Night Chase: Sat 4-21-01 Hoisington, KS

Disclaimer

I previously made a brief mention to Wx-Chase concerning this chase during the night of the Hoisington F4 tornado, but now that I am home would like to  elaborate a bit because it was such an interesting adventure. This will be a long post, but bear with me and I will try to make it worth your while. Also,  chasing tornadic storms at night is inherently risky and dangerous. Do not try  this unless you are an advanced storm chaser with the proper equipment.

Memorable Chases

First of all, let me say that for most of us there are ho hum chases where one day blends into another. It may seem like you've been there before, that you've stopped at the same gas station and restaurants, the clouds are the same,  etc. A feeling not too dissimilar to finding yourself in the Twilight Zone. Then  there are stand out days, those days, which you will always remember. Usually these special days come about unexpectedly, but looking back and reflecting on them will give you new insights and perspectives on the whole turn of events for  years to come. These are the events, which forever leave themselves etched upon your memory almost as if they had happened just yesterday.

Jarrell, Tx '97 was a memorable chase day for me. I was returning from intercepting tornadoes in Oklahoma the previous day, and because of road detours, and stopping off to visit relatives I missed out on one of the bigger  events close to home, even though I believe I did manage to photograph a tornado west of Waco, TX which was taking place about the same time.

Castell, TX '99 was also a very memorable chase. The afternoon of the violent  Castell F4 I positioned myself on the road just west of Llano only miles from where the meso would eventually cross the road. The air and atmosphere that day  was very oppressive and heavy. The supercell building just north of the road I  was on was laden down with thick moisture, crisp bulbous sides, and sported a  dark ominous base which was almost dragging on the ground. That day I knew there  would be a "helluva" storm. It was so literally scary just looking at that cloud it gave you the feeling that if you continued down that road you would be sorry. I was about to venture forth, but then got a call from a fellow chaser about a tornado on the ground a county or so to the north. I turned north back through  town and ended up missing an incredible tornado at Castell. Of course, I?m also not sure how I would have faired if I had ventured forward. One of my friends  was pinned down by the Castell storm on a hill country back road up against a  flooded creek, the vault, and core coming down on him in the form of high wind and baseball hail. Just a skip from him, across the creek, and down the bank a  mile or so a man's life was ended as he took shelter in his stone garage when  the tornado passed.

Of course May 3^rd '99 in Oklahoma was memorable for me too, but unfortunately that's because I had to work and couldn't get off to chase the  obvious outbreak.

Anyway, as I say there are memorable storms. The night of the Hoisington storm was one of them:

The Waitress

The day started bright in St. Joseph, MO. Morning brunch at the Country  Kitchen and a waitress which was unable to bring me cream for my coffee throughout the meal. Apparently the few drinks she had the night before, and  lack of sleep had robbed her of her few remaining brain cells, and she now was  constrained to aimlessly wander to and from the kitchen in perpetual  forgetfulness and confusion while carrying the look you see on many of the fine  Herefords found along the road throughout the great Midwest.

Towers & M&M's

From St. Joseph around 11am, chaser Gene Moore and I headed down I29 to Loop 435 around Kansas City. From there we proceeded down I35 through Emporia, and on  to Strong City KS where we were able to stop at the Total gas station and  receive good cell phone internet connectivity. The general target area for the  day was SE KS in the area bounded by I35, I135, and Hwy 50, or slightly NE of Wichita, Ks along the warm frontal boundary. Already that morning storms had begun forming along the KS / MO border south of the warm front; however nobody wanted to chase in Missouri (i.e. Misery) because of the hills, and windy, curvy roads. From the area around Strong City, towers could be seen building in the  distance, and there were gaps between the clouds, enough to allow for good adiabatic heating.

From Strong City after devouring a large half bag of peanut M&M's and a  fountain Coke, I was all "sugared" and "caffeined" up. This is an appropriate state for a storm chaser while on the road. We continued on 150 / 56 west and  eventually pulled over to do an observation. The clouds were beautiful. There was a lot of deep blue sky, with broken low level cumulus clouds pouring in from the south. This was a good sign for deep moisture. Just east of the road, and  up, a number of towers were starting to build which we estimated at 20K to 30K feet. These towers had very crisp sides, and were very bright with the direct  sun shining on them. Cloud growth was phenomenal as you could very visibly see the towers both expanding and growing in height at the same time. One of the towers also showed a rolling motion as the top / sides of the cloud rolled downward and inward in a circular fashion. These features very much kept our  attention so we grabbed a new radar. Anvils were starting to build / form, and our "storm" was beginning to show on radar. We turned around, refueled at Strong  City, and then continued north, very quickly toward this storm and toward Council Grove on 57 / 177. Conditions were "ripe" in this environment for a  tornadic storm to form. North of Council Grove off of 57 / 177 we pulled off and  watched the inflow portion of the storm develop a lowered base. It appeared to  be "winding up". The storm was moving fairly quickly NE and as I recall I believe it had a Severe Thunderstorm Warning on it, but could be mistaken. Anyway we backtracked through Council Grove and then found a good gravel road  going north to once again catch up and intercept the inflow area. Well, we went a ways down the road and finally stopped at the top of a hill and grabbed  another radar download cross section.

