2001 Chase Summaries:

1.  May 1, 2001:  Intercepted 3 tornadoes in southeast MN during tour number 1.

2. May 6, 2001:  The Ardmore area tornadoes. This was an off day between tours 1 and 2.

3. May 16, 2001:  The Jefferson County NE  supercell during tour number 2.

4. May 20, 2001:  The Ada, OK area supercells.  This was an off day between tours 2 and 3.

5. May 23, 2001:  The Rocksprings, TX supercell during tour number 3.

6. May 27, 2001:  The Clark County KS tornadic supercell.

7. May 29, 2001:  The southeast Texas Panhandle HP beast supercell during tour number 3.

8. May 30, 2001: The Southeast OK supercells during tour number 3.

9. June 1, 2001:  The South-central KS supercells during tour number 3.

10. June 9, 2001:  The South-central SD supercell during tour number 4.

11. June 11, 2001: 3 tornadoes in West-central MN during tour number 4.

12. June 12, 2001: The Hutchison County, SD supercell during tour number 4.

June 12, 2001 tour 4:  The Hutchinson County, SD supercell.

David Gold, Gene Rhoden and I took the Silver Lining Tours group back in the Sioux Falls, South Dakota (FSD) area again today. Spent the night here and headed towards the O'Neil, NE area as all things pointed this direction (except for the major hoses in northwest NE). Arrived in the promised land near Niobrara, NE by mid afternoon. Decent convergence, great shear, excellent Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE), and a major cap :-) Waited around until a storm attempted to break the cap around , and struggled hard. Since it was having difficulty surviving we blew it off for a storm developing in northeast NE. Soon it died and our attention was drawn back to our northwest in the Hutchison county, SD area (Our original storm!!! Never leave your storm for greener pastures!!). By 8:00 PM were approached the storm from the south on highway 25. It was very disheartening to see a horseshoe shaped updraft that the Rear Fland Downdraft (RFD) had cut drastically into. But we decided to play it anyway. We got east of it and discovered very strong inflow jets, rapid rising scud under the base and strong cascading where the RFD was continuing to cut into the updraft. Soon a wall cloud formed on the northeast side of the updraft and rotation increased drastically. Condensation fingers extended to the ground and several dirt swirls formed. Rain curtains were rapidly rotating around the wall cloud and would often mostly obscure it from view. By 9:00 Pm the storm crossed the boundary and sucked in 65F air. But it still tried hard. A large gustnado on the RFD outflow almost caught us off guard as we turned quickly and headed east towards Sioux Falls. When we arrived in town the sirens were sounded, so Gene Rhoden and I headed back out to see what we could. It was now 10 PM. We got northeast of the updraft and got pelted with decent sized hail. Two nice green power flashes occurred in town (probably from straight line winds). Afterward we were treated to a spectacular lightning show.

By SLT Guide:  Roger Hill

June 11, 2001 tour 4:  3 tornadoes in West-central MN.

Silver Lining Tours left Aberdeen, SD on June 10 and drove to Granite Falls where we, along with The Weather Channel (TWC) crew, IMAX and National Geographic, spent the night at a beautiful Super 8 just east of last year's damage path. 

