SUNY Oswego Storm Chasing Program Summary

[heavy_wx]

First off, I'd like to apologize for not posting this summary of our storm chasing trip sooner. I have been pretty busy lately. I'll post the following in case anyone is still interested.

 

Our trip began in Oswego on May 27th, one day earlier than we had planned, since conditions looked very favorable for severe weather the next day in Kansas. We had 3 vehicles travelling together; two large passenger vans and a smaller minivan carrying mobile sounding equipment. Each van had a mobile internet hotspot and a laptop with GR2Analyst. We had a total of 22 people on the trip including one professor, Dave Eichorn and SUNY Oswego students. There were also a few students from SUNY Albany and Lyndon State.

 

We left Oswego around 7:00 AM and drove nearly 18 hours to Columbia, MO. We then decided to target the Salina, KS area for the next day as it was near an intersection of the dryline and a stationary front. The morning of the 28th, we left Columbia and made our way to Salina by around 2 PM central time. As we got to the Salina area, someone noticed that the dew point from our mobile weather station was beginning to drop into the upper 60s so we got off of I-70 just before Salina and stopped at a gas station.

 

At that point there wasn't much activity in the area, so the decision was made to launch a sounding. Based on the sounding, the environment looked very favorable for supercells, with a strong cap preventing convection from firing early. Some cumulus had begun to develop around this time, with some strong vertical vertical growth in the clouds. None of the cumulus were able to break the cap at that point.

 

As we waited at the gas station, the dew point began to rise back into the low 70s, as the boundary moved back towards the west a bit. Around 4:30, we noticed a well defined cumulonimbus cloud form just to our west.

 

 

We then moved about a half mile north to get a better view of the storm. The anvil had some mammatus and we could see the lightning becoming more frequent. By around 5 PM, the storm began to develop a clear base. We then moved slightly farther north and noticed as we were driving that a wall cloud was beginning to develop. When we pulled over, a brief funnel formed, however, our view of the ground was obscured by a hill, so we decided to move back to the south in order to get to an east-west road.

 

 

After going west for a few miles, we reached a good spot visibility-wise just to the southeast of the supercell. A beautiful wall cloud had developed at this time (around 5:40 PM) with intense rotation clearly visible. The rotation was over a fairly wide area with scud on the far side of the wall cloud moving towards the left and the scud closest to us moving towards the right. Without any warning, the scud began to consolidate and lower towards the ground, forming a tornado. This tornado was pretty brief, lifting within a minute. Soon after it lifted, the funnel dropped again, this time with a wider diameter.

 

 

Throughout the time we were watching the storm, I felt tremendous inflow and saw some dust in the field to our right being pulled into the circulation. The tornado quickly became more visible with some good contrast to the dark funnel and the light colored cloud behind the storm.

 

 

The tornado lasted for about 10 minutes, before lifting again and becoming rain-wrapped. We still saw an intense velocity couplet on radar so we continued to chase the storm, even though we mostly got caught in rain and lightning. We ended the chase and stayed in Salina that night. This tornado near Bennington, KS ended up being rated EF4 and thankfully, there were no fatalities.

 

For the day of the 29th, a moderate risk was issued for parts of central and western KS. We generally targeted the area around Garden City. Unfortunately, we didn't see too much that day as most of the discrete cells merged into a quasi-linear MCS before we got to them. We did see a nice shelf cloud as the line approached us and experienced the gust front as it moved over our vans. We stayed in Dodge City that night, targeting Northern Oklahoma for the next day.

 

Our chase on the 30th was more successful with a brief funnel observed near Perkins, OK and a beautiful supercell near Paul's Valley, OK. We started  chasing around Guthrie, OK, moving eastward as we followed some cells showing good rotation on radar. Unfortunately, the terrain was poor in this area with quite a few hills and trees around. As we got near Perkins, we saw a funnel cloud to our north through the trees.

 

 

Eventually, we headed south to chase a supercell south of Oklahoma City. This storm had a nice multi-layered structure.

 

 

We had to move southward in order to avoid significant hail, as the storm was moving towards the southeast. As it got dark, we ended the chase and headed back north. Our target for the next day was north central Oklahoma, so we stayed in in the Oklahoma City area that night.

