Storms fired a lit­tle before church got out last night, so we took the long way home (thru Welling­ton). Photos:

243rd West & 71st S

South of Con­way Springs

K-49 & 20th N, Sum­ner Co

Prettty!

The graphic is pretty self-explanatory. My posi­tions and times are indi­cated. Orig­i­nal graphic, zoomable, at http://www.crh.noaa.gov/ict/?n=april14th_sgTrack

Um…too close, methinks.

This was a chal­leng­ing, inter­est­ing and a bit too excit­ing chase. Nolan, Matt, Shay­lon and I loaded up as planned and left town a lit­tle after 1:30pm, headed for Pratt.

Early on, we decided to take the cells just SW of Dodge City…but see­ing that things would be mov­ing quickly, we decided that we’d skirt Pratt and go meet the storms as they arrived in the Macksville area. Sat on the west edge of Macksville for maybe half an hour and saw what may have been a rain-wrapped fun­nel pass just north­west of town.

We pulled east a lit­tle bit and watched the storm as it con­tin­ued to go to the north­east. This was the storm that would become the first large tor­nado of the day as it came near Goes­sel, Mar­quette, and even­tu­ally Salina. We let that storm go on to the north­east and regrouped for a bit in Stafford. The plan then was to inter­cept the storm com­ing through Bar­ber and Pratt county at the time, about Arling­ton. That one passed to our west, with maybe a brief fun­nel, but I don’t really think so.

Next was a dash for King­man for gas stop, and to get just ahead of the storm com­ing through west­ern Harper county at the time. We sat east of King­man just off 54 and watched that one fun­nel sev­eral times as it passed north and west of town. We shot east to K17 to try and get back on the cell in the Pretty Prairie area.

Shortly after shoot­ing this photo just south of Pretty Prairie, we arrived at Par­al­lel Road and turned west…just in time to see this low-contrast, weak tor­nado cross the road:

Video: Fun­nel North of Pretty Prairie

As we came out of the area where this was and tried to catch up with the storm as it headed just to the south of Hutchin­son, we got caught in the chaser horde, includ­ing Reed Tim­mer and his hangers-on. They decided to fol­low the storm, which went on to go through the Moundridge area. We let them. Chaser horde, ugh.

Our plan was to scoot down the west side of Sedg­wick and Sum­ner coun­ties to Argonia…we already had our eyes on the storm com­ing out of Okla­homa that would become the Oatville tor­nado. It got dark while we made this re-positioning run.

After we decided to go east from Argonia, we kept a really close eye on the storm and would pull east a mile or two every ten min­utes or so as it turned ever so slightly to the right. What we were see­ing on the RADAR was – well, beyond descrip­tion. The range to the Argonia storm from the Vance AFB site is com­pa­ra­ble the dis­tance from Dodge City’s site to Greens­burg.  Last night’s storm was show­ing sim­ply unfath­omable winds in the meso­cy­clone. Col­ors I’d never seen on my screen. They would per­sist until the storm cycled near Clear­wa­ter, pick­ing up and weak­en­ing just slightly before tight­en­ing back up and sit­ting down at Oatville.

These video grabs are from about 9:30pm, as I recall. Taken look­ing west on US 160 from about half a mile west of Milan Road. Argonia would have been just to the left of the frame.

At this point, it appears to be a fun­nel when it’s lit up. Between the com­puter screen and traf­fic on US 160, my night vision was shot, but a few minute ear­lier when it was south­west of us, all four of us had caught a cou­ple of lightning-lit glances of the wedge tor­nado and a smaller satel­lite twister that I described dur­ing this TV report:

TV screen shot taken by Laura White, who was in her shel­ter with Cristi, my youngest daugh­ter, and Ryan, Pat’s son. They were near Clear­wa­ter, and were look­ing right down the throat of this storm.

After the storm passed to our north, we made the deci­sion to high-tail it to the turn­pike and get back north, meet­ing the storm again as it crossed Clear­wa­ter Road west of Broad­way. As we were get­ting into that posi­tion, we heard that Emer­gency Man­age­ment reported the tor­nado had lifted out­side Clear­wa­ter. We got to Merid­ian and Clear­wa­ter Road and went north, plan­ning to sit on the west edge of Haysville and watch the storm.

Now we shift to RADAR shorts with our loca­tion over­laid. I’ll let them speak for them­selves. Times are at the upper right of the images. Take a look in the lower right of the image at the RADAR-measured wind speeds in the storm. In this first one, 98 knots (112 MPH) toward the RADAR site, 100 knots (115 MPH) away from the RADAR. That’s an insane amount of shear! (Speed is the for­ward sped of the storm)

Some notes here: the path I show on this map is solely my esti­mate based on the RADAR images from the time period and the degree of dam­age I saw. I do not believe the offi­cial dam­age assessment/survey is done, so the path may not bear any resem­blance to what the weather ser­vice marks as the offi­cial storm path.

At 10:20pm, we were cross­ing the Turn­pike bridge on 71st street south. Dam­age started at the foot of the bridge – in fact, the signs for north­bound traf­fic just to the south of the bridge were sheared off. We dodged mul­ti­ple 4–5” or maybe larger branches in the road, includ­ing hav­ing one fall just as we passed and scrape the mag­netic anten­nas off the roof.

At 10:22, we were turn­ing right at 63rd and Hydraulic. This is the loca­tion an entire garage roof was lifted off the garage. My instincts told me we were in strong inflow wind of 70 MPH or greater, and the tor­nado was just to our north obscured by rain. Nolan reported see­ing power flashes to our north. We’d been see­ing power flashes in our vicin­ity since we were just SW of Haysville.

At 10:24 the rain was blind­ing, the wind blow­ing it nearly hor­i­zon­tal, and it was com­ing from the south­east. We were pass­ing 63rd & Clifton at this time, Based on pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ences being in the inflow of a devel­op­ing tor­nado, I think this is about the time the tor­nado set down, a mile to our north in the trailer park. We con­tin­ued east just as fast as we could, allow­ing for traf­fic lights that were out and keep­ing the van at a speed that would avoid hydroplaning.

We cleared the rain shaft about 63rd and Green­wich Road – maybe closer to 127th, I’m not sure. Though we con­tin­ued to chase, we had allowed the tor­nado to get sev­eral miles north of us by this time. At US 54 and Santa Fe Lake Road, we called off the chase and went back to see whether Matt’s home or my home had been dam­aged. We stopped near 63rd and Madi­son and Matt took sev­eral pho­tos of old trees that had been top­pled and had the root ball showing.

My house is less than 1000 feet from my 10:20pm loca­tion on the map above. All we had, damage-wise, was some branches down about the diam­e­ter of my thumb. Matt had some smaller branches and leaves down, in the Pawnee and Seneca area.

Exciting…yes. Too close? Yes.

Par­tic­u­larly Dan­ger­ous Sit­u­a­tion Tor­nado Watch issued until 6pm.

Prob­a­bil­ity of 2 or more tornadoes

High (80%)

Prob­a­bil­ity of 1 or more strong (F2-F5) tornadoes

High (70%)

Prob­a­bil­ity of 10 or more severe wind events

High (90%)

Prob­a­bil­ity of 1 or more wind events > 65 knots (75 mph)

High (80%)

Prob­a­bil­ity of 10 or more severe hail events

High (>95%)

Prob­a­bil­ity of 1 or more hail­stones > 2 inches

High (80%)

Wichita is NOT included in this one.

We’ll be headed west in about 2 hours. Today is shap­ing up to be a long day, so we’re let­ting the early storms go in order to pre­serve some energy for later.

AND:

The 45% tor­nado risk area has been extended south. It hasn’t updated to my RADAR app yet, but I think it includes Wichita.

Well, a lot of ink has been spilled, a lot of pix­els have been pro­duced, and a lot of antic­i­pa­tion has gone on in advance of today. This is my take on the whole thing, for what it’s worth.

THIS IS STILL A BIG DEAL

There have been some peo­ple who took the change from 60% risk in yesterday’s Day 2 out­look to a 30% tor­nado risk in today’s Day 1 out­look as a less­en­ing of the risk for today. It is not any­thing of the type. Let’s com­pare it to shop­ping for fruit at the gro­cery store. Yes­ter­day, fore­cast­ers were as cer­tain as they can be that we’d be shop­ping for apples today. This morn­ing, they have a decent cer­tainty that we’ll come home with the Pink Lady apples that are on sale.

