7/24 - 4pm - 2011 Great Plains Storm Chase Video

From May 7th to June 4th this year I had the privilege of again being a tour guide with Storm Chasing Adventure Tours, a company I've worked with for four years. We traveled well over 10,000 miles during my time in the Great Plains and saw numerous supercell thunderstorms with wall clouds and even a few funnel clouds. There were also a few episodes when we came very close to tornadoes, with one touching down right in front of us at night in South Dakota. Check out my "mini documentary" video of all the things I saw this year below or on my storm chasing page at RyanHoke.com:

This video is available in 720p or 1080p HD

5/24 - 6am CDT - Great Supercell Yesterday, HIGH Risk Today

We chased a supercell that formed near Ringwood, Oklahoma yesterday for a few minutes until it merged with other storms and became weaker. We moved to a new isolated cell near Greenfield, OK and it persisted for a while with a few rotating wall clouds. It may not have produced a tornado, but it certainly had the capability and nearly did when one of these wall clouds tightened up considerably. Check out the video below to see it all happen!



The panorama below gives you an idea of how close the wall cloud came to the ground as its rotation tightened:

We traveled 366 miles yesterday on our chase, which took us from Woodward to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma:

The Storm Prediction Center has issued a HIGH Risk for severe weather tomorrow in Oklahoma and Kansas. We stayed in Oklahoma City last night, so we're not far from the action. There's a 30% tornado risk with this outlook, which is the first HIGH Risk of the year for the Plains.

Here's a snippet of the SPC's discussion for today:

VERY LARGE HAIL...DAMAGING WINDS...AND SEVERAL POTENTIALLY SIGNIFICANT TORNADOES APPEAR LIKELY AS THE STORMS INCREASE AND SPREAD ACROSS KS/OK INTO WRN AR AND THEN LATER INTO WRN MO.

I'll have an update later this morning with the latest SPC severe weather outlook and a discussion on today's outbreak along with our target area.

5/20 - 9:30am CDT - Bust Yesterday in Kansas

Cool temperatures aloft kept storms from being isolated in Kansas yesterday, resulting in a plethora of individual cells that quickly formed a line. Since each cell cut-off the other's inflow, none of these storms could get strong enough to produce a good tornado. There were a few brief tornadoes and funnels yesterday, but nothing worth writing home about. We were able to intercept a cell near Wilson, Kansas before it became completely linear yesterday and saw a rapidly rotating wall cloud with many finger-like funnels. Check out the video below to see it in action!



That storm had a history of producing a brief tornado, but the cell was moving too fast to intercept it at that point. After we left that storm, we traveled down to just north of Dodge City, KS, where an isolated supercell developed in the untapped warm air. We briefly saw what we thought to be a rope tornado from a few miles away, but it was too far to tell. This cell was spectacular for the few minutes that it stayed isolated yesterday and I was able to snap a gorgeous panorama of it as the sun went down:

I'll have an update from the road later on this morning... not quite sure if we'll chase in Oklahoma today or just head back to Amarillo so that our guests can prepare for their departure tomorrow.

6/17 - 12:30am CDT - Awesome Supercell!

We started off in Northern Oklahoma this morning where there were east winds, but the cap (warm layer of air above the surface) was on too tight and was inhibiting convection. After hours of meandering through the area near Woodward, OK, we finally saw some cumulus clouds getting organized just south of Wichita, KS. We hopped on I-35 toward Wichita and caught up with a cell that was just giving birth to a wall cloud as we arrived. We stayed with this supercell for nearly three hours because it was a training storm, meaning it kept reforming and staying in the same location. It had a rotating wall cloud for a good portion of its life, but no funnel or tornado ever manifested. Frequent cloud-to-ground lightning provided a good show for us until another storm cell finally formed and pushed the weakening supercell out of the area.






Looks like our target area tomorrow will be somewhere near Central or Eastern Nebraska, but we'll know for sure tomorrow morning.

6/12 - 9:00pm MDT - We're Done for the Day

After chasing a supercell through Southeast Colorado, we're done chasing today. There weren't any funnel clouds or tornadoes, but we saw a well-defined wall cloud. As the sun set, we drove under a gas station and let it pass over us. The storm came quick, which didn't give me and a member of our group named Charley time to get inside the car before the ping-pong ball size hail came. We both ended up squatting behind the chase vehicle because the wind was blowing hail and heavy rain under the overhang of the gas station. Things settled down after a few minutes and we got back in the SUV soaked. It was great fun! We're now heading back to base in Denver.

