2010-04-29 Report

Chased the Washington and Belleville, KS tornado warned storms. No tornadoes verified from my view but deep convection, low hanging scud, crazy inflow winds and wild lightning after dark. Today the threat moves into the AR to IL area.

AMAZING TORNADO VIDEO FROM MICHAEL CARLSON PHOTOGRAPHY

FULL REPORT - PHOTOGRAPHS AND VIDEO

Tornado Photos and Video from the Tornadoes south of Las Animas, Colo.

Michael Carlson Photography

2010-04-21 Report

Just a quick report for yesterday as I have to pour over models and pick a target for today. I shot down through the 'Northwest Passage' (Limon, Lamar, Amarillo) late yesterday afternoon and toyed with the idea of hanging back on the cells in northeast NM but with the tornado watch and Amarillo in my sites I kept punching south. Ended up chasing the cell that was almost stationary in Oldham county northwest of Vega, TX. It had good structure and a ragged wall cloud with fingers under it. No actual tornado reports as seen from my location or other chasers. Did my first live phoner with the Weather Channel. Thanks to Kendra Reed for setting that up! Today it's either the caprock or western Kansas. Tomorrow looks great along the warm front/triple point in se NE!

Potential Big Days 4/21 and 4/22

Weds April 21, 2010: Looking at the GFS we have a nice 500h trough coming in on Weds afternoon and just starting to overspread the warm sector in eastern CO. Based on where the surface features line up I plan on positioning myself somewhere from Limon, CO to Lamar, CO with an overnight trip down to Amarillo to be in position for the real show on Thursday!
Edit: looking at the NAM which is now in range I might want to be down in the western OK panhandle to Dalhart, TX area.

Thurs April 22, 2010: I am liking the Liberal, KS to western OK area for the best juxtoposition of 500h divergent winds and dryline Cape.
Edit: If later runs of the NAM show the dryline more to the west I may favor a starting point of Silverton, TX and then chase north from there as cells fire up along the dryline.

2010-04-13 Report

This day the SPC had a slight risk from Canada down to the OK panhandle crossing the far eastern plains of Colorado. The dynamics for severe weather were certainly in place and had the dewpoints been higher in the upper 50 range vs the upper 40s that we actually had - this day might have been a big tornado day.

I headed up I-76 late afternoon and caught the tail-end of the line forming near Chappell, NE were I caught a couple of brief but intense gustnadoes on the leading edge of the line. I also drove through a pretty good barrage of penny-sized hail.

A couple of cells formed ahead of the line and were tornado warned near Ogallala, NE but these were absorbed by the line before they could really produce a long lived meso.

I shot south to Grant and then to Holyoke and then south on 385 to Wray were I pierced the line back to the east and got ahead of it again at Goodland, KS. As I was blasting west again to another tornado warned segment of the line a tornado was reported. I could not confirm it and looking around on the internet this morning I don't see any real evidence that these tornadoes weren't more than the gustnadoes or perhaps brief landspout I'd seen all day.

Exciting new changes to iMapTracker!

You'll notice some exciting changes on the iMapTracker above and at all iMap sites.
1) Level II data free and live in a browser!
2) Supercell composite type areas.
3) All trackers visible now with a listing board.

Enjoy the new features and look forward to 4/5 when Kansas really lights up! More on that later.