On June 11, we sat around until 12:30pm analyzing data and then did a very foolish thing: we drove SE to Redwood Falls for fear of getting behind storms that we feared would be blasting east as the day progressed. You see, the models had clearly and consistently forecast the severe storm environment to peak in western MN by mid-afternoon and then rapidly dissipate as low-level winds were to veer progressively from west to east. Moreover, despite surface observations very clearly showing an apparent meso-low circulation with warm front (enhanced by Meso-scale Convective System (MCS) outflow)/convergence boundary intersection near Milbank, SD, we feared that surface-based storms might not have time to develop until things evolved further east. Finally, we saw no surface-based moist convection of any kind, only accas and elevated mush. Luckily, as we entered Redwood Falls, MN ( RWD) from the east on Hwy 71, Roger spotted a turkey tower to our distant NW - surface-based convection! Deciding that that was the beginning of the show, we quickly grabbed food at the Redwood Falls McDonalds. While the group was inside ordering, I ran around the side of the building and saw that our turkey tower had rapidly expanded into a very fat clump of multicell storms. We raced back up 71 all the way to Wilmar and then NW on 12. During our approach (which seemed to take a lifetime), we watched as the convection on the western end just exploded, overturning, a-bombing and backshearing. The ever-blossoming backshear was horrific looking with razor sharp southern edge. As we approached the updraft base to our distant west-northwest (directly ahead over Hwy 12) the first thing we could see under the cloud base was a long line of dark gray-blue scud clouds faintly backlit orange with obvious RFD-induced dust plumes surging outward. Slightly to the right of this was an ominous lowered base. As we passed the town of Murdock, we could see (1) a dryslot-clefted barrel cloud mesocyclone to our west-northwest towards Benson, MN
with fat tapered cone tornado and (2) a new mesocyclone with developing tornado just to the left of the road. Realizing that we could not proceed much further up 12 without driving directly underneath the developing tornado that now featured small rapidly condensing/dissipating finger funnels above a classic dust whirl just 1 mile directly ahead of us, we sat and watched the whole scene. The time was 3:00 pm and we had first view of the Benson tornado at 2:58 pm. After the newer weaker tornado crossed north of 12, we blasted west farther to get closer to the ever-enlarging barrel tornado directly ahead of us on Hwy 12 about 3-4 miles to our west-norhtwest. We
stopped near DeGraff and watched the tornado, whose inner core funnel was about 250-300 yards wide, move slowly east. The large tornado completely wrapped in rain and was totally obscured from our view by 3:19 pm. We hurried back east-northeast on Hwy 12 as a very ominous Rear Flank Downdraft (RFD) core associated with the new mesocyclone to our east-northeast began surging towards us, causing the highway to disappear not far behind us back towards Benson. We drove back to Murdock and just southeast of town we split off onto 80th Street SE, a decent gravel road heading due east. As we did this, it became plainly apparent that the entire supercell was tending strongly to the High Precipitation ( HP) side of things with a long vorticity-loaded shear line along the forward flank gust front extending
east-northeast from an ugly looking and rapidly expanding Forward Flank Downdraft (FFD) core. There were numerous areas of very strong cyclonic rotation along this line while numerous weak anticyclonic gustnadoes formed along the trailing flanking towers/RFD gust front. The eastern most area of rotation beneath the leading updraft/shear line was very strong/persistent and funnels would frequently condense to ground beneath this strongly rotating cloud base as dust whirled
beneath: tornado #3. All the while, it was becoming increasingly apparent that we needed to get south and east away from this beast. Navigating around the south side of a small lake on CR 27 we continued eastbound until we hit the western side of Long Lake, just west-northwest of Willmar, MN. At this point, we rapidly turned south onto 15th ST NW and then east onto CR 25 as the vicious HP supercell continued to produce strong cyclonic/occasionally tornadic eddies along the forward flank shear line, all the while munching towards us with what looked like a terrible hail core that I wanted nothing at all to do with. We split off onto Hwy 12 east, breathing a big sigh of relief that we had beat this thing. This was a black-green hail core with wrapping shelf and it was moving ESE quickly. Our relief was short-lived. Somewhere between Kandiyohi and Atwater, our winds became NE at 50 mph and we got bonked with a large hail stone. Then, large hail started side-smashing our vans, some of the stones at 1-2". We cracked our front windshield. The FFD core was munching down onto Hwy 12 from the north. The winds were fierce. Traffic slowed to a crawl and we had to get the heck out of there so we turned south onto Hwy 4 at Grove City, just barely beating the horrendous bruised blue-gray-green rear flank core across the road. I saw several cars cluelessly driving northbound into this thing. Oops. That's about it. We left the storm after another hour or two of  fruitless chasing-from-behind. We are spending the night in FSD for what we expect will be more significant supercells tomorrow. I hope there were no fatalities today :(

 By SLT President and Guide: Dave Gold

June 9, 2001 tour 4:  South-central SD supercell.

Dave Gold, Gene Rhoden and I took the Silver Lining Tours group to 
southwest North Dakota today. We blew off the Nebraska/Colorado scenario for the greener pastures of better mid and upper level flow. It proved to be the right choice.

We Arrived just east of Dickerson, ND by 5:30 PM just in time for a 
tornado warning for a supercell about 40 miles northeast of town. We 
were afraid that the bubble high over SD would blast dry air into North 
Dakota, but soon found that north of the warm front was the promised 
land. We headed east on I-94 to get in front of a developing cell over 
Mandan. As we approached it from the west we were treated to an awesome sight. A large rotating wall cloud was visible just north of the 
interstate, with strong RFD winds cascading down the western side. 
Several funnels formed and rapidly dissipated. This structure of this system just wreaked of a large tornado. As we approached it from the 
south, RFD winds blasted us at 30-40 knots. We couldn't tell if anything was under the wall cloud due to precip and hail wrapping rapidly around it. But soon, it was undercut by outflow, darn.

