I drove twice this chase season for Tempest Tours and have included some pictures for your viewing pleasure, disdain, or amusement. The links can be found on my personal website by following the appropriate link below:
Tornadoes in Kansas on May 22, 2008
My chase log for that great day in May:
On the last full day of the Tempest Tours storm chase, our group of twenty-three finally hit pay dirt. The Storm Prediction Center had been touting Thursday for nearly the past forty-eight hours as having a risk for severe weather all the way from the Texas Panhandle to southeastern Wyoming.
Who says those weather guys never get it right?
Our group, which consisted of guests from all over the English-speaking world, had been patiently awaiting D-day on the Plains while cooking under a large ridge of high pressure for over a week. When the ridge finally broke down and allowed an upper level trough to deepen over the Rockies, the Tempest team brought the paying customers right into the playground of several tornadoes!
The particular storm we followed put down its first tornado near Grainfield, KS at around 5:45 in the afternoon. This tornado appeared ghostly white against a light gray background as it raced off to the north at nearly fifty miles per hour. I could best describe the shape as being that of an elephant tusk, complete with a pretty debris cloud that dragged along behind it. As we headed north, we continued playing leap frog with a convergence of other storm chasers, jockeying with them for position along the shoulder of the two-lane highway. After gracing the western backdrop for nearly ten minutes, the tornado decayed and vanished.
This storm was just getting organized, cycling itself north into a beautiful mesocyclone which quickly spit out a second tornado, appearing at first like a large black wedge to the west, then standing proudly as it moved gracefully northward at a more reasonable pace of perhaps thirty miles per hour. Fifteen minutes and several hundred photographs later, the second beast became history and was swallowed by the sky.
But the parent thunderstorm again cycled to the north and wound itself up into an ominous dark coil in the sky. That's when the show really began. We were treated to five more tornadoes in a ground-hugging merry-go-round that displayed nearly every type of tornado imaginable. Regrettably, I missed several key photo opportunities because of my primary responsibility of driving.
We ended the day in Salina, KS, arriving at our hotel after midnight, exhausted but filled with stories of a lifetime.
Note: The final picture in the sequence was taken by one of the Tempest drivers. Note the debris cloud to the right of the two cars ahead. We are the first car. Now THAT was close.
The second storm chase began in Denver on June 21 and had us playing mostly in the western Dakotas, western Nebraska, and northeastern Wyoming. The scenery consisted mostly of interesting clouds, bison, and a few geographic (and not-so-geographic) wonders. Compared to the May chase, it was an uninspiring event; but it was not without its good moments. (The pictures from this chase did not warrant their own folder, so I lumped the best of them along with those of May.)
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