Thursday May 3rd - The so called "Colorado" tornado outbreak wasn't an outbreak at all. These storms were EXTREMELY high based and suffered from tremendous outflow problems. Many spin ups, or gustnadoes formed, but certainly were not connected to the cloud base. I have a very hard time believing the reports that these were tornadoes.
Friday, May 4 - Caught a rapidly rotating supercell east of Phillipsburg, Kansas. This storm was 60,000 ft tall and was tornado warned for nearly 2 hours. There were at times funnels, but nothing touched down. It appeared it moved onto the cool side of the boundary, thus sucking in cool, stable air. We saw the Greensburg storm but chose not to take the tours to it since it had a monster tornado and was after dark.
Saturday May 5th - Kansas tornado outbreak. We intercepted 6, and possibly 7 tornadoes this day, including three very strong tornadoes. The town of Mackville, Kansas came close to being obliterated from the map!! There were numerous tornadic supercells that raced northeast along the boundary and produced many tornadoes. Nearly 80 tornado reports came in this day from the Dakotas to Texas.
Sunday May 6th - We intercepted several severe storms in Oklahoma. Upper level flow was parallel to the dryline, causing storms to seed each other and become a huge squall line. Lightning was awesome, but the tornado threat quickly ended.
Tuesday May 8th - Very interesting day as we started in Lubbock and blasted south to Seminole as a tornado warned piece of a squall line/bow echo blasted through knocking down trees and power lines. It was quite an intense system! Later we approached Throckmorton, TX to find a RAPIDLY rotating supercell with a nice striated, bell shaped base. This storm had produced a tornado and tried to again several times!
Now time for a break!
Roger Hill
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