Wheat Fields, The Farmer, and Our Pathetic Storm

As we sat there, a friendly, local Kansas farmer pulled up in his large Ford 350 Diesel truck and we chatted awhile. The countryside was beautiful and we  complimented him on his home area. He told us about tornadoes he had seen around there before. He was somewhat impressed / amazed that we had come all the way up  from Central TX to see his "back yard". As we watched the storm, it simply fell apart! Oh well, but very odd. Why with conditions being as favorable as they were did this storm not create a huge tornadic monster? We were somewhat  baffled, but we believe that the storm had "crossed over" the boundary into the  colder air, and therefore into an environment not conducive to growth. We  ejected our present course and began to head west down Hwy 4 into warmer air  with better heating / instability. Unfortunately, it was already about 6 or 7pm, and daytime chase time was running out.

Twilight Titans, and Strobe Lightning

We continued on hwy 4 to I135 and crossed it south of Salina. A while before crossing we kept looking west along the boundary where all the convergence was. Eventually I spotted a "convention" of large towers in the distance to the west with very large anvils. It would take a bit to get there but, well we wanted to  see a storm and "damn it" we were going to see one today even if it was dark when we got there! We eventually heard about the tornado warnings toward Rush  Center and knew these must be our storms. Basically at the time there were two storms: 1) was in the county close to us SW of Salina, and the other was a bit further west in the next county or two over. We began seeing lightning from the first storm near Salina, and it was very rapid and intense. However my very experienced chase partner elected to go to the second storm since it was known  tornadic, and had a better signature on radar.

Into The Darkness

We proceeded toward Hoisington, and there was talk of having dinner / staying  the night in Great Bend. As we transitioned along hwy 4 from Frederick, Bushton,  and eventually Claflin it became apparent that this wasn't just "any" storm, and  I and my partner have both seen numerous storms. Of course any storm, especially  tornadic ones will generally look impressive at night, but "impressive" was pretty much an understatement concerning the state of this storm. As we  continued west, the inflow began to grow greatly in magnitude. Winds were  hitting us hard from left side of the vehicle. The lightning eventually became  like a constant "strobe" effect. It was almost exclusively cloud to cloud in nature, but I would estimate it was flashing many times a second in differing  parts of the storm all around us. The air was generally clear, but for the  longest time, we kept wondering "where is the base"? We wanted to make our way toward the inflow area and perhaps get some good night CG lightning shots with  maybe a wall cloud image in the foreground. We got to Claflin somewhere around 8:45 to 9:00, but probably closer to 9pm. As usual, our local town cops were out  patrolling so I was paranoid to keep my speed checked. The town of Claflin was  kind of eerie. It appeared to be mostly abandoned, no other cars driving (except  the cop). The wind was whipping all the trees around in the front yards of the  local folk's houses, and you could hear the roar & rustle as the wind rose  and fell through gusts. I would estimate that winds were probably close to 40 or 45 mph through town as an average speed with higher gusts. Additionally just  before town we began noticing these "contrail" type features in the clouds over  our heads. These were not wind bands along the outside of a lowered supercell,  but instead were a rolled, straight funnel type feature similar in shape to  large jet exhaust contrails which translated directly over our heads downward  and into what we thought was the general direction of the storm's very large  inflow area. Later Gene related that he thought this was a feature associated with very strong inflow jets above the surface. Either way it was the first time I had seen such a thing and it made you realize that something was a bit out of  the ordinary with this storm.

Onward to Hoisington

We continued our journey west of hwy 4 past Redwing and onward toward  Hoisington. We also continued looking for the base. Surely there would be  something visible / viewable once we could see the base. We slowed our approach somewhere past Redwing because it just kept getting spookier, and spookier as we went. Finally, about 3 miles west of Redwing and at close to 9:15 we were able  to see under the base. We pulled over on the side of the road and watched the "show". In the distance, to the SW I could see lights in the distance for many miles, perhaps 10 to 25. It was very clear under the storm in this direction. It was my impression that these were the lights of Hoisington, but I suppose they  could have been Great Bend since Hoisington was almost dirctly in front of us,  and a bit to the south. Additionally, it was obvious that everything around us  was extremely charged in the sky. Most likely all the ground objects around us (included the outside of our vehicle) was probably extremely negatively charged and the atmosphere was just waiting for something, or someone to complete the  circuit. Well, unfortunately the coke and M&M's had done their stint with me, and had other plans. Reluctantly, I stepped out of the vehicle paranoid  about touching anything metal to do the inevitable. I must say this is an  interesting feat with inflow winds blowing nearly 60 miles an hour. The door of my Tahoe nearly came off when I opened it. However, as you know, when you got a go, you got a, well you know the rest.

Talk about eerie, man check out the way the sky and those clouds with all the  freaky lightning looks when you are no longer protected by your vehicle structure around you. You get the feeling that you may be carried off by aliens, or, something worse. I quickly got back in the vehicle. We continued to look  under the base, and eventually determined that we were looking WNW into the inflow area not too far away. Eventually we were able to see a wall cloud  hanging down. My partner was concerned about being under the base, with other areas of rotation coming up on us from the south. Our position, and the darkness made it difficult to resolve lowerings, and circulations directly overhead. He was reluctant to go forward any more. Instinctively he knew that would NOT be  wise. We sat there for 5 to 10 minutes. As Gene began to see something large and  rounded in the circulation starting to spin up rapidly, he gave the order to  quickly turn around and "move!". I had NO problem responding to this. We were out of there at least for now! We backed east a number of miles, and then pulled  over and watched some more. We continued to see lowered areas, along with areas  of apparent heavy precipitation, which we did not want to be caught in to our NW. I believe about this time is when we heard the NWS Mr. Roboto tell of a  confirmed dangerous tornado on the ground with injuries at Hoisington.

We didn't want to drive into a mess on the way to Great Bend for the night since obviously there would be emergency vehicles at work, etc and we would be in the way. We figured it was game over for the night, so we headed east back through Claflin, slowed down for the cops, etc. Right before entering Claflin  our cop and other emergency vehicles were headed due west out of town past us  and apparently directly toward Hoisington and our storm. We thought it was  remarkable and must be something serious if they would send vehicles into a storm that looked like that. We passed more emergency vehicles east of Claflin,  and finally pulled off on the north side of hwy 4 in a field with good visibility. We began downloading the latest reflectivity and velocity images.  These images were close to 9:45 PM to 10 PM. It was apparent that there were some very clear "tornadic" signatures on the storms passing before us in the field ahead of us. We could make out a lot of detail. It was great to be able to  look at features with your eyes while at the same time back it up and compare it  to the radar images we downloaded. Connections were working great! We decided we were there to chase tornadoes so why let one go past. We could already see the area, which we had been watching previously although it was rapidly getting away from us. My friend found a road headed due north from Claflin. So I quickly headed back to Claflin and took it.

Beast in the Night

We quickly caught up to the backside of the storm, which we had been avoiding  previously. The adrenaline was going and we yearned to see a bit further into  the night. Slowly we began to resolve features as we neared the backside of the  lowered cloud deck. And then, there it was! Just to our NNE in the distance,  headed toward the town of Ellsworth (Roboto butchered this name). We could clearly make out a tornado on the ground violently twisting and turning as it  headed away from us. It was very dark, but all the lightning made it possible to  catch the features of this monster on the ground probably 3 to 5 miles away. I  previously described this tornado as "morphing". By that I mean that it's shape was rapidly changing length, width, and thickness second by second. From what we could see, back lit by lightning it appeared to be somewhat violent, though I  suspect it was no where near as strong as it had been at Hoisington. I am also  not sure if it is the same "funnel family" as Hoisington. Supposedly there was / had been damage at the town of Susank north of Hoisington. When were looking at the storm west of Redwing we suspected that there might have been another circulation further back in the storm, and that we were seeing a separate one on  the SE side of the same storm. The tornado we were witnessing may have been  given birth by a separate circulation within the same parent storm. Either way  it was intense, and we felt sorry for whoever encountered this "beast in the  night".

At some point, we started to take a road east. Then stopped, turned around,  and lost clear view of the tornado. I suspect it was still going strong. We probably should have continued to follow it, but it was getting late, we had not  eaten, we needed to find a place for the night, and Sunday was supposed to be a big chase day in the daylight. We wanted to be fresh so we turned around.

For the life of me, I don't know why we didn't pull out a camcorder. We had  two of them, and could easily have attempted to film whatever there was.  Thinking back on it after the fact, I now realize that my Sony Hi 8 has the  "Night Shot" mode, and may have worked well to film this night twister. I used  it once before for night tornadoes near Valentine NE and it worked well. The  picture is all green but it works well with the lightning to produce a visible image. A lot of this could have been captured if we had the dash mounted  camcorder I've been talking about getting. Still, those things are fairly expensive, and I've already spent quite a bit on a chase setup this season.

It would have been much easier to track this storm with the GPS. It also would have been a great test for SWIFT. I just recently got one of the yellow  GPS's, which works with StreetMap USA. However, I'm having trouble getting the  GPS to work. Every time it starts it has to re-initialize with the Com port on Win 98. Seems there is some type of conflict between it and my cellular modem. If anyone knows any ideas on trouble shooting this connection, I'd like to hear  their ideas.

We briefly continued tracking the storm down 156 and I-70. On the way down 156 toward Ellsworth we encountered numerous emergency vehicles headed for  Hoisington. Our storm basically just fell apart when it finally crossed the  boundary as the other storm had done earlier in the day. We crashed for the night in Salina.

As I said it was a memorable storm. I'd say it was memorable because of the  strength of the lightning, wind, and bizarre storm features. It is also  memorable because of what it did at Hoisington, and knowing what we were looking at as the beast wandered the night.

Bill

Tornado Extreme Storm Chase