Chase Log: 2006: Week 2

6/21/06, Baca County, CO (1 Tornado)
6/22/06, Prowers County, CO (1 Tornado, 1 Funnel)

6/22/06, Seward County, KS (1 Funnel)
6/24/06, Webster County, IA (2 Funnels)

Details:

6/19/06

Depart early afternoon from Chicago area.  We are heading out to the front range probably towards South Dakota.  We head out on 90 to Rockford and then get on 20 west.   When we get near Dubuque, IA a severe t-storm warning is put out for a cell just to our north.  We go and look at it because it is so close.   It is weak beyond belief and we just keep heading west on 20.  We stop in Fort Dodge overnight.

6/20/06

Storms today will most likely not be tornadic and I am thinking eastern Wyoming.  We get up early and keep heading west on 20.  We head up 29 to 90 in South Dakota and keep heading west. We end up seeing a severe t-storm watch box being put out, but decide that we will do some sightseeing and visit Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse in the Black Hills.  After sightseeing, we hear that the storms were not tornadic but that one was just west of us in eastern Wyoming.   We decide to go and look at it even though sunset is approaching, so we head west on 16 from Custer.  When we run into the storm right on the border, we find a good view point to look at the storm.  The storm is not near tornadic but it has great mammatus and really good lightning.  So we watch it for a while and then call it a day.

6/21/06

The outlook today is much better for tornados and I target eastern South Dakota.   We get back on 90 heading back east along the same route we took west the day before.   When we get near Sioux Falls we wait for storms to fire up.  We wait and wait!   OOOOPPPPS.  I don’t get blanked very often and not even see storms, but it happened today.   I quickly figure out where my forecast went wrong and plot a course for the next day to get back in the game.  We make an early night of it so we will be rested up.

6/22/06

I plot a course for the Colorado/Kansas border and we get on the road early.  When we get there storms start to fire in SE Colorado along the foot hills.    These storms are moving east.   I decide to head to the southern most storm and take our chances.  So we exit 70 and head south on 27.  From 27 we head west into the storm on 160, near Johnson.   We cross into Colorado  and we see large a shelf cloud with a nice lowering right on the south end.   We start following this area back east and within a half an hour we end up having a funnel drop down and a nice land spout tornado spin up.  It didn’t last long before the outflow took over.  The storm kicked up a wall of dust all along the shelf cloud.  Being that it was still early in the afternoon we looked on the radar for other good storms.  We made a bee line east on 160 for another storm.   When we get on that storm north of Sublette it had a nice wall cloud, but it shortly gusted itself out.  Looking at the radar, the storm in southeast Colorado that produced the tornado was pulsing again, now that it crossed into Kansas.  That storm will have the benefit of the outflow from this storm that just started to gust itself out north of Sublette.  So we head south to the intersection of the previous line and the outflow from the storm to the north.  Well the Weather Gods didn’t disappoint me.  The storm that was produced had a monster wall cloud that produced another weak funnel.   The wall cloud that was produced seemed too wide for conditions to produce a nice tornado, but it was very impressive.

6/23/06

We are figuring eastern Colorado again today and we are not that far away in Dodge City,  Kansas.  So we take our time and have steak for lunch(chaser reward for catching a tornado).  We start heading west and it looks like our steak lunch will cost us tornados today.  As we are heading west we keep hearing reports of tornados southeast of Denver.  We keep heading that direction.  When we get to Lamar there is no road that goes northeast so we just head north on 287.  We turn west at Eads on 96 and very soon we are running into a outflow boundary.  Then we see a spin up.  I hear a yell from behind me “Tornado”.  Nope, we just have gustnados, several of them.   Well we turn around and start to head for Lamar.  We try to stay ahead of the outflow and hope a storm fires out in front of the outflow.  Sure enough there was a storm much further south on the radar.   So we keep heading south.  As luck would have it, when we get close to Lamar, a cu goes up to the west of Lamar.   It rapidly develops and moves east.  We need to get south of it and we do just before it passed over 287.  Several updrafts form but one on the west side of the storm takes over and it produces a funnel.  Next a barrel shaped condensation funnel extends in an arch shape to the ground.  This storm starts to gust itself out and it goes super with another wall cloud forming out in front of the previous.  We follow that for about an hour but the storm was never able to get going again.  We call it a day and head back up through the rain to Lamar for the night.

6/24/06

This day is not looking good.  Just borderline for tornados.   Today is Nebraska panhandle and tomorrow is looking like Iowa.  Tomorrow looks better.  So we head north toward Nebraska.  We will decide whether to chase or position for the next day when we get up there.   So we head north on 385.   When we get up to 76, we decide to just position for the next day and head east on 80.

6/25/06

We wake up in Omaha, NE.  Close to our target area of west Iowa.  After getting an update on the weather information we start to head north towards Sioux City and keep going up 29 just south of Sioux Falls, SD.  Storms are firing all around but we see nothing that looks tornadic.  We keep repositioning and end up crossing into IA.   We go north on 75 up to the MN border.  We watch a storm pulsing with a wall cloud.  Unfortunately the outflow wins and we head back south to clear skies again hoping for more storms to initiate.  We take 75 to 3 and head east.  We keep having weak cu pop along the outflow boundary, but nothing that can get going until finally near Fort Dodge storms are going well.  We are coming up from behind but may get lucky if the storms can hold out for a bit longer.  Nope.  We were 5 or so miles away and could see a funnel spinning and dipping out of the back side.  It was a pretty sight but we were just a bit too far away to really enjoy it.   However a catch is a catch.  Now it is time to go home.