My chase partner Andy and I arrived in central Kansas on the morning of Friday, May 4, 2007 with the anticipation of two marksmen on the opening day of hunting season. We had come to the central plains to see and document supercell thunderstorms and tornadoes, the most violent winds on the face of the earth. The journey had been planned for several days already, as a deep low pressure trough would be digging its way into the central United States from the Rocky Mountains that weekend, and a significant outbreak of severe weather was expected.

The Storm Prediction Center had drawn the red circle, depicting a moderate chance of severe thuderstorms around most of central Kansas and the Oklahoma panhandle the previous evening, which meant that chances were good of at least seeing a beefy thunderstorm or two. As we viewed the updated outlook for Friday afternoon at a guest computer at the Quality Inn at Salina, Kansas just after lunchtime, our anticipation began to build as we glared at the large flat panel monitor. The SPC had drawn a smaller fuschia circle around central Kansas and part of the Oklahoma panhandle, meaning the entire area was then at high risk for severe thunderstorms, and possibly tornadoes. We knew that Kansas was going to be under the gun, and the very area we were traveling in was now in the crosshairs.

The mid afternoon sun was bright, but diffused slightly by a fine haze of humidity that hung over the plains like a smothering blanket. Temperatures were in the mid seventies, with dewpoints only three or four degrees lower. With southeasterly winds at the surface siphoning even more moisture up from the Gulf of Mexico, we knew the atmosphere above Kansas was like a giant powder keg, just waiting for the first hot spark to ignite it.

Our data eventually led us to the conclusion that western Kansas would be the area of initiation for convective storms, given the position of the dryline, the boundary between the dry, cooler Pacific air and the near-saturated warmer air mass that now engulfed most of Kansas and all points south. We arrived in Hays, KS around 5:00 pm, and waited for the dryline to make its late afternoon journey east, hopefully sparking the massive supercell thunderstorms we were seeking.

The sky above Hays showed signs of strong capping, meaning that a layer of warm air at the middle altitudes was preventing the moist, buyant air at the surface from rising into a colder environment to create the updrafts needed for a thunderstorm. Masses of fluffy cumulus clouds drifted aimlessly on the southeasterly winds, with no sign of a storm in sight. Conditions were looking ripe for a cap bust, when Andy said “just be patient, it’s going to happen and it’s just a matter of where and when”.

After close to an hour of watching nothing but small globs of moderate precipitation come and go on the laptop screen, the Baron Mobile ThreatNet finally revealed the presence of a small developing storm well to the east of us, along highway 9 between Densmore and Logan. It was beginning to present a healthy precipitation core, so Andy swung the car around and we blasted up the highway to intercept the storm.

As we rushed further east toward the blob on the laptop screen, the massive anvil of the now severe-warned supercell began to come into view. It was flat and solid on the top, with angry dark knuckles of chunky cumulonimbus gathered beneath it. The storm was beginning to display very high reflectivity values, and was starting to drop hail as we approached it from the west.

The closer we got, the more the massive supercell grew in the window. It now had the bean-shaped appearance of a classic HP supercell, and the laptop screen now showed an area of rotating winds on its southwest flank. The shear marker revealed wind speeds of over eighty miles an hour, so the storm was beginning to become well organized.

When we got close enough to the base, the mesocyclone was beginning to show signs of vigorous rotation. The sky turned ink black as we advanced beneath the cloud base, and torrential rain and golf ball sized hail stones began their assault on the chase car. Through the rear view mirror, it was plain to see that we were not the only chase team to take notice of the huge supercell. A long line of headlights appeared behind us in the rain, all jockeying to get the best view Intense CG lightning began to stab the ground on all sides of the road.

The ThreatNet screen revealed the supercell’s southwest flank was beginning to wrap in on itself cyclonically, producing one of the best hook echoes I’d ever seen. The meso was rotating fast now, and we parked in a clearing off the side of the road, along with several other interested chasers and chase tour vans.

We got out of the chase car beneath the meso, and the wind was dead calm, even as the clouds whirled furiously above, the storm’s updraft base sucking in the hot and humid air that was its fuel, its life blood. Slender fingers of rotating clouds would occasionally emerge from the rotating meso, searching for purchase on the ground, but would weaken and retreat. The storm was beginning to enter a dissipating stage, and would not produce a tornado on this night, in spite of all the earlier indications. After chatting with some of the other chasers on the side of the road, the setting sun convinced us to call it a night.

As we headed toward Russell, KS to find hotel rooms, Andy and I talked about our supercell’s impressive structure and how turbulent the skies were over Kansas. We had no idea as we headed toward Russell that a colossal supercell, part of a cluster of storms that had drifted northeast across the Oklahoma state line, had brewed a monster EF5 wedge over a mile and a half wide that was heading toward Greensburg. By the time we had arrived in Russell, and gotten the keys to our hotel rooms, that historic tornado had already scoured most of the city of Greensburg from existence.

We only became aware of the Greensburg disaster after the portable weather radio in my hotel room had sounded an alarm, and a tornado emergency message that carried an urgency unlike any I had ever heard before. It was seriously dangerous and destructive tornado, and my television screen was filled with the doppler radar image of the huge supercell that had given birth to it, accompanied by frantic warnings from the National Weather Service for any people in the path of the storm to take cover immediately.

As I went to sleep that night, weary from a day of chasing, the sky above still raged on.

Only with the light of morning on Saturday and the images from media uplink trucks did the gravity of what happened to Greensburg finally begin to sink in. The city had been decimated, reduced to a landscape of rubble and de-barked trees that reminded me of pictures from Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atom bomb. The storms we chasers often refer to using “awesome”, “incredible” and other adjectives had done what they often do, destroyed property and lives. I felt sick inside, and began to wonder why we do what we do. I felt somewhat guilty about being so fascinated with a weather phenomenon that, in minutes, had destroyed so many lives forever.

As stories of the Greensburg tornado began to trickle out through the media, and Internet groups such as Stormtrack, it became clear to me that it is really okay to be fascinated with such fury. And, I also realized that we chasers also can find ourselves in the position of being able to give back to the communities that suffer. A number of chasers had been tracking the tornado on Friday night, capturing its images as lightning revealed its deadly path through the countryside. The speed and heading of the storm was relayed by chasers to the NWS offices in Dodge City, providing an element of “ground truthing” to the images captured on doppler radar. After the tornado chewed through the heart and soul of Greensburg, many of these same chasers pulled survivors from their wrecked homes to safety, risking their own safety as they did so.

I no longer felt the nagging guilt of a few nights ago. In fact, I felt proud of our community of chasers, and how they conducted themselves at Greensburg.

May Greensburg rise again, stronger and better than before. –VIEW PHOTOS–>

Saturday, May 5, 2007 saw high levels of instability over the central plains, particularly in Kansas. We departed Russell, KS at 12:00 pm, moving to intercept storms 70 miles south of Hays. At the time, Doppler radar indicated a line of storms with embedded supercells with 1.5″ hail, moving north.

Enroute to these storms, radar indicated diminished shear parameters and a reduced chance of tornadic potential, so we proceeded to Wakeeney, KS for data updates. At 2:00 pm, Doppler radar indicated evolving storms ahead of the dryline, merging into a MCS extending from the OK panhandle to SC NE. Embedded supercells were developing in a favorable shear environment, and we elected to intercept one of these cells southeast of Great Bend, KS.

At approximately 5:30 pm, the storm began to exhibit some vigorous rotation, and a slight lowering of the cloud base. A funnel cloud protruded from the lowering, and debris circulation was observed on the ground, in spite of the fact the funnel never fully condensed. –SEE VIDEO->