We decided to get east of it and stay on I-94. We were soon greeted with 3-4" of quarter size (and some larger) hail covering the highway. Finally we blasted south on US83 as a large rotating meso almost on the ground was very evident to our southwest. What we did not realize was that we were about to be cut off into the gullet of this beast. Soon 
strong RFD winds greeted us with sustained gusts to 60 mph. All of a 
sudden at 6:32 Pm CDT debris started falling from the sky as our Visibility quickly improved. Power poles were snapped, housing insulation and leaves blasted the van. On the east side of the road, a 
vehicle was totally demolished and in the ditch. We turned back to find 
a young man running up the hill to greet us, with multiple cuts. His car had been rolled by this possible rain wrapped tornado. We also found several grain elevators toppled over and a roof peeled back from a mobile home. 

Afterwards, we headed into South Dakota to get in front of this monster 
and watch the incredible shelf and electrification of this storm from a 
safe and photogenic distance. What an awesome sight.

By SLT Guide:  Roger Hill

June 1, 2001 tour 3:  South-central KS supercells.

Well, today was to be the last day of tour number 3 for Silver Lining Tours.  Our target area: Great Bend, KS. We arrived in the Wichita area at 3:30 PM, just in time to hear the tornado watch go out. We saw
rapid thunderstorm development to our north and northwest, and decided to target a brand new crisp storm north of Wichita. At 4 PM a severe warning went out and we could see a wall cloud trying to get organized under the updraft. As we approached it from the south, condensation was rising rapidly under the updraft. The wall cloud showed strong differential motion and became more blocky with time. Soon a clear slot developed and a tail  cloud formed at 4:30 PM. The updraft had a nice tilted appearance and a rough vault. The rotation in the wall cloud increased, but never could become strong or focused enough to tube,,, but it sure tried!!!  Finally at 4:55 PM near the town of Walton, the updraft weakened, the wall cloud  disappeared and the base raised. Show over.

We then decided to head west on new storms near Hutchison. About the time we arrived, the storms were very disorganized, and could never 
quite get it together. We decided to blow them off and grab dinner. At 
7:50 PM, we learned of a tornado warning on a crappy little cell  southwest of Wichita. We decided to head for it anyway. Along the way, we were turned towards the west, to a cell developing near Medicine Lodge. We blasted south on highways 42 and 2, and hit the Oklahoma border around 8:50 PM. The updraft was weakening, but still had impressive structure with a back sheared anvil and sharp overturning convection under the anvil. We drove through the core, with golf-ball size hail on the highway and cleared the core around 9:10 PM in northern Grant county, OK to be treated to a stack of plates with a rotating wall cloud under it. A small funnel formed and remained for about 2 minutes. It rapidly weakened and became an LP storm quickly. Nice structure, and then it died. Oh well.

By SLT Guide: Roger Hill.

May 30, 2001 tour 3:  Southeast OK supercells.

We began the day in Wichita Falls, TX and quickly decided that the environment most favorable for tornadic supercells would steadily move northeastward into the trees/hills of SE OK as the upper wave lifted out of the SP, leaving a gradually weakening trailing westerly flow regime over the area. With this in mind we went to Ardmore, OK and sat for quite some time, analyzing data, esp. the OK Mesonet obs, vis. satellite and wind profilers/VADs. We watched towers struggle to develop N and W of town but really liked the area around Ada where the sfc winds were relatively strong and backed for hours as the outflow boundary from earlier convection washed out. We drove NE to Ada,
becoming encouraged that storms would actually develop by the sight of all the cu congestus in the region. As we got to the east side of town on Hwy 1, we stopped and looked around. There was a fairly narrow but rapidly growing convective tower over Ada, several turkey towers and, to the not-too-distant northeast, what seemed to be the bottom part of a large convective tower beneath the bases of all the cu congestus in the area. Suddenly, we saw a convective turret explode up the west side of this latter tower and we went for it. Gene Rhoden met up with us and we caravanned east and northeast on Hwy 1 towards Allen. To our northeast beneath the burgeoning updraft, we could see a distinct lowering with what appeared to be a dryslot beginning to cut in at the back edge. Near Atwood, we were able to look directly up the northwestern side of this a-bomb updraft with a knife edge anvil spreading out on the north side. A pregnant looking rotating wall cloud was plainly visible to our southeast. Fortunately, the highway cooperated and turned gradually towards the ESE at Calvin where Hwy 1 become 270. When we got about 3 miles east of Calvin on Hwy 270, we saw a high-contrast funnel extending about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way to the ground beneath the wall cloud at the back edge of the updraft base. It persisted for a few minutes and occurred about 3 miles NE of Gerty (I promptly called OUN NWS to report it). We stopped and filmed before continuing on 270. During our approach to Stuart, we noticed three mesos simultaneously: one that had emerged from the core to our NW, the southwestern meso that seemed to be reorganizing about 5 miles SW of Stuart and another meso to our northeast (probably 3-4 miles ENE of Stuart) that looked fairly ominous - a three ring circus. With the highway now turning northeast into the core, we dropped south on Hwy 31A at Stuart, stopping a couple of times to film brief funnels forming beneath the southwestern mesocyclone. During this time, we noticed a new updraft exploding on the southern flank of the northeastern meso (the one a few miles northeast of Stuart). Driving through rain between the eastern storm (and new updraft) and the western storm on Hwy 31, we entered McAlester. This is when we heard the tornado warning for a spotter-indicated tornado near Haileyville. There was also a tornado warning for the western storm, now approaching Ashland. Deciding to play the storm with a spotter-indicated tornado (and also one that was relatively new), we blasted east through McAlester on Hwy 270. Circumnavigating a road block west of Haileyville, we saw scattered large hailstones on the road and encountered debris raining from the sky, mostly bits and pieces of what I assumed was housing insulation. And there, to our east-southeast we saw the white remnants of what was the Haileyville/Hartshorne tornado-two wispy white funnels rapidly evaporating beneath a scuddy circular wall cloud. Rats! Just missed it. We continued ESE on Hwy 1 and into the mountains of SE OK, getting ahead of the striated supercell which had an inflow tail streaming in from the ESE and wall cloud on the northeast side of the updraft. At the lake south of Yanush, we stopped to shoot video of the staccato anvil lightning occurring northeast of the updraft. All in all, a fun chase. We did everything possible to be where we needed to be, but hills, trees, roadblocks and bad luck prevented us from seeing a tornado.

