High Plains Drifter

Pawnee City, NE Supercell & Oregon to Amity, MO Supercell

Robin and I left North Platte around 9:30am with a target of Hebron, NE in mind.  I really didn’t envision us ending the day along the I-35 corridor in northwestern Missouri, though!  …but it was worth it.  We photographed two photogenic supercells, the first of which developing near the KS-NE border southwest of Pawnee City.  This storm showed some signs of tornadogenesis early on when it was southwest of Pawnee City, however it struggled against some of its own outflow.  Nevertheless, this was probably the most photogenic supercell I’ve photographed in southeastern Nebraska.  We had a decision to make as we continued east on Hwy 8  on approach to Salem and Falls City — do we continue our intercept of the original storm or do we go after much better looking development east of us — a much more difficult intercept.  The atmosphere made the decision for us.  The southern supercell took over while our original storm was falling apart.  The backside of the southern supercell was spectacular.  The convection was like an atom bomb going off in front of us.  As we crossed the Missouri River at Rulo, we continued to get closer, approaching the hook echo region of the supercell from the back side.  We got into some of the precipitation as we approached Oregon.  None of the precipitation was hail…. but as we drove into Oregon, that’s all we saw on the ground.  Lots of giant hail.  We didn’t stop in town in favor of trying to get ahead of the storm, but in retrospect, I wish we would have stopped to photograph some of these hail stones.  They were absolutely huge, and we didn’t miss this hail fall by much — maybe as little as 5 to 10 minutes.

We reached I-29 with the hail core just barely to our east, and we managed to make it to Hwy 36 at St. Joseph where we continued east.  We then headed north on Hwy 6 toward Clarksdale where we refueled and continued on our way.  We stopped a couple miles south of where Hwy 6 curved to the east (about 6 miles west of Amity) where we photographed the supercell structure and wrapping rain curtains.  The wrapping rain curtains to our NNE was significant.  There was likely a substantial ground circulation amidst this wrapping rain curtain area, but it could not tighten up into a tornado circulation.  It was close, though!  We back-tracked to Hwy 36 and continued east, stopping at times to photograph the structure to our north.  This was some of the finest storm structure I’ve ever seen this far east — certainly the best Missouri storm structure I’ve photographed.  I was impressed — it was almost like chasing a storm on the High Plains — very contrasting colors with good visibility.  As we approached I-35 it was getting to be close to 9:00pm and we had to end the chase given the drive we had to make back home.  I had a very fun time these past 3 days chasing with my good friend Robin Lorenson.  Certainly another reminder for sure how much easier it is to multi-task having a chase partner — since I chase solo so often.  Thanks Robin!  Some images from this chase below:

The One-Hour Pure Gentleman’s Chase — Dodge City, KS Supercell

I worked the day shift on June 9th, and I got off shift at 4:00pm.  I had planned all along to work overtime given severe weather development across our forecast area.  That being said, by 4:00pm, there was nothing on radar across all of our forecast area, so I agreed to be called back if I was needed back for help.  After a 20-minute nap, I got a call from Matt Crowther asking about a new storm developing southwest of DDC.  I didn’t know anything about it at the time (about 4:30pm by now), so a quick glance at radar had me intrigued.  It had a nice little shape to it and was moving in the general direction of DDC.  So, I decided to go after it, only a 15 mile drive to the southwest from my duplex to the updraft seen in the first image.  As this was moving northeast, I had to keep moving northeast too… back toward Dodge City.  I took north bypass through the north part of town all the way to the US-283 junction, about 2.5 miles northeast of the Dodge City airport.  It was at that time that one of my evening shift co-workers called me back in.  It was at this time that I photographed images #2 through#5 below of the awesome updraft structure and menacing near-ground activity (in images #4 and #5, you can see the KDDC WSR-88D radome in the distance!).  The tall precip shaft adjacent the updraft was beautiful!  After I shot these images, I drove to the office…. toward this supercell.  I didn’t make it to the WFO DDC driveway before the golfball size hail.  Heavy and hard golfball to 2″ diameter hail pelted me as I entered the WFO parking lot.  The last two images in this series below are from the WFO parking lot.  What an awesome 1-hour, 30-mile round trip gentleman’s chase!!

