Cloud 9 Tours
Cloud 9 Tours

Pictures from 2004
 
 

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November 10

Didn't expect any severe weather today. After watching tornadoes in Dell City on TV. I watched a cell moving toward Shawnee. I went out to see what I could see before sunset. Surprisingly it had some good structure. These were shot from 177 and I-40 looking WSW.


June 12

After getting frustrated with the development of the storms near McPherson, KS, we dropped south to the storms south of Wichita. We saw a total of three tornadoes. I have never seen as much lightning near a tornado as this day.


June 10

What a day. We watched the first tornado for about 25 minutes. At times we were only about 500 yards away. It eventually got rain-wrapped and roped out. We had to go east to go around the lake and witnessed another brief tornado just north of the dam.


May 29

WOW! What a day! Southern Kansas was very active. We saw at least 10 tornadoes this day.


May 16

This was the first day for Tour#2. We targeted the warm front in Nebraska and had a long drive from Norman. The day was plagued with technical problems. John's laptop died. My WXWORX receiver also died. We stopped in York, NE for data and then continued NNW. Soon a few storms started to pop, but we couldn't see anything. Visibility was very poor. We heard warnings go up to our west and we targeted them. Trying to project the path and find a suitable intercept rout. We went west towards Amelia and suddenly the visibility improved and we saw the storm. It was much better than anticipated and had a nice rotating updraft. I looked hard in the rain core and saw a cone tornado in the middle of it. We decided to get a little close to see it better. It emerged from the rain and planted itself firmly on the ground. It then evolved into a multivortex tornado and crossed the road about 1/4 mile in front of us. In the fourth picture, you can see a little bit of a debris cloud to the right of the tornado from another suction spot.


May 12

Our initial target was in the vicinity south of Dodge City, Ks to the Oklahoma border. The front was located roughly just north of the OK-KS border and I expected that any storm riding along the front might have potential of tornadoes. We stopped to watch the skies at the intersection of 283 and 16t0 south of Minneola, KS. Congestus was increasing to our SE. We soon targeted that area and went east on 160. two separate storms formed. At first, the northern one was the dominant storm. We encountered two inch hail 12 miles east of Coldwater. We stopped west of Medicine Lodge to watch and choose a storm. The southern storm was strengthening and we had better road options for it. A tornado warning went out for the northern storm. We went east and soon saw a tornado south of Medicine Lodge. We found a great place to pull off and watch it. We then continued east and observed a quick tornado SW of Attica. It only lasted seconds. We went into town as baseball then softball size hail came down. We found shelter from the hail. After watching the hail. I ran out into an opening to look for signs of a tornado. I soon saw a cone funnel south of town and it quickly extended to the ground and was coming out way apparently. We went west to get out of the path. The tornado was illuminated by the sun and had a huge red dirt debris cloud. After it dissipated, we tried to get east, but the road was blocked due to damage, We eventually went south of Anthony and watched an incredible lightning display. Then a tornado was illuminated by lightning to our north. We watched it for some time till it dissipated.


April 21

Target area was west of OKC. Met up with Matt Biddle and co in Norman. We went out to north of Newcastle. Storms went up to our north, but we didn't feel we could chase very well through the OKC metro area. Now towers went up to our south and we targeted them. We went south on 76 to near Dibble. There we encountered dime size hail and went east to get out ahead of the storm. A wall cloud rapidly formed behind us. We stopped to photograph it, but it was undercut by outflow. We continued east trying to keep up with the storms. More formed to the south seeding each other. One high based shear funnel was spotted near Lexington. Several chasers were watching it and I was afraid a tornado warning was going to go out, but luckily it didn't. We gave up east of Asher. I continued back home to Shawnee. Looking back, the storms didn't look as intense as expected. Another storm formed behind the line and moved east along I-40. As I approached Shawnee a wall cloud formed and the storm had nice curvature to the base. It produced Quarter size hail on the north side of Shawnee.

 
 
 

 

 
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