Tomorrow is the end of tour 6 and the beginning of tour 7 for Storm Chasing Adventure Tours. We'll say goodbye to Stephen, Charley, and Dave and welcome four new guests tomorrow as they arrive. Active storm chasing will resume on Sunday, but until then, we'll be running errands and getting ready for next week.

Here are some pictures:

6/1 - 10pm MDT - What a Day!!!

Do I have some pictures for you! We followed a super cell from Scottsbluff, NE to Grant, NE that constantly maintained scary looking wall clouds and even a couple funnels. We were darn sure that it was going to drop a tornado, but it simply didn't execute. Since this cell was the only show in town due to its isolation, the TIV (Tornado Intercept Vehicle), the DOW (Doppler on Wheels), and the whole team from the hit Discovery Channel show Storm Chasers showed up. We passed them a couple times as a wall cloud really got going. Since this all happened at sunset, the photos are simply stunning. I'll try to upload as many as I can tomorrow morning. Some of these are National Geographic magazine quality shots... Time to get some sleep!

5/30 - 11:30am CDT - A Scary Day Yesterday, Off to Denver

After waiting around at a truck stop yesterday for the storms to form during the HIGH risk, Todd (leader of the tour group) noticed that the winds in Nebraska were not shifting east like they were supposed to. This shift was needed so that the advertised tornado outbreak would happen. A cell formed to our west after about an hour at the stop, so we began to chase it with little expectation of a tornado since the winds were not shifting eastward. Once we caught up with the wall cloud, this is what we saw:

This was the eeriest wall cloud anyone on the tour had seen. It had a very prominent rotation to it and it looked like it was ready to fire off a funnel cloud. We had to leave after about five minutes since the mesocyclone looked ready to drop a funnel in our direction. We had to go around the south and east of the storm since it cut off access to the north road. When we finally came back to intercept it again, it had gone from a super cell to a linear wind-driven mess. It was moving about as fast as we were and that made things scary when we tried to outrun it. We were heading north with dozens of other chaser vans in a sort of "escape parade" when the storm nearly caught up to us. We weren't entirely sure what was inside the core of the storm, especially since there were power flashes on the ground (tell-tale sign of a tornado) and reports of funnels. The radar showed no rotation and just a straight line wind situation, which in itself could harbor winds of over 100mph. Here's a picture of that monster heading toward us:

We finally were able to outrun it by going east. We stopped to look at it in the driving rain, when I spotted a funnel. It didn't last long, but it was a finger-like protrusion that was bouncing around in one of the lower cloud bases. I wasn't able to take a photo of it, but I captured it with my video camera. I'll be sure to edit all my video footage and post it when I come back to Louisville.

After seeing the speed that it was going and the possible hail that the storm have been putting down, we aborted chasing this one for our own safety. We drove west on I-80 for a while and saw some of the destruction the storm left in its path. Barns were completely destroyed and houses had some minor damage done to them. Trees were also stripped of their leaves and branches were scattered. The debris was all scattered in one direction, so it looked like straight line winds were the culprit. It was hard to tell though since there were so many reports of tornadoes in the area. That storm really wasn't the type that should have put down a tornado, but stranger things have happened.

We then punched through a line of storms to see some lightning on the other side at night just south of the Nebraska border in Kansas. It was quite an active line with lots of hail and lightning. Todd managed to manuver us in between the hail cores as we punched through, but just barely. A 5 minute delay in our travels would have meant a new windsheild for all three SUVs. We then stopped and took pictures of the beautiful storm structure and the lightning. This was my best shot:

After a good night's rest, we're going to Denver, CO since there's no good storms in this part of the country. We'll be visiting the Denver Zoo for fun. Tomorrow is when tour 4 ends and the guests go home. New guests will be arriving tomorrow and tour 5 will start on Sunday morning. It has been a pleasure meeting and getting to know all the people on tour 4 and I hope this blog has been a good resource for family members to keep up with what we're doing.

Next week looks interesting!

5/28 - 11am CDT - Small Chance for Severe Weather, Pictures

We're on the road toward Lubbock, TX from Abilene, TX in search of some possible isolated storms. Overnight, things got a little bit better forecast wise, so we scrapped the New Mexico plan and Carlsbad Caverns that we had planned for today. Our destination is around West Central Kansas or East Colorado by tonight so we can be in position for tomorrow in Nebraska. We'll be looking for storms on the way (SPC put out a SLIGHT risk for severe storms for Eastern Colorado), but mostly this is a travel day.

Here's one of the immense wheat fields that we stopped at in Texas yesterday as we waited for cells to form:

This is the infamous cow pasture where a wall cloud nearly gave birth to a tornado: