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5/22/07 Hill City, Kansas
Loaded Gun Storm Chasing
website of storm chaser Mikey Gribble
website of storm chaser Mikey Gribble
To be honest I can't remember much about the setup from this chase. I know there was a cold
front dryline intersection over Kansas and I'm pretty sure I played the northern most portion of
the dryline, just South of the cold front. I headed out towards Dodge City initially and planned on
getting on the internet there to fine tune my forecast. Once getting to Dodge I checked data and
headed NW to a cumulus field that was forming a few counties North of us. Right as we got to the
cumulus field two cells went up and started moving to the northeast.
It took a couple of hours for the storm to really get going. The first picture on the left up above
was a wall cloud that produced a little appendage that you could classify as a funnel. It did have
rapid rotation and vertical motion for a few seconds. At this time there were two updraft bases on
the the storm. The second updraft base was behind us in that picture. It was much healthier than
the one pictured, but it didn't have any lowerings at the time.
After the storm cycled through several times, producing nothing more than rotating wall clouds, it
finally got its act together and produced a tornado. The video of this tornado forming is pretty
cool. A tail cloud formed as air was quickly sucked in and condensed. Then all of a sudden a white
funnel appeared just in front of the tail cloud. It didn't take long for the funnel to pick up some
dust at the ground, which is in the second picture. We were pretty close to the tornado when it
touched down (probably about a half mile).
The tornado lasted for about five minutes and slowly roped out. The storm continued to produce a
couple more rotating wall clouds, but it never managed to tornado again. A new storm went up
just South of us about an hour before dark and we quickly dropped down to get on it.
Unfortunately we had to punch the core of the storm to get there (heavy rain and hail is in the
core) and I paid dearly for it. My brand new Xterra is now covered in hail dents because of that. I
knew it was going to happen sooner or later so I actually wasn't too mad about it. If you storm
chase it is only a matter of time before your car takes a beating.
We got on the southern storm right as it went tornado warned. We watched it for about thirty
minutes before deciding to leave for Hays. I wanted to get to Hays in time to feed video back to
KWCH for the news at 10PM. The storm was putting out an incredible amount of lightning as we
left. It was seriously like three strikes a second. I have only seen one or two storms that could
compete with that one on lightning.
The one other memorable part of this chase was the roads. I like to get close to tornadoes and
that means positioning yourself under the mesocyclone before tornadoes form. This usually forces
you to take back roads since there is rarely a paved road running right under the business end of
the storm. The roads that we were on that day were beyond muddy. I was seriously driving
sideways half the time. There was a eight foot wall of mud and dirt on the passenger side of the
road at one point and I could not get my car to straighten out. I was sliding sideways
uncontrollably and I had no choice but to continue gassing it. My rear quarter panel was just
scraping against this wall of mud. I thought for sure my car was going to be all scratched to hell,
but some how she made it out of it OK. We probably were stuck on nasty roads for 15 miles or so
on this chase. Any chaser that has been in the middle of nowhere on these kinds of roads knows
the amazing feeling of relief you get when you finally reach a paved one. There is something about
the idea of getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with nobody to help that really stresses me out.
Whenever I get on a really muddy road like that (where getting stuck is a possibility) I always lock
my hands in the ten and two position and tense up. It is incredibly nerve racking for me. Anyways,
we made it out safe with a bunch of hail dents and a tornado to show for it. I got to do lots of call
ins on air to KWCH that night, I sold some video, and I got to see an awesome storm, so all in all
it was a great chase.
This storm chase ended up being widely discussed among the storm chasing community after the
event due to some jackass sheriff out by Hill City. The Hays paper ran an article with the sheriff
quoted talking about how all the chasers on the storm were causing traffic jams, impeding
emergency workers, and preventing spotters from reaching their assigned locations. He went on
to say something about how chasers don't do anything good and he didn't want them in his
county. That is a bunch of bullshit. There were a lot of chasers on this storm and other people
might have been inconvenienced a little, but not to the degree that this sheriff said. Impeded
emergency workers? From doing what? There weren't any structures hit by the tornado. The only
thing the emergency workers were doing that day was phoning in reports on the storm and 90%
of the time cops call in false reports anyways. If we were impeding them we were more than likely
doing the community a favor. We don't do any good? That guy can bite me. Who does he think
calls in reports to the National Weather Service and the TV stations. Storm chasers do. Cops try
to report on the storms, but normally all they do is fill the radio waves with false reports and other
jackassery. They don't know storm structure and they don't know how to accurately report on a
storm. I hope the sheriff tells his wife to turn off the TV the next time they have a tornado
warning because apparently I'm not doing anything good either. What a dumbass.
front dryline intersection over Kansas and I'm pretty sure I played the northern most portion of
the dryline, just South of the cold front. I headed out towards Dodge City initially and planned on
getting on the internet there to fine tune my forecast. Once getting to Dodge I checked data and
headed NW to a cumulus field that was forming a few counties North of us. Right as we got to the
cumulus field two cells went up and started moving to the northeast.
