Date: May 18, 2013
Time: 5:00 - 8:30 PM CDT
Place: Kinsley, Rozel, and Sanford, KS
Distance: 545 mi (482 positioning, 51 chasing, 12 to hotel)
Camera: T3i, GoPro, Lumix
Warnings: SVR, TOR
Rating: S5

Forecast and Set Up

The special thing about storm chasing is that you wake up not knowing what you'll do that day, where you'll go to sleep, or whether lifelong dreams will be fulfilled.

Leading up to this weekend, chase forums exhibited varying degrees of excitement about storm prospects today and tomorrow. Like any potential storm system, some elements looked great while others were less than perfect. My instincts said this was the first really good chase day of the whole season. Moisture and instability were abundant from Texas all the way to Nebraska, with potentially explosive CAPE values approaching 5000 J/kg in areas of Kansas. A decently stout cap had me a little worried, but it appeared to be breakable given the large instability and sharpening dryline in central Kansas. Wind profiles were on the weaker side, with some hints of a veer-back-veer pattern (turning in opposite directions with height), which isn't optimal. All said, though, I felt the large instability would win the day and there might even be a couple strong tornados.

Toni and I left ABQ around mid-morning with a target of Greensburg, Kansas. After a pretty uneventful drive down I-40 listening to the Hyperion series on audio-book, excitement started to grow as we saw several chasers in Tucumcari, NM. I've never before noticed storm chase stickers and license plates this far from a target. In this case, we were all funneling northeast along Hwy 54 towards the central Kansas dryline. A moment of panic struck when we stopped briefly in Dalhart, TX and I glanced at Google maps on my phone, which must have gotten a bad GPS ping. I nearly passed out when it placed us near Hereford, TX (100 miles to the south), thinking I had unknowingly made a wrong turn and driven southeast for an hour. But no such comically dumb mistake had been made.

West of Liberal, KS, we got our first unmistakable sign of the dryline – a north-south line of cumulus stretching in either direction as far as the eye could see. Nothing had yet broken the cap, which was good as we were still 100 miles behind the dryline. An hour later in Bucklin, KS, we stopped directly under the building cumulus towers to film a little b-roll footage. Precipitation was starting to fall out of the larger towers and there were a couple rumbles of thunder, but the cap was still squashing everything almost as soon as it appeared on radar. We wandered a little farther east and then north to get ahead of where I thought the storms would initiate, and ended up sitting just outside our initial Greensburg target as the first cells started to fire.

The Chase

Despite the huge CAPE values, storms did not explode initially. We sat for quite some time between Greensburg and Kinsley wondering which storms would get their act together. A very mature tornado-warned supercell way to our north near Hays didn't tempt me at all; we would never catch that. Other cells were growing towards us out of Oklahoma, but they looked messy on radar. A couple miles to our west, a new tower was also developing. Despite its terrible radar presentation, this nearby updraft had an large flat base, which I felt was a good sign. Hence we made the call to stick with this nearby storm and see what it would do.

We followed it to Kinsley, where we positioned just to the east of the storm and watched the updraft vault become much better organized. During this time, I had a chance to get every motion timelapse shot I could think of. Then, after about 20 minutes, the ante was upped. From high up on the updraft vault, several small funnels emerged. These were non-tornadic shear funnels that had no chance of touching down, but they were still mesmerizing, and at one point there were three separate funnels simultaneously. Despite our relatively close vantage point, I was never too nervous about lightning as there was hardly any thunder during this stage of the storm development. This was about to change, however.

As the storm tracked to the north-northeast, we needed to reposition and get back in front of it. I was nervous about taking the north-south Hwy 183 in case the cell made a sudden right turn. So we gave the storm a little more space and headed north out of Garfield along dirt roads, now about 10 miles to the storm's east. During this drive, there was a sudden and very apparent spike in cloud-to-ground lightning. Within 2 or 3 minutes, the storm went from hardly any lightning to a bolt every several seconds. It was impressive enough that I got out of the car and set up the camera for several minutes to catch a bolt or two. But we didn't stay long at this position as we didn't have good visibility on the main show, the updraft base. So we made our way to Hwy 156, and headed back west towards the core (now feeling safer with an east-west escape route). I can hardly believe what I'm about to type next…

As we turned onto 156, we were immediately greeted by a stout, beefy funnel cloud that was already 2/3rds of the way to the ground about 8 miles to our southwest. By the time we pulled off near the 183/156 intersection, the most amazing tornado I had ever seen (in person) was already in progress. Its sharp, laminar edges were as iconic as any of the old pictures and video I watched as a kid. As it took on a pleasing, forward-leaning posture, I began filming with the Konova slider, getting shots of escaping foreground cars with the background tornado. I messed up several slider shots because my hands were shaking with excitement. I also made the old press-stop-when-you-think-you're-pressing-record mistake and missed a nice slider shot with the DOW trucks racing towards the tornado.

