Shot at 2009-03-24
Tim Jones and I headed out at about 5:20AM yesterday morning from Cedar Rapids to make our trek west. We ended up playing the dryline for the day.
We decided to ride the Kansas turnpike, started seeing storms firing in the Medicine Lodge area and jumped off at El Dorado to 254 and headed west to 96, before finally ending up around Mt. Hope IIRC when we started jumping onto the farm roads to fine tune our spot.
This was just south of town looking SW, this is a little before the wall cloud got a little more solid, RFD was trying to break in at this point but was having troubles.
We sat in this spot for about 10min, ran some streaming video for a bit and prayed for it to develop a bit more...but no dice.
Shot with NIKON D40 at 2009-03-23
Decided to run NE to try and reposition, but as we followed it northeast it started to lose form, hit light hail and some rains, then decided to let it go.
Took a break in Newton, KS for a bit to fill up and take a look at other storms down the line, saw a cell forming well over Grant County, OK and decided to head south and the east before Wichita to position ourselves around the storm.
We then encountered the worst technical problems ever....no data, no stream...no nothing. We had to just fly east hoping to stay ahead of the storm while Tim was in the back trying to coax data cards into actually function. During that time we heard the warnings on the HAM and just about had aneurysms because we were so out of position.
We finally got data at 5:50ish, we turned off at Severy, KS finding out we were right in the path of the storm, but not having much left in it in terms of tornado threat. Then the camera decided to not be recognized on the computer for stream, so I pulled out my little camera and try and get something on stream/tape.
We hit 99 just west of Severy and headed south a couple miles before stopping off on a farm road to salvage anything. We were getting some strong and close CG at this point on video.
Shot with NIKON D40 at 2009-03-23
Watched some broad but slow meso rotation for a couple of minutes before it started outflowing like crazy. We were so frustrated at this point that nothing was working that we just punched through it.
Shot with NIKON D40 at 2009-03-23
Just before getting destroyed by this core...
Shot with NIKON D40 at 2009-03-23
Pulled off a half mile or so after hitting the outflow and got 1/4 inch hail as we just didn't care anymore. We let the storm go bye bye and called it a day and headed to Chanute for the night.
We had some positives and negatives. Positives was we finally got out of Iowa to chase. Second thing is we got the most viewers ever on our stream (KGANWX) that we've ever had, which I think was close to 250 on the first cell. Third thing is I got some more experience chasing with a partner, and a great one at that.
Negatives is nothing worked when we needed it to...too many equipment problems to even count. We also missed the tornado warned life of the second cell. All in all I think it was a good day for being early in the year, got one storm on the verge of dropping, and the other was strong but outflow dominant, had a good core punch and hail.
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