It took a couple of hours for the storm to really get going. The first picture on the left up above
was a wall cloud that produced a little appendage that you could classify as a funnel. It did have
rapid rotation and vertical motion for a few seconds. At this time there were two updraft bases on
the the storm. The second updraft base was behind us in that picture. It was much healthier than
the one pictured, but it didn't have any lowerings at the time.
After the storm cycled through several times, producing nothing more than rotating wall clouds, it
finally got its act together and produced a tornado. The video of this tornado forming is pretty
cool. A tail cloud formed as air was quickly sucked in and condensed. Then all of a sudden a white
funnel appeared just in front of the tail cloud. It didn't take long for the funnel to pick up some
dust at the ground, which is in the second picture. We were pretty close to the tornado when it
touched down (probably about a half mile).
The tornado lasted for about five minutes and slowly roped out. The storm continued to produce a
couple more rotating wall clouds, but it never managed to tornado again. A new storm went up
just South of us about an hour before dark and we quickly dropped down to get on it.
Unfortunately we had to punch the core of the storm to get there (heavy rain and hail is in the
core) and I paid dearly for it. My brand new Xterra is now covered in hail dents because of that. I
knew it was going to happen sooner or later so I actually wasn't too mad about it. If you storm
chase it is only a matter of time before your car takes a beating.
We got on the southern storm right as it went tornado warned. We watched it for about thirty
minutes before deciding to leave for Hays. I wanted to get to Hays in time to feed video back to
KWCH for the news at 10PM. The storm was putting out an incredible amount of lightning as we
left. It was seriously like three strikes a second. I have only seen one or two storms that could
compete with that one on lightning.
The one other memorable part of this chase was the roads. I like to get close to tornadoes and
that means positioning yourself under the mesocyclone before tornadoes form. This usually forces
you to take back roads since there is rarely a paved road running right under the business end of
the storm. The roads that we were on that day were beyond muddy. I was seriously driving
sideways half the time. There was a eight foot wall of mud and dirt on the passenger side of the
road at one point and I could not get my car to straighten out. I was sliding sideways
uncontrollably and I had no choice but to continue gassing it. My rear quarter panel was just
scraping against this wall of mud. I thought for sure my car was going to be all scratched to hell,
but some how she made it out of it OK. We probably were stuck on nasty roads for 15 miles or so
on this chase. Any chaser that has been in the middle of nowhere on these kinds of roads knows
the amazing feeling of relief you get when you finally reach a paved one. There is something about
the idea of getting stuck in the middle of nowhere with nobody to help that really stresses me out.
Whenever I get on a really muddy road like that (where getting stuck is a possibility) I always lock
my hands in the ten and two position and tense up. It is incredibly nerve racking for me. Anyways,
we made it out safe with a bunch of hail dents and a tornado to show for it. I got to do lots of call
ins on air to KWCH that night, I sold some video, and I got to see an awesome storm, so all in all
it was a great chase.
This storm chase ended up being widely discussed among the storm chasing community after the
event due to some jackass sheriff out by Hill City. The Hays paper ran an article with the sheriff
quoted talking about how all the chasers on the storm were causing traffic jams, impeding
emergency workers, and preventing spotters from reaching their assigned locations. He went on
to say something about how chasers don't do anything good and he didn't want them in his
county. That is a bunch of bullshit. There were a lot of chasers on this storm and other people
might have been inconvenienced a little, but not to the degree that this sheriff said. Impeded
emergency workers? From doing what? There weren't any structures hit by the tornado. The only
thing the emergency workers were doing that day was phoning in reports on the storm and 90%
of the time cops call in false reports anyways. If we were impeding them we were more than likely
doing the community a favor. We don't do any good? That guy can bite me. Who does he think
calls in reports to the National Weather Service and the TV stations. Storm chasers do. Cops try
to report on the storms, but normally all they do is fill the radio waves with false reports and other
jackassery. They don't know storm structure and they don't know how to accurately report on a
storm. I hope the sheriff tells his wife to turn off the TV the next time they have a tornado
warning because apparently I'm not doing anything good either. What a dumbass.
| 5/22/07 Tornadic Supercell Hill City, Kansas click here for storm reports and more information from this day |