| Click on any of the the Photos to Enlarge |
| Day 1 | |
| Tom arrives in Oklahoma. |
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| First excitement, police chased a white van into our car park and surrounded the driver at gunpoint. He was later taken away in handcuffs. They had apparently tried to catch him the day before. More fool him for coming back.
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| The trip set off with poor weather this suited my travelling companion who took the opportunity to work on his suntan. With nothing doing we found an excuse to try a steak at the Big Texan in Amarillo. As always, a good evening was had and we met three bikers from West Virginia who were living their dreams and biking to California. We had a good ole sing along with the resident artistes.
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| Day 2 | |
| As there was a good chance for storms near Salina, Kansas we set off and set up camp at the Best Western. |
| Day 3 | |
| The following day was a disappointment and before I make any comments I need to review the decisions made by me during that day. A day that ended up as a bust day. However the day wasn't a total waste, as we managed to find ourselves in Newton, Kansas where we tucked into BBQ sandwiches at Charlies Restaurant. |
| Day 4 | |
| Once again I'm not sure where I went wrong I based my decision on the SPC progs. I took a chance of tornadoes in the Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas borders. However they developed way over in the Denver area and were not to arrive anywhere near us until the early hours so I listed the day as yet another bust day and we booked into a motel in Colby. |
| Day 5 | |
Ever the optimist I moved up to a motel in Holdrege Nebraska. There, after communications with James from UKSTORM we watched and waited for any developments. It wasn't too long before a tornado watch was posted for an area around Smith Centre. It stated that any developments would occur in the warm air on the south side of the warm front. So we made a decision to head south towards Smith Centre. This was a journey of some 80 miles as we moved south of Smith Centre we moved into clearer air and could see the towers building up. |
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As we sat watching the developing towers we were joined by Jeff Piotrowski who had spotted the same potential storm. We chased with Jeff for a short while but soon had to Part Company, as our Toyota was no match for Jeff's 4x4. The storm that we follow 15 miles down a dirt track had now moved into colder air and was not meeting with our expectations. Jeff shot off south to pick up another substantial storm. We however only wanted to get back onto a proper road. When we eventually got back onto a proper road we headed east. |
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| As we were travelling along 136 we came across Todd Thorn who allowed us to view the most recent radar in his tour bus. This information alerted us to the fact that we were actually in the path of a severe storm which was putting down extremely large hail and eventually was the cause of a tornado warning. In order to get to a place of safety we moved east and then with the intention of getting behind the oncoming storm we headed to Red Cloud and set off south on 281. We saw some beautiful views of the storm as we travelled along.
We then went a short way west along 36 where we pulled up and watched the storm for some time it provided a fantastic lighting show. It became apparent that if we went any further west on 36 we could probably end up going back into the storm and so we decided to head back up 281 to catch sight of the tornado that was being reported.
We saw a brief funnel cloud, which was only visible when illuminated by the lightning flashes. As the core of the storm moved on to the northeast we set off towards Red Cloud once more. As we neared the town we had to take cover as we passed through one or two hail shafts. We then encountered some more hail further north of Red Cloud as we made our way back to Holdrege, Nebraska. The visibility on our journey was at times fairly poor and resulted in us having a collision with a Racoon. Unfortunately the Racoon came off worse. |
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| Day 6 | |
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Severe weather had been forecast for east Nebraska and over into Iowa however it would seem that the cold air had sunk further south than was expected and the target area had slipped further south too. So we set off from under a cool cloudy sky with a plan to stay at Salina, Kansas. As we progressed slowly southwards the temperature crept up and up. For one of two reasons, we were moving back into the warm air and the cloud cover was breaking up this allowed the sun to heat things up a bit. By the time we reached Salina we found our attire incompatible with the climate. We had set off with temps in the 50s we were now in the 80s so the jeans had to be discarded.
We set up base at the Best Western next to the I135. This would give us the opportunity to go south if necessary. The forecast at this moment in time was a possibility of tornadic storms just to the east of where we were and so we watched and waited. I sat by the computer and Brian went out to build up his tan. Strangely enough his action proved to be beneficial because he became aware that the weather boundary had now pushed further south before I noticed it on the Unissy web site. As he sat outside our room it became too cool for him to stay outside. This caused me to double check data and sure enough it confirmed what he had already detected. That we were now back north of the warm front. I looked at the SPC and they showed the target area to be still to our east and had reported a line of Cu building up to the southeast of our position
At this point I believe we made a wrong decision. We gassed up and set off with the intention of finding a good vantage point just to our southeast. With the benefit of hindsight we should have done what we had thought about and gone down to Newton again where we could have logged on. This would have resulted in us being better located for the storms that developed around that area later that evening.
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As it was we went east off 135 towards Gypsum where we waited for a short while. It wasn't too long before we started to see some cumulus building up to the south east of our location.
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| We set off in their direction and as we did we could see that they were trying to develop. If I had stopped to think instead of charging off after one possible tower I would have realised the fact that if the cold front has pushed further south then the target area would have also pushed further south and should have gone south west towards an area of developing storms. As it was I chased one cell all the way into Kansas City that proved to be a bad decision because we lost a lot of ground and got stuck in traffic in the built up area. |
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| The top portion blew away forming a ball of cloud. which drifted away to the northeast I guess the jet stream had something to do with this. The cell that we chase was spectacular as it went through its various stages. It obviously contained immense power. However it didn't become totally organised and apart from one or two high level funnels I had nothing to write home about when we parted company with it. At this point we calculated just to get back to base was going to take us nearly three hours. This would give us an ETA at approximately midnight, so we made the long trip home. The storm continued to develop throughout the night, at one point they even moved up towards our motel. This caused my lightning detector to go wild and me to get into the car to move west of our motel to see some of the lightning. |
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| Day 7 | |
| I wont go into great detail about today other than there were tornadoes in eastern Oklahoma and the weather where we were in Dodge was very sunny. We didn't go there incorrectly Brian wanted to go there to say that he had been to Dodge City. |
| Day 8 | |
| Today was the day we flew home and the day that I believe I got some of the best photos of the week. On our way from Tulsa, Oklahoma we flew south of some major storm cells. I had a fairly good view from 32,000 feet up as we passed the first cluster. We could see the core, tail cloud, anvil overshooting top and splashing cirrus. I could actually see right down under the anvil into the heart of the storm. |
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| Not only did we land in Atlanta through a storm but one storm then actually passed to the north of the airfield whilst another crossed directly over us. We boarded the plane with lightning hitting any tall object around the area. Once on the plane the main core of the storm passed directly overhead the wind caused the plane to rock violently and the airport to close down for a short while. We meanwhile stood in line behind 20 other airplanes waiting to take off. When we eventually took off we were provided with another lightshow at various altitudes until we headed off out over the Atlantic Ocean. I'm not sure if the lightning had anything to do with the planes electronics but one or two of the onboard systems wouldn't function. As a result we had to eat in partial darkness and learn to lip read if you wanted to watch the movie. And so the 2003 USA chase trip came to an end - Tom |
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