HailSTONE 2 Day 6: 22 May 2012

After leaving work on May 21, I prepared for what would be my second marathon drive in a week's time to meet up with Project HailSTONE for the first time in 2012.  I departed ICT for Watertown, SD around 3:30 pm and finally arrived shortly after midnight on the 22nd.  After a short night of sleep, the PI's held the morning briefing deciding on a target area of Bismark, North Dakota.

The team departed Watertown, SD ~10:30 am to get in position to wait for convective initiation north of Bismark.  After a few car issues (including my data card antenna getting blown off of my roof again), ice cream sandwiches for good luck, and footraces down dirt roads, the cold front had overtaken us without convection initiating due to abundant stratus clouds in the area.  Taking this into account, the team repositioned to the east and was able to salvage the day by intercepting a cluster of storms south of Jamestown, North Dakota during the evening hours. 

 
The team decided to trek eastward across South Dakota and brave gusty outflow winds (measured ~50mph; 5-10mph error) from collapsing storms to return to Watertown, SD for a short night's rest.

First Kansas Tornadoes: 19 May 2012

I departed ICT around 3:30pm after work and quickly outfitting my car with chase gear.  Due to my late departure time, I chase to adjust my initial target area eastward from Pratt, KS to Kingman, KS.  Unfortunately, my late departure prevented me from being able to join Project Hailstone for operations on this day.  With meager low level shear, my main goals for the day were to get back into the groove of chasing before rejoining HailSTONE, shoot structure and observe hail.

Storms initiated along the cold front across Central Kansas around 4pm, with the southernmost cell near Stafford, KS showing the most promise.  Upon reaching Kingman, Kansas a little after 4:30pm, I decided to move north on State Highway 14 and northeast on back roads toward Hutchinson to get ahead of this particular storm. After spending an hour shooting structure and observing the updraft base of the storm that featured persistent rainfall in the vicinity, I noticed the storm begin to move to the southeast and backbuild toward cumulus towers that were going up to the south.

At this point, I decided it was in my best interest to proceed south on highway 17 toward Murdock, KS.  Before I could do this, I met the entire ROTATE team waiting to turn onto the same road. After allowing the ROTATE team to go ahead of me, I was able to proceed south.  After 5 miles of driving south, I spotted a thin funnel cloud through the persistent precipitation in the vicinity of the updraft.  After quickly pulling over and grabbing my camera, I observed and documented two seperate rope landspouts that lasted a little less than a minute apeice.

After documenting these landspouts, I noticed storms were beginning to initiate and intensify to the south of my storm, thus introducing the chance for mergers to occur. I decided to quickly proceed south of Highway 400 toward Harper and Argonia, where I began to take back roads to better position myself to observe additional tornadoes. I coincidentally ran into Jared Leighton and Mike Mezuel from the HailSTONE team while repositioning to the south and observed my third tornado of the day near Rago, KS from a distance over the trees that landscaped the area.   Upon my initial analysis of radar data, it appears that these tornadoes formed as the result of a storm merger, thus marking the first time that I've observed such an event from start to finish in the field (12/31/10 in Jackson, MS was also a merger, but rainwrapped).

After finally briefly getting caught in hail, I quickly blasted southeast out of the path of the rapidly developing QLCS and shot some structure in the company of some storm chasers from Switzerland near Caldwell, Kansas.  After observing some decent structure, several CG strikes, and a colorful sunset behind the newly formed QLCS, I wrapped up one of my most surprising and satisfying chases with a short drive back to ICT.

Distance: 200 miles
Wx: 3 tornadoes, large hail, structure

Slight Risk, No Reward: 11 March 2012

On a day where there was little school work to do, Cooper, Blanchard, and myself departed MLU around 11am with an initial target of Fordyce, AR.  Although this particular day garnered the attention of the SPC, who issued a 10% tornado risk across much of Central and Southern Arkansas into Northwestern Louisiana in their morning outlook, My expectations for this particular chase were tempered. Stratus covered much of the region from the previous day's convection that was generated from a residual MCV in northeastern Texas. This would greatly inhibit destabilization across the region, thus making intense convection in the target area a longshot.

The morning sounding from KSHV revealed no instability and no capping inversion, which would allow storms to quickly intensify and new storms to initiate over a large area as existing convection moved into the pre-frontal convergence axis.

Regional radar showing stratiform rain affecting the target area in southern Arkansas as convection intensifies in the pre-frontal convergence zone in far eastern Texas. 

Upon arriving in El Dorado, AR around 12:30pm, we were greeted by cool stable air and a light stratiform drizzle that essentially killed any chance of decent convection over the target area as expected. After spending about 30 minutes analyzing the situation around Shreveport and deciding that the main threat for the remainder of the day would be damaging wind and a few isolated MCS/QLCS tornadoes, we decided to chalk up our losses and return to Monroe.

Miles: 200
Wx: None