for dessert. Keith had everything.

We then went north-east to the far north-eastern Nebraska to possibly a really explosive area. Again it was so hard for Bill et al to know where to go for the best - when there's one target it's easy enough but there were several potential areas today and they were all so far away from each other. As we approached our target area a large messy, junky line of thunderstorms was beginning to develop. This was annoying as we would have hoped really for isolated cells rather than a huge row. The storms were also moving really fast at 40 mph so it was getting worrying that we'd either miss something or they'd just go so fast we couldn't keep up. The line of storms began to erode and cells became more isolated, but it was still messy. However, there was a nice looking cell to the east of the main line which had a better structure to it and it was moving into far nicer moisture and at a slightly slower speed. We went for that one.

We stopped several times to take photos and each and every photo opportunity was becoming shorter and shorter as the cell picked up speed and we struggled to stay ahead of it. We continued on to find more photo ops when suddenly we saw this rotating column of dust. We stopped on a dirt road (Scott turned the van round first in case we had to dash for it. Bill ran for his camera and shouted "We have a tornado or something going on out here!" I just flipped, the adrenalin was just unbelievable - shaking with excitement and completely buzzing I struggled out of the van as Keith raced forward to video the tornado - I stood behind the others propping the van door open and the van door was probably propping me open as well, managed to get some really nice shots of the classic funnel shape - it was so so amazing, there are no words to describe how it felt. I wanted to scream.

This tornado was literally just across the road from us. Bill said it was a 'forward flank tornado' It occurred at 6.55 for several minutes west south-west of Meadow Grove, western Madison County - NE. It left an absolute plume of dust in the air as we continued forward through a town where the sirens were wailing. Nebraskan dust tastes nice.

As we continued forward we saw a large funnel cloud to the left - it seems there could have been some dust being picked up from it - but it was hard to tell. The next minute we had to screech to a halt when another tornado crossed the road, right in front of us!! Again, this was just awesome. It was black and swirling fast, probably around 400-500 feet wide.

This was 2-3 miles west of Pilger, lasted 4 minutes beginning at 8.08 pm. It wasn't as classically conical like the first one but it was just so exciting how it crossed right in front of us and we had to stop!

As we continued forward after it crossed the road we encountered several tree branches and other debris in the road - Bill warned the guys behind us about the debris.

We then just continued on to try and get forward again, but this thing was moving fast. Scott did so well driving, it was just literally impossible to see, I have never seen so much rain, ever. Even from last year - that core punching was nothing compared to this. It just happened all so quickly - that is the fun of storm chasing. We decided to stop a bit further up once we were finally ahead of the rain to take lightning shots before riding the storm out for a bit at Subway.

Then continuing on to Blair County Super 8 motel where we were staying the night. More sirens were heard far in the distance as we arrived at the motel. I made sure I was ready to leave any second all night, just in case.

The storm/s was/were still going over us with continual lightning and thunder at 1.30 am. I thanked Bill for such an amazing day and I'll thank him again - thanks Bill so much I'll never forget it.

Lightning shot taken by Keith through van window - why is it Keith has more luck taking photos through the window when travelling at 65 mph yet I have more luck when stopped?! Theoretically when stopped is easier so why can't Keith do that?!! :)

Day 9

Bill et al have done their best to find us storms this tour - not least today. We travelled from Nebraska, through Iowa to Illinois and Wisconsin!

Once we got to the target area we checked radar and cells we were watching and decided to go North to Wisconsin (something Bill wanted to avoid if possible). Wisconsin looks just like parts of Cheshire - especially Agden!

Loads of trees and hills (grassy verges) - we were on quite a nice storm until it began to move really fast again, caught us up and began depositing large rain on us. Once again we were trying to get ahead of it to keep looking at its features.

A lot of nice lowerings were evident and at one point Scott noticed the rain curtain shafts rotating RIGHT in front of us - we slammed on the brakes. Bill grabbed his camera and shouted across the radio - "developing tornado right here in front of us". It continued to rotate right over us into the field to our left. I took some pics through the window so can show you what was rotating. Bill later said that it could have been a developing tornado but he doesn't want to say for sure as it wasn't 'classic' but the rotation was FAST.

Later in the evening Kinney Adams was saying "If we were in that situation on the Plains we would have been like 'what the hell are we doing HERE'" but with the nature of Wisconsin storms as well as how it looked to Bill and on radar - with all his experience he didn't think we were in much danger and I agreed with him - even though the rotation passed right over us, it didn't rock the car any more than the side winds were anyway, plus there were no hooks on radar or anything which suggested a potentially dangerous situation where we were (even though the radar is 10 minutes old) I trust Bill's judgement. It is just unfortunate that the storms we have had have been of this high precipitation, outflow dominant situations - the reason we have been caught out a few times because supercells tend to travel far more slowly and are relatively far far more predictable. But again another day of absolute adrenalin and excitement. The long wait at the beginning of the tour has been entirely worthwhile just to have the recent wonderfully exciting activity. Tomorrow we head back to OKC, hopefully via another 'slight risk' area.