Robin Lorenson and I photographed three different supercells across southwestern Nebraska.  Our target was Ogallala to Sidney to Julesburg, which allowed us to hang around Ogallala for the better part of the afternoon along with Matt Crowther, Scott Bell, and Dave Blanchard.  The first supercell we photographed was a high based well-sculpted “cinnamon swirl” supercell updraft as it tracked along I-80 from Brule to just northwest of North Platte before weakening.  Robn and I stuck with this a little too long, while Matt Crowther and company broke off sooner in favor of new development back toward Julesburg, CO.  Matt’s decision to break off that initial storm paid off, as they managed to get fantastic images of the 2nd supercell that tracked south of Ogallala.  Robin and I caught the last glimpses of the supercell structure just after sunset from a viewing point a couple miles east-southeast of Elsie, NE.  Matt and Scott joined us at this location and we watched a 3rd supercell track basically along the same track as supercell #2.  There was just enough remaining twilight for my Nikon D3 to take advantage of, so I set it up on the tripod and shot continuous 5-second exposures of lightning illuminated structure… beautiful bell-shaped updraft with a wonderful convective top above.  This was just a beautiful sight!!  A very rewarding day on the high plains with the storms essentially to ourselves as all the other chasers targeted much farther east with little in the way of results.

This is very brief with a more detailed account to be written later on next week.  My chase partner Robin Lorenson and I left Salina, KS about 8:45am for a target somewhere around Sidney, NE to Sterling, CO.  We missed the La Grange, Wyoming 25-minute tornado event by about 30 minutes. We were simply late. Other storm chasers had the same fate as I’m finding out (including Bill Hark, who we chewed the fat with for probably too long in retrospect in Sterling!! It was great to catch up with you again though, Bill!).  However many others were not late, who were already up along I-80 in the early afternoon — including Vortex-2.  Some fine High Plains storm photography, though, ensued as we followed the supercell as it evolved over the next several hours from south of Harrisburg to north of Dalton to southwest of Oshkosh by late-evening twilight.  Below are a few images from this chase:

May 25, 2009 Tribune, KS Vicinity Storms & Brief Glimpse of a Non-Supercell Tornado

I decided to chase this day with the hopes of intercepting a non-supercell (landspout) tornado along a nearly stationary north-south surface boundary.  Surface temperature/dewpoints were expected to be in the mid 70s over mid 50s dewpoints in the area of interest which Lamar, CO to Tribune, KS.  I set off from Dodge City at 9:45am (CDT) after a whopping 1.5 hours of sleep following a midnight shift, hopefully arriving in the target area around Noon.  I knew that storms would form very early given a non-existent cap. The trick was to get on storms early in their updraft-dominant phase before evolving more upscale into a more complicated outflow dominant mess.  The first storms of the day developed along a north-south axis from near Burlington to Cheyenne Wells, and I hoped to reach the southern end of this first development near Cheyenne Wells.  I arrived in Cheyenne Wells to a signficantly weakened storm.  I didn’t hang around Cheyenne Wells long before realizing I needed to get back southeast toward newly developing sharp-looking towers — about halfway between Cheyenne Wells and Tribune very near the state border.

