Well this will likely never happen again in our chasing career, somehow we managed to intercept two EF-5 tornadoes in two days. The Joplin, MO tornado and the El Reno, OK tornado. I will post some images and video here when I have some more time.
Tyler Costantini
I will never forget this day as long as I live! Joplin, MO was hit with a strong tornado leveling a large swath of town. The damage extends roughly from 15th street south to around 32nd street and from the KS / MO state line east to I44 around mile marker 11. I have put some pictures up on our facebook page I will try and have some more updates as we have time to post everything.
The people of Joplin are certainly in my thoughts.
Tyler Costantini.
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What a very long and rewarding weekend. This chase began Friday evening after I (Jordan) got off work and headed towards Southeast/South Central Kansas. I was a little late to this event and by the time I arrived at the storms it was nearly nightfall and the majority of them had began to lower in intensity. I called the chase east of Wellington, KS and began the drive home. Tyler was under the weather during this time frame so I was flying alone the entire weekend. After looking at the weather models early Saturday morning I decided that anywhere from Lincoln, NE to near the Iowa/Minnesota border could be the chase target for that day.
I set out from my house that morning around 8 AM, arrived in Lincoln, NE at around 1 PM and ate some GREAT Middle Eastern food at a little restaurant named Sinbad’s. If anyone is ever in the Lincoln, NE area and Middle Eastern food is their thing I would HIGHLY suggest checking it out. During my meal of hummus and Falafel I looked over the new model runs and determined that I should head farther north, I headed towards Sioux City, IA. While looking at the models I considered the possibility that the cap might not break before nightfall but figured that since I had already came this far that I had nothing to lose, and boy am I glad I made that decision.
Just as I was arriving in Sioux City a storm began to form in the extreme southern edge of South Dakota. I began to pursue this storm but quickly another storm began to form in eastern Nebraska. The storm in Nebraska quickly began to strengthen and was looking much more potent than the storm I was on so I decided that I would wait just on the other side of the Missouri River for it. This storm went on to produce four tornados that I witnessed, all but one of them were after dark and at one point there were two tornadoes on the ground at the same time, and many more that I was out of position to intercept. I stayed on this storm until nearly 12AM at which time I headed to Webster City, IA to get some sleep before having to head to Wisconsin for the next days chase.
After looking at the weather models and current surface observations I determined that the low that would be partially responsible for triggering that days severe weather might track a little farther southeast than originally was thought so made my initial target Dubuque, IA. Once I left around 9 AM from Webster City, IA to head towards Dubuque, IA to give myself plenty of time in case I needed to re-adjust my chase target, and sure enough I did. After arriving in Dubuque I determined that I needed to get farther north so I set my target to Le Crosse, WI.
I arrived just west of Le Crosse at around 3 PM and now the waiting game was on, just had to hope that I made the right decision on my chase target while waiting for storms to fire. Storms began to fire in eastern Iowa and southern Minnesota around 3:30 PM and quickly raced off to the northeast. Maybe quickly is not the term I should use, at light speed would be more like it. Some of these storms were traveling faster than 80 knots, which is around 92 MPH. It was one of those days where you have to try to keep your distance from the storms until they begin to tornado and then hope for the best. Well I was not lucky that day, the cell I picked did not produce a tornado and merged with a tornado producing supercell. I followed this storm complex as best as I could, hoping that a tornado would possibly form on the back edge which I still had a view of. This ended up not being the case, I called the chase near Merrill, WI at around 7 PM after the storm was well out of my grasp.
I decided to drive to Minneapolis, MN that evening then drive the remainder of the way home the next day. Arrived in Minneapolis at around 12:15 Am, grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed to bed. Got up that morning and hit the road at around 10 AM, arrived back home in Carterville, MO at around 7 PM. If I had to do this chase over again I may passed up the Sunday chase in Wisconsin just because on the extreme storm speed, I should have looked at the models closer in this aspect. I cannot complain though, that supercell up in Iowa may have been the cell of the year. Heck if that supercell had been during the day it could have been the supercell of a lifetime, not a storm I will forget about any time soon. All in all it was a very successful weekend for an early April chase. This has been the most rewarding chase season so far for me since I got into storm chasing all across the midwest, hopefully it is just the beginning of a very successful year for The Storm Patrol.
Miles Driven: 2,495
Tornadoes Intercepted: 4
There is a major tornado outbreak underway along the east coast. The SPC has issued a HIGH risk for strong / long track tornadoes; they also have a PDS particularly dangerous situation tornado watch in effect for the area. I haven’t been around the computer as much as I would like today but here are some images and meteorological data from the event. Please note some of this data may not be current please see official sources for current information the storms are moving very fast adding to the danger.
