May 24, 2011 Chase

Target: Enid, OK
Tornadoes: 0
Hail: Penny

For this chase we got smart. We left Rapid City the night before at 6 p.m. and planned on spending the night in Pawnee City, NE. By 2 a.m. Central, we arrived at our destination for the night.  We left our hotel at 8 a.m. the next morning and headed south to Enid, OK, which is about 84 miles to the north of Oklahoma City. We arrived at Enid  right after initiation started and a particularly dangerous situation (PDS) tornado watch was out for the area.

We tracked three tornado-warned storms that day. The first one was in the Enid area. When we got ourselves into position, this storm looked amazing. She had already produced a few tornadoes and it looked like she was going to produce again.  However, the storms to its south decided to be mean and ran into her.  This caused her to loose rotation. She tried to reorganized herself a few times but could not get her act together. During this time, we were hearing about the Oklahoma City tornado and decided to drive south and try to catch up with it.  The second tornado-warned storm was the one associated with the Oklahoma City tornado. We did try to catch up to the storm to see this tornado. However, we were not able to. We did experience some debris falling out of the sky, so we were close.  Also, the cloud-to-ground lightning was very frequent.  We may have seen this tornado in a rain-wrapped mess but we are not sure since all we saw was rain. We got to an area just west of Tulsa, and had to pull over in a McDonald's parking lot next to a dumpster to protect us from hail.  After the storm started to pass, we went inside to grab some food before making our track back to Rapid City.  However, while watching the news, we saw a potential third storm just to our south.  After we finished, we tracked south to see if we can see a tornado. We experienced very heavy rain, some small hail, and very strong winds.  I saw a few small trees down.  However, no tornado was found.  We then decided to head to Wichita, KS for the night, and then drove back to Rapid City the next
day.

Video of our day:

Some mammatus clouds that we saw while going after our first storm of the day.

So close.....

She was still trying.

And trying...

 

Loved the structure in the distance.

 

Beautiful structure.

Coming home through Nebraska. Yes, this is a natural photo.

© Heather Caye 2011

May 20, 2011 Chase

This chase started off with us leaving at 6 a.m (I do not think we will ever do this again).  Our target area for the day was central Kansas just east of the dry line.  This day was initially a slight risk day, but was upgraded to a moderate risk day. However, we were worried because we traveled through rain from Rapid City down to our target area and were unsure about how unstable it would get. Once we crossed the Nebraska-Kansas border, storms began to fire up. Two storms just south of Osbourne, KS quickly became tornado-warned, and we decided to go after the northern one. We headed south of Osbourne to try and catch it.  This storm was looking good on radar.  Plenty of CAPE and moisture were in place and we were getting excited.  But then we lost our radar and did not know what the storm looked like.  When we finally got an update, we saw that this storm was dying out.  We then decided to head north and try to cut east so we can catch the southernmost storm.  However, we were not able to make it east fast enough and decided to wait it out.  By now, all of the storms that were developing were high precipitation supercells.  Any tornadoes that developed would be wrapped up in rain and would be nearly impossible to see until it would be too late. At about 6:30 p.m., we called it a day and drove almost 10 hours back to Rapid City.  We got in at around 3 a.m. and we plan on never doing that again.

These are all photos after we ended our chase:

The first time that we saw the sun all day long.

Under the anvil of one of the storms.  There is another storm in the distance.

Thought this looked pretty cool.

 Storm in the distance. I loved the structure. The phone line...not so much.

Beautiful sunset.

© Heather Caye 2011

First Chase EVERRRRRR!!! May 9, 2011

So this first chase of the season for us SDSMT students (first ever chase for me) was on May 9, 2011.  We decided to wait until about 2:30 in the afternoon to go out and try to find ourselves a tornado.  Our target was Phillip, SD, which is about 75 minutes east of Rapid City.

A few hours prior to leaving Rapid City, we were worried about the setup.  There was plenty of CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy), but it was capped. If the CAPE is capped, then no storms can form.  We were waiting to see if this cap would break, which was not looking good since the whole state of South Dakota was under clouds. The only way for the cap to break was if the clouds broke up and let the sun warm up the Earth. There was only about a 2% chance of a tornado occurring in SD until about 2 p.m. Then when the Storm Prediction Center came out with their new forecast, the predictability of a tornado occurring was 5%.  Also, the cloud cover in south central SD was starting to finally break up. This is when we decided to get our stuff together and head out east to Phillip, SD, which was in the bulls-eye of the 5% area.

As we headed out east, the cloud cover remained. However, as we got closer to our target area, the clouds started to break up and the temperatures started to rise from the lower 50s to the mid-70s.  Plenty of moisture was in place, the CAPE was high, and the cap was breaking. When we got to Phillip at 3:45 p.m., we were in positive thinking that we were going to see a tornado.  To keep us busy, we threw around a Frisbee, ate snacks, threw rocks, and continued to watch the radar. We kept waiting...and waiting...and waiting....but nothing was showing up on our radar.  At 6:30 p.m., with blue sky all around us, we decided to call it a day and head back home.

As we were heading back to Rapid City, we ran into a downpour. Little did we know that this "downpour" would become something more later on and make me a little upset.  When we got home around 7:45 p.m., we heard that the "downpour" that we drove through was now a severe thunderstorm.  This part of the story gets even better.  When I got home a little after 8 p.m., I looked at my radar and saw that this storm was now tornado-warned. And guess where it was heading? If you guessed Phillip, you are correct. This storm did produce a tornado and when I found that out, I was not a happy camper.  The only good that comes out of this story is that this storm developed after dark.  It is extremely dangerous to chase storms at night because you cannot see anything.  If a storm would go and produce a tornado, the only way that you will be able to see it is from lightning.  Other than that, you would be setting yourself up for trouble.

Overall, this day was a BIG bust. It was a good thing that we decided to stay local.

I was bored so I took this picture.

Saw this lonely cloud in the distance.

Okay, this is NOT what we wanted to see....

Clouds in the distance. These did not produce anything either.

When we did get home, though, we did see something.....

Oh well, better luck next time.

© Heather Caye 2011