I decided to head east on an unpaved, but well graded farm road northeast of Sheridan Lake, CO.  The newly formed updrafts had high bases to the east and northeast.  Eventually the northern one filled in with precipitation, but I continued to trudge east.  I stopped for a short time to photograph the darkening mass off to the northeast with an interesting embedded updraft base feature.  I photographed this with some oil wells in the foreground very near the state border at around or shortly before 2pm CDT.  After this, I continued east on the farm road to get closer to the more southern updraft area of newer cells, but the road became increasingly soft and messy, so I turned around and retreated back west.  I eventually headed back south to Towner, CO and then east on Hwy 96 into Greeley County, KS.  At this point, I was getting increasingly tired and impatient with the disorganization of everything, so I decided to just bag the chase and head back home so I could get some sleep.  Well, as I was writing this off, a new updraft surge was looking rather interesting to my north as I was approaching Tribune.  Sometime between 2:30 and 2:40pm CDT, the updraft base to the north looked rather well organized, and I could make out a fairly well-defined high-based funnel cloud.  It was such a small funnel relative to the distance from the cloud base to the surface that I just simply wrote it off as an insignificant funnel — however the shape persisted for at least a couple minutes.  I was too busy driving to try to get north and closer to the updraft area, so I never stopped to get a photo of this feature.  As it turned out, this was actually a landspout tornado that Greely County sherrif confirmed.  I got a call from Chris Foltz at WFO Goodland seeking confirmation of this event (as he noticed my position on Spotter Network).  I did not confirm a tornado from this feature, but did advise him that I observed what certainly looked to be a legit funnel cloud looking to my north while I was just a few miles west of Tribune.

I finally got north of Tribune and no longer observed this funnel cloud.  The entire storm base was looking more and more uninteresting with time, so I then backtracked into Tribune.  I had thoughts a second time of just heading back home… but then a fairly stout cell formed to my west-southwest, near Sheridan Lake.  This storm had a a 50dbz core on radar up to about 25 thousand feet, which was certainly better than most of the other storms I was observing northwest of Tribune up to that point.  I could also make out a fairly healthy updraft base and pseudo lowered area way off in the distance.  I thought what the hell and decided to head back west on Hwy 96.  I didn’t get any farther than about 7 miles west of Tribune before another newly developed storm took my interest south of Tribune to my east-southeast!  I just decided to sit still there west of Tribune and watch things for awhile.  Storm updraft then began to my northwest at around 3:40pm, and I photographed this for a little bit along Hwy 96.  This new storm formed an interesting “mustache” type outflow cloud structure beneath the base which was somewhat photogenic.  I then headed north on a farm road just to the north side of Horace where I photographed this storm a little bit more.  It was at this point, around 4:15pm CDT, when I met up with the Greeley County sherrif.  He described the earlier tornado event to me and described what he saw as a small funnel, a dust debris area in the field, and nothing in the middle — fitting the classic landspout tornado description.  He said it lasted some 3 or 4 minutes.  After I was done photographing from this location, I finally decided I had enough and began my trek back home.

I reached Garden City at around 6:00pm to a surprisingly well-developed updraft to my east with pretty damn good structure.  Instead of taking Hwy 50 back home, I wanted to follow this storm since it looked so appealing visually from the backside.  This cell behaved like a left-split supercell, moving to the north-northwest during its brief life as a well-organized storm.  I stopped to photograph this updraft a few miles east of Garden City…then decided to get closer to the storm and hopefully either get into some hail or photograph more structure from closer in.  By the time I reached about 10 miles northeast of Garden City, the storm rapidly collapsed between 6:30 and 6:45pm.  After that, I finally make my final leg back home to Dodge City, in time for about an hour and a half more sleep and my next 10pm-6am shift.  All in all, not a fantastic chase photographically speaking, but my forecast verified:  There was, indeed, a landspout tornado, however brief it was, northwest of Tribune.  I just was not in the right position at the time of the event.

Two Mid-Late Evening Supercells:  Roby to Anson to Nugent, TX

Here is part 2 of the two-part chase account for May 1st, 2009.  After the Rule to Stamford supercell dissipated, I remained in Jones County near Lueders watching struggling towering cumulus to my immediate north and northwest {2342}.  The towers showed very little sign of doing anything other than tilting severely to the east in the strong shear, and I really did not expect this localized area of towering cu to do much.  After watching a clumping cumulus field on visible satellite continue to grow to my west toward Rotan and Hamlin, I decided to head in that direction.  I did like this area due to the fact that it was A) still far enough south of the surging cold front and B) mid 60s dewpoints lurked southeast of the development in the Abilene area.  I stopped to refuel in Anson and continued on my way west on Hwy 180 {0009}.  There was an east-west line of somewhat aggressive towering cumulus growth with echoes showing up on radar.  My plan, obviously, was to target the best of these initial pulses, but my eyes were most set on the western-most of this small area to the north of Roby, near Rotan.  There was another storm to the northwest of Rotan, southwest of Jayton, however it appeared to be too far north, too close to the front, and given its east to northeast storm motion, this was not a viable option for a target storm.  I did reach Roby and noticed the electrical activity increasing to my north.  About this time, radar on Stormlab was showing continued growth of this new storm with a hail icon by 7:32pm {0032}.  I decided to drift north of Roby about a mile or so and stop there to photograph {0043).   This was a good decision as the storm developed very nicely before my very eyes to my north-northeast.

Cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning was photogenic, both within and just outside a concentrated rain core area beneath the storm.  I photographed from that spot for nearly 20 minutes — roughly 7:35 to 7:55pm {0056}.  Just before I left the location, the storm began to show much better organization, even taking on some supercell structure.  I then headed back east on Hwy 180 to follow the storm.  Fortunately, it appeared as it right-moved, it would more or less parallel the highway.  I stopped again about 5 miles east of Roby along the highway to photograph more.  The storm grew into much better structure with striated banding and a mid-level inflow feature on the southeast quadrant {0106}.  There was aggressive scud development as well which formed into a wall cloud at times.  I set the Nikon D200 on a tripod with the lightning trigger in hopes of capturing a CG with the storm structure.  I succeeded.  Some cows roaming in the pasture in front of me provided a nice little foreground element addition to the scene.  I sat there at that location until a couple minutes before 8:20pm.  This would be the best structure this storm would have to offer, for as I continued east…the storm began a slow decrease in intensity as it headed east.  All this time, another supercell was developing nicely to my northeast near Haskell {0133}.  I stopped one more time to try to photograph dangerous staccato CGs being spit out from my slowly dying storm to the northwest…but the lightning was too close and too dangerous to get out of the vehicle…so after sitting there for a few minutes, I decided to hell with that storm and continued east back to Anson.

By this time, though, it was starting to get dark, and there was no way I’d be able to intercept the new Haskell supercell with any daylight left {0147}.  I was still going to follow this storm, though, since it was an extremely easy intercept, plus I had my eyes set on Abilene for a place to stay for the night.  This storm was very electrical off to my northeast and was quite impressive on radar {0201}.  A couple of other storm chasers closer to this storm reported low, rotating wall clouds at times east of Stamford.  Eventually, as this storm approached Hwy 180, other cells began to develop on the southwest flank and the storm became this giant monstrosity of a storm with an incredible amount of CG lightning (both visually and what I was seeing on the Stormlab display! {0242}).  I managed to get some CG stills, but nothing all that jaw-dropping.  I had a hard time finding an area to concentrate on since there was so much electrical activity everywhere.. it was quite impressive.  There was a lot of lightning upstairs, too, and combined with increasing low cloud cover ahead of the storm, made for an interesting “strobe” effect, although sucky for photography.  Eventually, I made it to Hwy 351 where I dropped southwest to get into a better position for the storm, the core of which was still off to my northwest at around 10pm {0300}.  The storm re-organized into one coherent “blob” of a supercell with a decent mesocyclone, but the visibility sucked where I was, and the hilly terrain northeast of Abilene didn’t help matters either.  I was getting kind of tired at this point, too, so I was becoming increasingly impatient with this storm.  About halfway to Abilene on Hwy 351, I lost internet connection, which tested my patience even further {0305, the last upload until I got to Abilene).  As the storm got closer, I did notice a few instances where distant lightning revealed what appeared to be a concentrated rain-wrapped area of interest, however the lack of frequent lightning illumination prevent good observations.