I know there are a lot of images I will try and put some notes with them later.
Tyler.
It’s looking like we may see an outbreak! This is a very impressive system we will defiantly be chasing!
This is just a quick update to post some images / links.
I have attached some nam forecast soundings based on the 18z name for Topeka, KS , Joplin, MO , Chanute, KS , Joplin, MO , Tulsa, OK and Ponca City, OK. Check the id on the sounding they may not be in that order.
I just had a look at the 00z run of the GFS and NAM, all I can say is WOW! The models are now coming into agreement the ECMWF has shown a negatively tilted trough for some time, but as of the 4-12 0z run the NAM / GFS are coming into agreement. GFS / NAM now show a negatively tilted 500mb trough with a ski jump! The GFS has quite a bit less instability compared to the NAM and the moisture return is a tad on the iffy side. But with upper level dynamics of this magnitude this could turn out to be quite the event it’s worth watching to see if the models fail anyway.
It’s a day or so too early for me to get really excited I will try and post some updates throughout the next few days.
I have attached some model forecast charts from twisterdata.com
Here are some links to Jeff Haby’s page that explain some of the topics like negatively tilted trough and the ski jump (divergence / diffluence) aloft
WHAT IS A “NEGATIVELY TILTED TROUGH”?
Tyler.
UPDATE 4-12 1:15am cdt
I had sometime to look over the level2 radar data today and it looks like you can see the circulation of the gustnado on radar. You can also see from the title change i have switched sides and went with a strong gustnado the main reason being is this radar data. The radar data shows the circulations are not part of the main mesocyclone and are along the gust front being sucked into the meso. Reed Timmer was talking about a paper by Howie Bluestien that talks about gustnadoes getting sucked into the primary circulation of a supercell i did i quick search and couldn’t find the paper so if someone knows the title let me know.
UPDATE: 4-11 7:15pm cdt.
Here is a link to Jon Davies blog where he has a really nice write up on this event.
Also here is a really good essay Jon did on the whole Tornado / Gustnado idea.
UPDATE: 4-4 4:30 pm cdt.
Here is a radar loop i drew the boundary on i will extend it all the way to the spot where we saw the tornado as soon as NCDC gets the radar data up for the 4th. I don’t know why i drew the cold front red but work with me..
Tyler.
This tornado or what ever you want to call it! Touched down along Highway 24 near Perry, KS at 7:18cdt and moved ESE towards Williamstown, KS crossing highway 24 1 ¾ miles E of Williamstown where highway 24 jogs to the south for a mile or so.
What a day! We were just about to go home and we had one of the coolest tornadoes I have ever seen touch down right next to us. This was a tornado what wasn’t supposed to happen all typical meteorological wisdom would say the storm was highly elevated and it had very little chance of producing but the storm thought otherwise. I will try and post a detailed case study in the next day or two. This storm stopped a section of the cold font in its tracks and tapped the warm moist air to the SE of the supercell it was amazing! This is why I love meteorology and storm chasing the one odd ball rare event that just shocks everyone.
You can see the circulation is quite large and within the broad circulation you can see really tight suction vortices Reed Timmer is involved in some research on suction vortices I will try and get some links posted but from what Reed talked about at chasercon and the KC AMS meeting suction vortices can be much stronger then the parent circulation by orders of magnitude! They really churned up the freshly plowed dry fields which really helped the visuals.
Miles 440
SPC: Mod 5% over target.
Left home 2pm returned 1am
Well the 3-22 Iowa chase was a success I caught the tornado near Creston, IA as you have problem noticed several chasers also caught the Creston, IA tornado on video. Even though the tornado wasn’t a Storm Patrol exclusive the chase was allot of fun.
A little meteorology, the storms formed in NE KS then moved NE at 50+ mph. It wasn’t long after initiation that the storms took on supercell characteristics but they where high based with really only a wind / hail threat. It wasn’t until the storms got close to the warm front that they began to develop low level rotation this is a common occurrence with chases in a small warm sector and storms riding over a warm front there is only a narrow window to see tornadoes as the cells interact with the boundary. I read the other day that they now think that only 5% to 10% of supercells produce tornadoes in the 1990’s it was thought that supercells may produce tornadoes up to 50% of the time! As an avid storm chaser I can tell you the 50% value is WAY too high I would even lean towards the 5% or LESS value.
Tyler.
SPC Slight, 10% tornado
750 Miles.
Left home 8am 3-22
Returned 3pm 3-23
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