Total severe weather risk prob­a­bil­ity is what the out­looks are based on through Day 2. That’s “apples” in the exam­ple. Tor­nado prob­a­bil­ity, hail prob­a­bil­ity, and wind prob­a­bil­ity are sep­a­rately fore­cast in the day 1 out­look. They’d be Pink Lady, Granny Smith, and Jonathan apples in the exam­ple above.

Pink Lady (Tornado)	Granny Smith (Hail)	Jonathan (wind)

Pick a point. I’m going to use King­man as my exam­ple. Within a 25-mile cir­cle cen­tered at King­man High School, there is a 30% risk of tor­na­does between now and 7am tomor­row. There is a 30% risk of 1” or greater hail, and a 15% risk of wind at or above 60mph.

But here’s the impor­tant thing…in addi­tion to the 30% risk of any tor­nado hap­pen­ing, there is a 10% prob­a­bil­ity of a tor­nado of EF2 or greater strength. That’s the hatched area. For hail, the hatch­ing means there is a 10% risk of 2-inch or larger hail.

Bot­tom line: this is not going to be a pretty day. To echo some things I’ve said on Face­book: it’s not a day to try your hand at storm chas­ing. If you receive a warn­ing, resist your Kansas urge to go out­side and see if the warn­ing is for real. Just take cover.

My Pre-Storm Preparations

These are the thing I’m doing to pre­pare for the storms. They are dif­fer­ent than yours may be, as I will be out in the storms and may be called to help in any response to a storm-impacted com­mu­nity I’m close to. I’ve high­lighted the things I think are impor­tant for any­one to do today

• In my van, I have an emer­gency kit that includes sev­eral road flares, a first aid kit, a box of nitrile gloves (a lighter ver­sion of what EMS work­ers use) and heav­ier gloves for each per­son that will be with me today. I have also put a crow­bar in the van in case of the need to break some­thing to res­cue a per­son, and I have a million-candlepower spot­light to help with night activities.
• I have gath­ered all my vital doc­u­ments (home insur­ance paper­work, ID for all fam­ily mem­bers, pass­ports, immu­niza­tion records for the kids, and other things needed to estab­lish who I am and what I own if the worst hap­pens. I take this set of fold­ers with me on a day like today. You should have it within arms reach to take with you to shelter.
• After fin­ish­ing this post, I will do a walk-around of my home with a video cam­era, to record the con­tents of the house and garage. It’s the quick­est way I know to have an up-to-date inven­tory of what’s in the house in case of an insur­ance claim.
• Our fam­ily will be in four loca­tions tonight…one of us is quite a dis­tance away from here. That per­son (Roxan) is the des­ig­nated con­tact point for the oth­ers in the fam­ily if some­thing hap­pens. We, and our extended fam­ily mem­bers, will call her to check on us. She knows the exact loca­tions of each of the rest of us through­out the day today. Please, take time now to set up a con­tact point out­side the area that every­one in your fam­ily can call to ver­ify you’re okay. Remem­ber, in a major  dis­as­ter, the phone ser­vice is likely to be lost. If you can get a mes­sage out, that’s a sin­gle call. Your extended fam­ily can con­tact your point per­son, rather than try­ing to call into the dis­as­ter area and get hold of you.
• Cash and gaso­line are good things to have stocked up.
• Remem­ber to pre­pare a dis­as­ter kit if you haven’t. I’ve posted links to sev­eral resources on my Face­book profile.

Ok, Ok…so where am I chas­ing today?

There’s been a lot of dis­cus­sion in other venues about why. Given time con­straints, I’m not going to reit­er­ate that stuff. This is a day to keep a weather radio close by and be aware of your sur­round­ings. Don’t change your activ­ity plans at this point….just be aware, and ready to take shel­ter this after­noon and evening if needed.

Just happened…and I can eas­ily see why.

RADAR depici­ton of Ver­ti­cally Inte­grated Liq­uid — a proxy for hail — at 7:57 pm

Decent Hail Pos­si­bil­ity at 7:57pm

The storm at this point was just south of the dry line, mov­ing toward it. (Ignore my posi­tion, and the hail report. I cap­tured the image about 8:10, out of my RADAR app’s history)

Here’s 10 min­utes later, after the hail report, and after it had crossed the dry line.

At 8:07pm, storm is dying.

Per­fectly valid deci­sion not to warn, as the storm behaved just as expected — crossed the dry line and died. Beyond valid — a good deci­sion. Kudos to the WFO ICT Warn­ing Met on duty tonight.

SPC had issued Tor­nado Watch #160 for all the Okla­homa coun­ties in the ear­lier 10% risk area. No Kansas coun­ties included.  Storms ini­ti­at­ing in SW OK.

Severe weather is still sev­eral hours upstream from SC KS.

Good clear­ing going on, lead­ing to more atmos­pheric desta­bi­liza­tion. I’m not sur­prised the 10% tor­nado risk was moved just a bit fur­ther north and the Sig­nif­i­cant Tor­nado risk was expanded. SPC stayed with a slight risk over­all, mean­ing many of us won’t have any severe weather this after­noon or evening. But for those that do, the chance for dam­ag­ing hail and tor­na­does is enough to take notice.

Here’s an image like I see when I’m chas­ing. It’s from my RADAR app, and the lines indi­cate the tor­nado risk. I’ve labeled them for you, as well.

Just what do those des­ig­na­tors mean?

The per­cent­age risks mean if you pick any one point within the line (in this case, to the south­west of it), there is either a 5% or a 10% risk of any tor­nado (EF-0 or greater) occur­ring within 25 miles of that point. So, there is a 5% risk of any tor­nado hap­pen­ing within 25 miles of my front porch. If I lived in South Haven, the risk would be 10% of any tor­nado within 25 miles of me.

A risk of sig­nif­i­cant tor­na­does means fore­cast­ers believe what tor­na­does do form have the poten­tial to cause EF-2 or greater dam­age.  Harper, Danville and Argonia are in the area that has a 5% risk of tor­na­does, but if they hap­pen, fore­cast­ers believe they could be strong. The entire 10% lies within the sig­nif­i­cant tor­nado circle.

Let’s look at the same thing for hail: On this map I’ve turned off the road display.

This time the red line is a 30% risk of hail. The light blue line out­side it is the Sig­nif­i­cant Hail line, a cir­cle in which fore­cast­ers believe hail could exceed 2 INCHES in size. The darker blue line slic­ing the north­west cor­ner of Reno county is the 15% risk of hail line.

I’m still lik­ing Welling­ton as a start point, but may decide to shade things a bit north of there, we’ll see. Still not plan­ning to get on the road until between 4 and 5…probably the lat­ter end of that hour.

The plan for today is to shade the south­ern edge of Kansas not too far out from Wichita. As much as I don’t like play­ing along US 160 due to data issues, that looks to be where I’ll need to be. I may ven­ture south into the first tier of coun­ties in Okla­homa, but I’ve been hear­ing so much about that being a data waste­land now that I may not make the jump across the state line. Bet­ter to stream hail from the Kansas side than to have a tor­nado sneak up on me on the Okla­homa side!

Some mixed emo­tions about today, though for a dif­fer­ent rea­son than yes­ter­day. We’re get­ting SO focused on tomor­row that I’m afraid today may sur­prise many peo­ple, lead­ing to another false cho­rus of “we didn’t have any warn­ing.” For those in the south­ern two tiers of Kansas coun­ties and the north­ern two tiers of Okla­homa coun­ties between US-77 and US-281, today is not a day to let down your weather awareness.

I won’t be sur­prised to see a mod­er­ate risk posted for today at the mid-day SPC update. But given a level of uncer­tainty in the mod­els, they may hold back again like they did in the AM update. Def­i­nite day-before-the-day pat­tern devel­op­ing here. Storms fir­ing off a retreat­ing dry­line, not so com­mon around here on big weather days. That will make for an inter­est­ing evo­lu­tion, regard­less of how it goes.