At about 10:30pm, I called the San Angelo office and talked to my former WFO-DDC colleague Mike Lacy about the storm, relaying to him my observations.  He was telling me the best circulation was somewhere between Hamby and Nugent.  At that time, I was just on the outskirts of Abilene, so after hearing of this, I decided to backtrack northeast on Hwy 351 toward Hamby to see what I could find.  CG lightning around the area of interest was lacking, and low cloud cover around was not helping me figure this storm out one bit.  I felt a light northeast wind and eventually noticed a lot of low scud approaching me.  I came to the incorrect conclusion that what I was witnessing was near the area of rotation on radar that Mike was telling me about, and given the northeast wind, thinking this thing was either outflow dominant or undercut by the front, so I was not excited about tornado prospects.  I say “incorrect conclusion” for this reason:  A tornado DID eventually form about 20 minutes after I made this observation…not more than a few miles northeast of my location on Hwy 351!  Since I thought the storm was outflow dominant at the time, I packed it in for the night and headed back to Abilene shortly after 10:30pm.  What I was observing at that time around 10:30pm was activity along the rear-flank gust front that was approaching my location.  The true area of significant rotation was well back in the occluded portion of the supercell, in an area I just simply couldn’t see given the low clouds around and lack of good lightning illumination.  I learned of the ~ 15 minute tornado northeast of Abilene from storm chaser Colt Ray Forney who managed to successfully document the event after 11pm as he was positioned on Ranch Road 604 {0418, after I was already in my motel room in Abilene}.  I was totally oblivious to this event even a couple days after it happened!  Oh well.  The tornado he photographed was somewhat wrapped in rain, however it was a fairly stout looking tornado during its mature stage with a fairly nice rope-out he also managed to photograph in the few lightning flashes that occurred.  All in all, this was a fine chase day with a number of keeper images for my portfolio

South-moving afternoon supercell from O’Brien to Rule to Stamford, TX

This is part 1/2 of this chase account… as I observed supercells at two different times during this chase.  This account focuses on the O’Brien/Rule/Stamford, TX supercell that developed mid-afternoon west of Knox City around 20z (3pm CDT).  I left Dodge City shortly after 8:30am for a target from Vernon to Seymour, TX.  The main problem for this chase day was the cold front.  Plain and simple.  It was moving south at a fairly good clip, and the challenge was to get on a storm far enough south of the cold front such that it would not become severely undercut by the front.  It was because of this that I decided to hedge south (Seymour).

I arrived in El Dorado, OK around 1pm with a growing cumulus field just along and ahead of the front.  This was a good sign that storms would probably develop over the next couple of hours given the extent of the agitated cumulus field.  I was monitoring obs closely and was interested in the near-90 degree air from Paducah to Aspermont.  I figured a storm would develop at the nose of this hottest air since the cap would be broken easiest here, so I was closely watching hi-res visible satellite imagery for towering cumulus growth in this area.  I arrived in Quanah, TX and was tempted to just head straight south to Benjamin.  Given the lack of substantial cumulus growth at that time in the area of Benjamin, I decided to just head southeast instead to Vernon.  From Vernon, I headed south on Hwy 183 to Seymour.  Along the way, cumulus was continuing to grow across all of this small region from Vernon south to Seymour…and even west toward Benjamin.  I arrived in Seymour around 2:40pm, and it was at this point that towering cumulus was most impressive southwest of Benjamin, which was some 45 miles to my west-southwest {1946}.  I immediately decided I wanted to target this new growth, so after a quick pit-stop in Seymour, I was on my way southwest on Hwy 277 toward Munday {2007}.  Once I reached Munday, I decided to continue west-southwest to Knox City as this development was very slow moving…and whatever movement there was, was almost straight south… so I had to keep heading west.

I reached Knox City with tornado sirens blaring in town, which I found quite interesting given the fact I didn’t see any warning on the storm at that time.  I headed south on Hwy 6 to O’Brien which was just a few miles south.  When I got to O’Brien I could observe a high-based well-defined nub funnel cloud looking almost due west.  I had to keep heading west, and fortunately, Ranch 2229 road was there to go west on from O’Brien, so I took this road out of town and found a stopping point a couple miles west of town.  This funnel persisted and continued to stretch to nearly halfway to the surface from cloud base.  I had to stop here and get the shots before it dissipated.  I managed to get some decent images of this well-defined funnel cloud.  For the first minute or so of observation, I just thought it was a funnel, but I eventually noticed a small debris cloud beneath the funnel.  The images I took were between 3:39 and 3:41pm {2031}.  I feel fortunate to have observed this event before many of the other storm chasers arrived on scene.  About a half hour after this time, the “chaser hordes” arrived.  Many, many storm chasers arrived on the storm finally — many of which were either staging in Wichita Falls, Vernon, or Seymour — arriving from the northeast {2045}.

The tornado finally dissipated and it was time to continue south.  I did so following county and ranch roads south…to the west of Hwy 6 by about 2 or 3 miles.  I stopped intermittently to shoot structure shots.  The structure evolved into a classic soda-can supercell updraft with a small lowered wall cloud in the center.  The whole storm was rather high-based, so if it was going to produce another tornado (a more classic supercell tornado) I was thinking it would have to do it fairly quick because of the high-based nature and potential forward flank downdraft undercutting problems in its not-too-distant future.  I finally reached the town of Rule and regained internet access after about a 45-minute downtime from west of Rochester to Rule {2127}.  It was at this point that I began to leap-frog a lot of storm chasers on Hwy 6, once I finally reached this highway.  I stopped for a little bit along Hwy 6 south of Rule and watched a beautiful rear-flank downdraft occlusion develop.  A tornado cyclone circulation was evident with fairly tight rotation in the wall cloud at around 4:40pm looking to the north-northwest from a few miles south of Rule {2131}.  My next stopping location was along a farm road about a half mile east of Hwy 6 where I setup my Nikon D200 on a tripod with the lightning trigger.  I managed to get one good cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning image within the supercell core looking to the north.  By this time, a rear-flank downdraft surge was heading my way and it was time to bail south.  Hwy 6 then turned southeast toward Stamford, and I followed this a few miles southeast to a stopping location to observe the next interesting aspect of this storm.  A rather rapidly rotating wall cloud developed to the north with some small dusty spin-ups beneath it initially.  Some storm chasers claim a brief ~ 30 second tornado here with this feature based on their accounts, but I am uncertain, because immediately after this, a huge surge of dust was kicked up in the next rear-flank downdraft surge…which was actually quite dynamic to photograph.  The copper color of the dust contrasted well against the storm structure from my vantage point.  This whole sequence occurred between roughly 5:26 and 5:32pm {2227}.

I then drove through a dusty town of Stamford shortly after shooting the previous scene just northwest of town.  The storm was on the demise after that point.  I continued southeast then east on some county roads to follow the now decaying storm.  My last images of this storm were around 5:53pm looking northeast at a small saucer-shaped updraft base with a neat looking wall cloud as the whole thing was beginning to shrivel up and die {2251}.  Now what to do.  There was another supercell well to the north-northeast of me approaching the Seymour area from the northwest.  The chaser hordes went after this, and it was funny watching all the chasers taking the same route to this storm at around 6pm or so {2309}.  Me, on the other hand, I’m not a follower.  I stayed put.  Small updrafts tried to form near and over me between Stamford and Lueders along Hwy 6, but none of these small updrafts made it very far at all and ultimately bit the dust.  I looked at visible satellite and noticed that the best looking clumping cumulus was off to my west still.  This interested me because it was still just far enough south of the cold front and there were mid to upper 60s dewpoints not too far southeast of this area.  This was my new area of interest:  Roby to Rotan, TX (Fisher County).  Not following the chaser hordes turned out to be a very wise decision:  My new target exploded into supercells and the storm the hordes went after ultimately died when they all arrived on scene!  See part 2 of this chase account.