Day 10

Today we had planned to just drive back to Oklahoma City since we had gone a lot farther than originally anticipated! It was sods law that there was a 10 % hatched probability of tornadoes at southern Illinois, Ohio and parts of Indiana. Bill said it was too far east to chase today because we had to get back to OKC, but we may catch something, or some nice cloudscapes on the way at least. However, on the way, the situation was getting far more favourable.

Bill asked who had to be back to OKC by Friday lunch time and a few did, some tried to change their flights, and some were ok 'til Saturday (like Keith and I). So, we went for it!! Bill didn't ideally want to chase into Indiana today, but we did! I am so so thankful to Bill for desperately trying to get us another chance to see a supercell and/or tornado.

None of the 'new' guys on this tour got to see a really good supercell. CAPE was 4000 J/kg in areas and oh wow could you tell. When convection began it went for it. It was as if it was on time lapse, but it was real time. It was bubbling away so so quickly a bit like the storm we tracked in New Mexico last year, but slightly faster. Shear markers began popping up everywhere on radar and we had at one point a 131 mph shear (approximately) - that's how fast it was rotating.

We got a beautiful wall cloud, but there were so many trees, something really interesting was seemingly happening every time a load of trees got in the way. We did see a rope develop though which I am sure nearly became a nice ropey tornado but just couldn't cut it. I took photos of it, it seems it didn't quite manage to form properly although there was most definite rotation with it.

Finally today, I got my big hail! It really clunked on the van - and that was only dime/nickel sized - a bit later on we had larger hail probably golf ball and bigger splashing in the field next to us - it would be all quiet and then the next minute SPLASH.

I am not sure if Keith got that on tape or not. Bill shouted "Let's get out of here" - it's not so bad the main van gets hail damage but the mini vans which are rented separately need to not get in that situation if possible.

We collected some hail and it was golf ball sized easily. Next, we saw rain curtains all around us and the shear had steadied off a bit - Bill said "I think we must be in the suck zone". It was so exciting, yet again!

Finally though we got some really beautiful cells and awesome updrafts and explosive cloud structures -even with the tornadoes the other day we didn't get this amazing structure we got today. Later on we got some absolutely amazing mammatus - mammatus that Bill, Scott and even Brad had not seen this good before. I think in this game you'll never ever see everything - every situation will be different with something new to experience - that is why it is so thunderliscious! 

Anyway we then set off to get to our motel - Bill booked our rooms and then we got there at 12.30 am Bill said (jokingly) "I don't have your reserved rooms" we all laughed - he went in, came out and said they had let our rooms go! I thought it was another joke but it was true, I couldn't believe it. Apparently the idiot receptionist had a call from someone (the person Bill spoke to to book the rooms) to say that we no longer needed the rooms - which is just not true. Fools. Anyway, we got rooms at possibly a nicer motel next door at the Baymont. Keith said it was like a Hampton Inn.

Their TV and alarm radio was exactly the same though as all the Super 8s :) So long as they have The Weather Channel I am fine. My room was the nearest to the lobby it's ever been all trip which was great.

Day 11

On the way back to OKC today. Had to be up and away at 7.45 am - a small price to pay for one last chance to chase yesterday. We saw some goofy looking cars, a blue one and an orange one and a convertible and I think we saw another coloured one too! Keith took some pics of them on the move.

There must be a rally or something going on. We went through Kansas on the way for Casper and Roy (Dutch guys) who wanted to see it as we missed it the entire trip - we went round in an entire circle completely leaving Kansas out which was mad.

People stopped at the Kansas sign and enjoyed being able to be in two places at once. Scott climbed the Kansas sign.

Here marks the end of the trip. I had a great time - I think even though we had 7 monster down days, the tornadoes, hail, mammatus and awesome bubbling supercells have made this year better than last year in terms of what we saw in the conditions we had to work with. Thank you Bill and everyone for making the trip another one I'll never ever forget. It meant a lot to me that you all tried so hard to get us some storms even when the pattern was just completely wrong. I really really hope to meet up with you next year, and if I win the lottery please let me come after Hurricane William with you Bill.

Keep in touch and as always - enjoy your meals.

Totalling 4,713 miles driven across 10 States, nearly bruising two others (Kentucky by a couple of miles and Kansas by a few feet!)