For about 7 or 8 amazing minutes, we had a perfect high-contrast, rain-free vantage point as the tornado tracked north-northeast. When the tornado was directly to our west, heavy rain and a little hail started to fall and we retreated into the car - continuing to film handheld shots out the window. At this point, even from a distance of 6 miles, it was apparent that the tornado was beginning to occlude. There was still incredible motion throughout the condensation funnel, though, and it was during this time that the DOWs recorded EF4 winds. After another 5 or 6 minutes, the rain cleared up and I again ventured out of the car. By now the tornado was not fully condensed to the ground, but there was still a very clear dust whirl underneath.

As the tornado continued to move to our northwest, there was a sudden wind shift and intensity increase. It took me about 30 seconds to make an alarming discovery - the winds were now blowing to our southwest into a new rapidly developing wall cloud just two miles away and moving straight towards us! The supercell was cycling and we were directly in new rotation's path. Since the rain had stopped, I'd gotten the tripod and slider back out of the car, and it took several seconds to get everything packed back in (it seemed to take forever). In my haste, I set the slider on the car roof and a 60MPH blast of inflow blew it off and broke one of the legs! During this mad scramble, the GoPro captured a dramatic vista as the original tornado off in the distance was still on the ground while at the same time the developing rotation was nearly on top of us.

We executed our escape route east and pulled off the road about a mile and a half down the road to reevaluate our position. Filming out the window, Toni got an amazing shot of tornadogenesis as the new mesocyclone dropped a tornado almost exactly where we had been only 4 minutes earlier. We appeared to be safe, however, as the tornado was directly to our west and was taking the same northeast path of its sibling. While weaker and smaller than the previous tornado, we had a much more dramatic view from just over a mile away. The new tornado adopted lots of interesting shapes, from a small cone, to an elephant trunk, to a drill-bit with internal sinking air. It was absolutely stunning, especially with an orange sunset backdrop. As we filmed, a couple cars with teens from the nearby town of Larned pulled up behind us and asked if they were safe and which way the storm was headed. I let them know about the storm motion and possibility of an RFD blast heading our way (the RFD gust front was nearly overhead). This was the first tornado any of them had witnessed, and they were just as excited as I was. They were also blown away by the fact that we'd driven all the way from New Mexico just to see storms. Toni continued to chat with them while I got slider shots of the various tornado shapes. It took a minute to sink in, but it dawned on me that the tornado had not really moved away from us as I'd expected. It had instead remained nearly stationary in the field in front of us for nearly 15 minutes. How could we get any luckier!?

Before too long, the second tornado roped out, having returned to nearly the exact spot it had first touched down. The sun would be setting very soon, and the storms now to our north and east were congealing into a line, effectively eliminating the tornado threat. So I was thinking the day was just about done and started packing away the camera equipment. But there was one last amazing surprise. About 3 or 4 minutes after the second tornado lifted, a 3rd rope tornado appeared where the previous one had disappeared. This was undoubtedly the same circulation as the previous tornado, having been stretched to an amazing degree as the parent supercell was weakening and departing to the northeast. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, as the whip-like rope tornado was so far from the parent storm that it appeared to be orphaned out in the middle of clear skies. Within the narrow condensed tube, it was possible to see two tiers rotation: a very tight inner core that was probably only a few feet across, and a larger outer core that was probably 20-30 feet in diameter. Being able to see the internal structure of this dying tornado was beyond anything I ever imagined.

After that grand finale, we just sat there by the side of the road for a while - watching the fading orange sunlight and anvil-crawling lightning from the departing line of storms. We ended up staying in Larned for the night, just a few miles from where we watched the tornadoes. After such a resounding success, it didn't take much convincing that we should opt for the upgraded hotel room with a hot tub. I think this should be a tradition on all successful chases.

Recap, Filmmaking Notes, and Lessons Learned