My decision to chase the unconventional target paid off yet again, however my tactical decisions in the field cost me the potential for much better shots of the high-based marginal supercell structure, as I know it had a beautiful high-based saucer shape if I was just positioned farther southeast when I still had light.  My target was Hobbs, NM — I had lunch there and hung out in and around town for the better part of the afternoon up until at least 5:30pm or so (CDT).  All these crappy virga showers kept forming in my target — but I have learned in the past that on the high plains…sometimes virga showers with high bases turn into something much better if you are patient.  Patience was really trying me, and the southernmost grouping of virga showers and high, flat bases was located northeast of Carlsbad, so I made a trek southwest from Hobbs in that direction.  I drove about 50 miles southwest of Hobbs and watched a group of really high bases struggle mightily.  This area, in retrospect, was too close to the hot, dry air that was impinging on the Carlsbad area.  After sitting there along highway 62, the action area was finally developing off to my northeast… just north of Hobbs!  I guess I wasn’t patient enough.  I had to drive back to Hobbs, and eventually the southernmost storm from the small cluster north of Hobbs took on some interesting supercell structure on radar.  I was southwest of the main area of interest the whole time, and given the fact I had fallen behind, I had no time to stop for images.  I finally managed to stop for some shots after I had lost pretty much all of my light (it was about 9:20pm CDT by this time) about 15 miles south of Seminole, TX.  This storm raced off to the east, but I noticed another healthy storm off to my northwest, to the northwest of Seminole, moving in the direction of Seminole.  I drove back north into town then went northwest just a few miles outside of town and got some nice staccato lightning images with a gas processing plant as a horizon line subject to the lightning.

Real brief for now.  I intercepted 3 supercells on Friday, May 1st.  The first supercell was the mid-late afternoon supercell which formed in Southwestern Knox County to the west of Knox City.  I observed a several-minute tornado west of O’Brien as the storm was organizing into a supercell.  This occurred around 3:40pm CDT.  This storm went on to become largely outflow dominant given its high-based characteristics.  Another marginal tornado probably occurred northwest of Stamford later in the storm’s life.  It kicked up some amazing red dirt which I got good images of.  The storm then died, and instead of joining the hordes to go after the Seymour storm, I loitered around northeastern Jones County. This paid off.  I intercepted another photogenic supercell toward sunset near Roby.  A third, even more impressive supercell formed after sunset with it becoming dark… in western Haskell County.  This storm dropped south-southeast toward Anson and eventually southeastern Jones County northeast of Abilene.  The lightning was prolific with this storm… rather amazing.  This was a very satisfying chase.  The two images below are of the tornado at the beginning of the chase.  The 2nd image is a severely contrast-enhanced version of the first, revealing the faint dust column that my Nikon camera picked up on (which I didn’t realize at the time).  Timestamp on the image below is 3:41pm CDT.  This is looking almost due west from an observing location ~ 2 miles west of O’Brien, TX:

It was a last-minute decision to chase, leaving 4:30pm from Dodge City after working an 8am to 4pm day shift.  Since storms would be underway by the time I reached northwest Oklahoma, my thought was just to head to Woodward, getting there by 6:30pm and target a storm by the time I got there.   I intercepted a supercell that tracked northeast along the Canadian River valley north of Cheyenne, OK into Dewey county.  I sat at a location south of Taloga about 6 to 10 miles along US-18, photographing the storm as it approached.  There was another marginal supercell just northeast of the main storm which was fairly photogenic at times as well.  On my way home at around 10:00pm or so, I managed to photograph some impressive staccato lightning.  I have included 8 images below.  A more detailed account will be forthcoming on this blog post soon.

(edit 5/19, 11:55pm CDT):

Full account:

April 25, 2009:  Roll-Camargo-Taloga, OK Evening Supercell & Woodward, OK Staccato Lightning

25 April 2009 had the makings of a potentially impressive mid-late evening tornado event across western Oklahoma as a strong front was expected to stall by late afternoon from the TX Panhandle northeast into northwestern OK.  The front was then expected to lift back north as a warm front by early-mid evening with a very impressive low level jet expected to develop by 8:00pm CDT or so.  I was working the day shift on the 25th, and since no storms were expected across southwestern KS, I was able to get off work right at 4:00pm.  All along, I had no intention of chasing this day, but a last-moment decision was made to go ahead and go after this event.  In some ways, this reminded me of the 9 May 2003 chase I had in central OK — a day in which I also departed Dodge City rather late in the afternoon following a day shift.

Storms were going to be underway by the time I reached northwest OK, and my plan was just to head to Woodward then target a storm upon reaching town.  I was expecting to reach Woodward by 6:30pm, which would give me a good hour and a half of decent light.  There were numerous storms to my east through southeast through south by 6:30pm or so upon my arrival to Woodward {2333}.  Given the storm motions, it was a lot easier to incercept storms to my south or south-southwest then anything east of me.  Hwy 270 (the “Northwest Passage”) goes southeast from Woodward, which would make life very easy for me from a positioning standpoint.  The most interesting storm by the time I reached Woodward was a storm along the Canadian river valley to my south-southwest, near Roll.  There were many chasers on this storm, per SpotterNetwork icons.  In fact, by 6:42pm {2342}, the storm west of Roll was tornado-warned.  This was by far the easiest intercept for me, assuming that no additional storms took over between now and the time I could reach this area.  As the Roll storm headed east-northeast, I headed southeast on Hwy 270 from Woodward {0004}.  Another storm developed northeast of the primary Roll storm, off to my south-southeast.  When I reached Mutual, the sky was getting quite dark, and I could begin to make out a rain-free base well off to my southwest as I continued southeast closer to Seiling {0031}.  I stopped briefly to watch this, however I figured I needed to continue south to get into better position of not only this, but the larger storm farther southwest.

I headed south on Hwy 183 through Taloga, ultimately stopping at what would be my primary stopping place, a few miles south of Taloga, until darkness set in.  I was in a very good position here {0044}, able to monitor both the storm to my northwest and west-southwest.  Both storms had radar rotation.  I was near the Canadian River, and the rolling hills/terrain in this area is quite scenic.  The high spot I found a few miles south of Taloga suited me well and I did not feel like I needed to move from this spot… just letting the westernmost storm approach me.  It was a battle against time, though, as darkness was really beginning to set in after 8:00pm.  I managed to get a few cloud-to-ground (CG) images from the northern storm with my lightning trigger on the Nikon D200.  The western storm was getting closer, and was revealing a nice lowered area beneath the rain-free base.  I was getting rather excited about the prospects of a tornado in the not-too-distant future given the inflow winds I was experiencing, plus the fact the low level jet was expected to be inreasing rather markedly by about this time.  There was one problem, though.  One big problem.  The front was not exactly warm-frontogenetic.  It still had cold front characteristics — it was not lifting north.  As the storm continued to approach between 8:10 and 8:20pm, it was becoming increasingly clear that it was at least slightly undercut by outflow and/or the front itself.  I noticed quite a bit of north-to-south cloud motion with an inflow/outflow interface at the southern edge of the lowered area that was approaching.  Nevertheless, this storm had incredible rotation with it, and it still had an opportunity at tornadogenesis if it could deal with only slight undercutting problems.  A more compact wall cloud formed at the southern periphery of the rain-free base off to the west at around 8:25pm {0124}.  I managed to get a number of decent images of this feature, and I picked a good location to shoot from with a windmill sitting right in front of me.  There was just a brief moment between 8:25 and 8:30pm where I thought tornadogenesis was imminent, but that did not last long.  A massive amount of precipitation was about to wrap around the southern edge of the circulation obscuring my view (as of the impending darkness was enough of a problem).  It wasn’t long before the whole thing was rain-wrapped.

I stayed at that location until about 8:35pm, and then I continued back to the north approaching Taloga.  I wanted to get a few more long-exposure structure images, which I did with some success between about 8:40 {0142} and 8:55pm {0155} or so.  It was clear at this point the storm was outflow-dominant given the elongated shelf cloud structure.  This was the last I would shoot of this storm, so I waited out the passage of the core to the north before beginning my trek back to Dodge {0213}.  I finally headed back north around 9:20pm or so, heading in the direction of Woodward when other storms began to develop in front of me on the highway to the northwest {0244}.  Surprisingly, brilliant staccato CGs were occurring in front of me and to the right of the road, so much so that I just had to stop to setup to photograph.  I photographed CGs between roughly 10:00 and 10:20pm southeast of Woodward {0302, 0319}.  A couple of the staccato CG images from this set were definite keepers, which will be added at some point to my fine-art portfolio.  After that, I began my trek home to Dodge, getting home about 1:45am.