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Well, I'm continuing my screw up 2007 tour. I thought I was doing so well on this one too. In short, my target upon leaving Blair NE was Kinsley KS, and I did not stay there...the Greensburg KS storm happens later near this area. I arrived in LaCrosse KS pretty early and sat there for a good 2 hours looking at data. The dryline bulge prog'd into this area just wasn't very organized(more just scouring aloft than anything....veered 850 jet moved over). By later in the afternoon the cu along this "bulge" looked like it was a long ways from full fledged convection....which it indeed was. It became clear there were two otpions, head south to convection firing in the TX Panhandle/western OK, or drive back north to I-70 to an area of better convergence where this dryline "bulge" intersected a weak warmfront. Some very crappy cu formed to my north, so I jumped on them, following them north for what seemed like forever. This n-s line of weak cu was very hard to make out on satellite, but it was there and holding. The image above here is the north cu on the line, somewhere west of Stockton KS. I was so excited when I drove under it and it was now producing sprinkles. I thought, hey, I'm nailing this day by making this move and being all over this thing, lol. I saw no other chasers for the longest time, even after it was firmly on radar.
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Near Alton KS now. One storm/tower moved north of the boundary and this one formed just south of it. Still, no other chasers around, but this would soon change as the hoardes began to arrive. I thought for sure whatever rooted on this boundary would become a beast.
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Well, it became tornado warned, but it had issues of just looking "too cold". There was a nice rfd cut here, with the wrapped up portion in there spinning round and round....but it just couldn't get it done.
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I had to drive east to Osborne then north to get ahead of it again. It had a lovely tower and backsheared anvil now. As I got ahead of it, it had a big nasty rfd notch, and beavertail going east, but the nice look soon got very cold looking and unorganized again. I punched it north to Smith Center, then back east through it and shot the following.
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Well about now the Greensburg storm was forming to the south. This was putting on a nice lightning show, but I can only imagine the structure and lightning on the Greensburg beast. One of these days I'll learn to just sit in the morning target, regardless of how current conditions look. It makes no sense I know, but jeeesh it seems most of the time one would do a lot better if they did so(at least for me this year). |
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I may as well post my chase for the following day here, a big outbreak day. I woke up in Smith Center, drove west to Norton and watched cells struggle as they flew north. Oh yeah, my morning thought was get on I-70 and use it and fully expect to need to drop south. Hell it was fairly clear in the morning that something similar to the night before was about to happen in the same area. You could see on satellite how the thicker area of cu were there and sort of lined up sw-ne. I remember fully thinking something would happen there but I did not want to run into damage issues from the night before, AND, I feared data issues via the cell phone from some of the damage, but now realize that was pretty silly. I was still ready to drop part way south, but went west to Norton first to keep that option open. I end up moving back east with stuff until I'm south of Osborne KS and north of Russell. All the stuff to the south had been struggling and struggling on radar. It almost looked like it would be a similar day to April 24, at least regarding the dryline development west of the early stuff(another day I screwed myself by leaving the morning thoughts, going east early on stuff, and never coming back west). I met up with Steve Peterson around this time. We caught a couple cells coming north of I-70 and the one quickly looked interesting with lowerings and a decent rfd cut. We debated and followed it north towards Osborne. Right at this same time you could see the cells down south becoming deeper and more discrete. I was like, man I hate chasing. I had tons of time to go down there before missing much, but also didn't want to leave this storm that was teasing us. Then there was the whole "main show" dryline out west yet. I thought, ok go north, then if it croaks go west to sw NE. Well it looked like crap as we caught it again so we let it go and continue north to Red Cloud. About the time we got there something near Hebron is tornado warned, but just too far east with these storm speeds. This area moves into western IA and produces tornadoes and some sweet structure judging by some video seen on tv later. This all happening like 2 counties from my home. But that's out of range. As we get west a bit guess what happens in Osborne? A tornado(apparently injuring 11). We just drove through freaking Osborne around an hour or so ago. Something on the west side of this convection north of I-70 did that. So having missed all this action(including the outbreak now starting south of I-70) guess where I am? I'm just north of where I woke up! I'm north of Smith Center in NE now, watching the dryline in sw NE, nw KS BUST. Even the SPC was still hitting this area hard in their outlooks with the highest tornado probs out there....continuing it on the 1z outlook! Well that area busted, probably due partly to the outflow boundary in northern KS that morning, and later due mostly to all the convection ahead of it, cutting the area off from good juice. How freaking ironic. The April 24th chase I never drove back west because the window of opportunity looked way too small(there was juice ahead of the dl back there then, but it'd soon be ingesting crappy air...which it did). That day the east convection was much closer to it and largely more severe earlier in the day...and it produced the Nickerson KS torandic supercell anyway. This time though, I went back west(hell by this point there was no other option) and it busts. There was plenty of instability back there according to the spc mesoanalysis page and the bondary was sharpening up, but, it just wasn't to be. To put it lightly, chasing is driving me completely nuts. It gets old driving in circles, thinking you have learned things, and this crap always happening. Well, it's been this way for largely the last year and a half for me, lol. I have many chases like this that never see the pages of my site(cause I busted and didn't see anything). My stretch of doing this crap is on the extremely troubling side now. Sure I saw the Grant NE wedge, but honestly, that was after screwing up that day and largely an accident. I swear I'm not this stupid, but maybe I am, lol. I wish I was able to quit sometimes. You try your butt off and miss, miss, miss and miss some more, while some others are able to just sit there and intercept the biggies over and over. I mean it's one thing to have a day you screw up and bust, but it's another to stack so many up, all in a neat little row, on days you yanked yourself all over hell and back trying not to miss anything. It's like trying too hard makes things worse. I've even said this before these later days, saying, just go sit somewhere and don't go anywhere till something is obviously the best....even if it means being way to far east and having to drive west. Somewhere along the way I got it in my head you have to jump right away or you'll be late. I know this is my biggest problem anymore, but man at the time it's so hard to have patience. Many more of these and I won't quit, but I will change what my idea of storm chasing is and the frequency of it. I WISH. Right now I feel like a heroin addict with an empty syringe in my hand, in this padded room with no way out. It's pretty close to that. |
