Saturday, May 29, 2004 will always be a red letter day for me. I had been in Baltimore all week, eyeing Saturday as a potential tornado chase day over the Central Plains. On Friday, I called my friends Karen and Gene Rhoden in Norman, Oklahoma. I asked if they were chasing on Saturday. Of course, they were. Karen asked me to join them. So I hopped a Southwest Airlines flight to Oklahoma City. Saturday morning dawned grey with shower and a stiff south wind. It was the warm front coming north. The Storm Prediction Center had the Central Plains under a High Risk outlook.
We met up in Norman about 9 a.m. and headed north about 10:30 a.m.. It looked like the main action would be north and we chose Hutchinson, Kansas as our target. The best shear would be over Oklahoma, but the cap might hold too strong and prevent storm development. Blue skies broke out and temperatures quickly warmed into the 90s as we drove to Ponca City, Oklahoma where we held for awhile with several other chasers. Dewpoints were in the 70s and the strong south wind was really zipping the building cumulus clouds across the Plains landscape. We were waiting on the dryline, which was back over western Oklahoma. It would break the cap eventually. But our worry was that the temperature and dewpoint spreads were getting to be too large for tornadoes to form. Finally, storms began to fire near Medicine Lodge, Kansas and we raced westward hoping to intercept them. The storms were not very organized. It began to look like the day was going to be a high risk bustola. Still, I was enjoying the heck out of the scenery. Even the disorganized storms were beautiful to me and the Plains landscape was a masterpiece. We stopped and enjoyed a lone, isolated thunderstorm that was rotating like mad in southern Kansas. Faced with a decision of whether to turn south and head back to Norman or chase the pitiful little storm we had just seen, we chose to chase.
We stayed on the storm’s heels and caught up with it about four miles southwest of Harper, Kansas. As we pulled alongside, it produced a slender, tapered tornado that was backlit by the setting sun. It would be the first of at least seven tornadoes that we would see that evening.
We met up in Norman about 9 a.m. and headed north about 10:30 a.m.. It looked like the main action would be north and we chose Hutchinson, Kansas as our target. The best shear would be over Oklahoma, but the cap might hold too strong and prevent storm development. Blue skies broke out and temperatures quickly warmed into the 90s as we drove to Ponca City, Oklahoma where we held for awhile with several other chasers. Dewpoints were in the 70s and the strong south wind was really zipping the building cumulus clouds across the Plains landscape. We were waiting on the dryline, which was back over western Oklahoma. It would break the cap eventually. But our worry was that the temperature and dewpoint spreads were getting to be too large for tornadoes to form. Finally, storms began to fire near Medicine Lodge, Kansas and we raced westward hoping to intercept them. The storms were not very organized. It began to look like the day was going to be a high risk bustola. Still, I was enjoying the heck out of the scenery. Even the disorganized storms were beautiful to me and the Plains landscape was a masterpiece. We stopped and enjoyed a lone, isolated thunderstorm that was rotating like mad in southern Kansas. Faced with a decision of whether to turn south and head back to Norman or chase the pitiful little storm we had just seen, we chose to chase.
We stayed on the storm’s heels and caught up with it about four miles southwest of Harper, Kansas. As we pulled alongside, it produced a slender, tapered tornado that was backlit by the setting sun. It would be the first of at least seven tornadoes that we would see that evening.
on May 28, 2006, 9:40 pm
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