 

On the 31st, we initially had targeted Stillwater, OK as the best area for supercells, however, as we looked the observations that day, we decided to move south and chase west of I-35, about 30 miles north of Oklahoma City. Another kink in a stationary front was located near this area, with storms expected to fire along this boundary. Hot air over southwest OK and Texas allowed for the development of low pressure in that area, causing the winds at the surface to back and increase the low-level helicity. The sounding we launched in Stillwater showed a textbook thermodynamic profile for a tornado, though the wind shear was not as impressive. We knew that the thermodynamic profile combined with the increased helicity to the west would allow for a substantial supercell threat.

 

As we reached the Kingfisher, OK area, storms had already begun to develop along the boundary. We targeted the farthest south storm, bringing us just west of Mustang. We pulled over near a field at around 6:30, facing an extremely intense couplet on velocity. However, we did not see a distinctive funnel or rotation, just a massive wall cloud and a dark gray area beneath.

 

 

We did experience strong inflow and observed a lot of dust getting sucked into the storm circulation. We found out later that we were about 12 miles away from the El Reno tornado and were looking directly at it. The lack of contrast between the funnel and the cloud behind it may have made it difficult to see the tornado. Also, some dust may have wrapped around the circulation, obscuring our view. As the storm was moving in our direction, we decided to move farther south. As we got back on the road and turned onto a main road, we suddenly hit traffic congestion. We turned around to find a different southward route, only to get onto another road backed up for several miles with cars. As we sat in the traffic, another, weaker couplet formed closer to our location.

 

Our van, which was ahead of the other two vans, managed to get somewhat farther down the road through some slightly aggressive driving. The other vans were caught a couple miles behind us and actually noticed the wind shift, indicating that they had gotten into the circulation of the weaker storm. Eventually, we got onto I-44, though it was backed up as well. Police were attempting to open the opposite lane of the highway to contra-flow traffic in an effort to lessen the congestion in the area. We finally made it to Chickasha where we took some pictures of another storm that had become outflow dominant. Eventually, we headed to Lawton to stay the night there.

 

The next day we took a well deserved down day to visit the National Weather Center in Norman, OK. We ended up driving to Wichita that evening, as we had planned on chasing in Nebraska on Monday the 3rd. On Sunday, however, we made the decision to chase in Southwest Kansas on Monday, so we ended up staying in Garden City, KS.

 

The chase on Monday was pretty successful, with us seeing a beautiful supercell in the NE Texas panhandle. 

 

 

This storm had definite rotation, with a large area of dust getting kicked up just below the rotating wall cloud.

 

On Tuesday the 4th, we saw another nice lp supercell and some extremely frequent lightning all the way down in Abilene, TX.

 

 

On Wednesday, we had somewhat of a busted forecast targeting southwest OK. The entire area was simply too capped and no storms fired anywhere near us. The models indicated possible development of storms later in the day in west Texas, so we continued west to Lubbock. We pretty much called off the chase and got an awesome steak dinner in Lubbock. After dinner, we saw a line of storms moving towards us and decided that it would be a good opportunity to do some lightning photography. I managed to get one decent lightning shot highlighting the squall line, though it might have come out better if I had a tripod.

 

 

The line, however, was moving quickly towards us and we had to move quickly to get to the hotel before we were caught in the storm. Only a few minutes after quickly bringing out bags into the hotel, the gust front hit us with tremendous wind and even some small hail. A peak gust of 82 mph was reported in the Lubbock area as a result of this squall line. The next day, we drove by a motel that had part of its roof completely blow off. We ended up heading north, staying the in the Oklahoma panhandle that night.

 

There wasn't much chasing during the last few days of the trip. We visited Greensburg, KS on Friday to see how the town had rebuilt after a devastating EF5 tornado in 2007. On Saturday, we started the trip back to Oswego, staying in Omaha, NE. We then drove to Sandusky, OH the next day and got back to Oswego Monday afternoon.

 

Overall, the trip was an incredible experience. I learned a lot about severe weather forecasting and storm structure by having to forecast each day and observe what actually happened. It was also intense being so close to a dangerous storm, especially during the El Reno tornado. I definitely gained a new perspective on severe weather and how it can disrupt society.

[nearpass]

Very interesting report. Thanks for posting.

[LakeEffectKing]

Outstanding!  And congrats on your chases and the well deserved redtag!!!  The pictures are stunning and the summary well written.

[heavy_wx]

Outstanding!  And congrats on your chases and the well deserved redtag!!!  The pictures are stunning and the summary well written.

 

Thanks a lot!

[Flying MXZ]

Great read.  Thanks for the writeup.

[Eskimo Joe]

Very nice summary and information.

[TJay]

Nice job.

[vortmax]

How I wish our class would have done something like this when I was at Oswego...great write-up!