 By SLT President and Guide: Dave Gold

May 29, 2001 tour 3:  The Tulia-Childress, TX beast supercell.

CLICK HERE TO SEE THE PICTURES!

All I can say is WOW!!!! What a storm to witness. I don' t care how many tornadoes occurred anywhere, as I would not trade the view of this storm for any of them :-)

David Gold, myself and the Silver Lining Tours group started the day setting up in AMA, then dropped south towards the Tulia area where this storm first developed. A very ragged disorganized storm as you do often find on high CAPE high shear days. It took this storm a couple of hours, maybe by 6 PM to get its act together. It became pretty outflow dominant quickly, which was a big surprise. Then, as is typical, when it came off the caprock, something magical happened. We saw rapid rotating and cascading rain curtains and then condensation fingers rapidly rotating. We do think it was a tornadic circulation. That is when we blasted farther east on FM145 to get away from this munching storm. As we approached Turkey, we looked back and the storm took on a great HP appearance. Finally, as we headed east on highway 86 towards Estelline, we stopped and about had a heart attack. A jaw dropping sight as we watched this gorgeous upside down wedding cake, with candy cane striations, extreme rising motion on the side walls, and with various wall clouds developing under the notch.

We were speechless as we watched this monster through the evening, until we gave up and went to our hotel in SPS at midnight. We did catch a butt dragging wall cloud near Quanah and Chillicothe, and this wall cloud may have developed into a full fledged tornado, then became rain wrapped. We have heard reports of significant damage in Chillicothe and Quanah from the Childress radio station 96.1FM.

The structure of this storm was the best I have seen in 15 years of  chasing.

By SLT Guide: Roger Hill.

May 27, 2001 tour 3:  Clark County, KS torandic supercell.

Dave Gold, myself and the Silver Lining Tours armada headed northward from Amarillo, TX (AMA) to south of the Dodge City, KS (DDC) area to our target. On the way we stopped in Perryton, TX and met up with many other chasers. Great to see you all out there.

After watching all the convective mess along the boundary from DDC 
northward to Goodland, KS, we decided to stay put and play the waiting game. Then, shortly before 6 PM CDT a storm developed southwest of DDC and became very outflow dominant quickly. Another area of congestous was also developing southwest of Medicine Lodge, KS (P28), so off we went to catch up with this area in Barber county, Kansas. This area had backed winds with  definitely lower LCLs. Maybe a tube???? Who knows???

At 6:15 PM a cell rapidly developed almost overhead, just east of Ashland, Kansas. The base lowered immediately. At 6:22 PM a strong wet RFD hit our position as a bell shaped meso developed southeast of the RFD near the junction of US160 and US183. The RFD blasted us as we headed south on US183. Rapid differential motion was seen and rapid cascading motion developed just to our south. Soon the rotation =
increased and tightened and a debris cloud formed about 4 miles south of the intersection of US160 and US183. Time was 6:31 PM CDT. The debris cloud stayed on the ground for 2 minutes before it dissipated. After going back and looking at my video I have no doubt that was a tornadic circulation. We then blasted south to Buffalo, Ok and then east to highway 34, where we headed south. We stopped and watched this monster HP storm and our old storm near DDC. The structure was incredible. A well formed beaver tail streamed in from the east. The vault was well formed, and the notch was very visible. Absolutely the prettiest shelf was visible and took on the appearance of a space ship. It was multi tiered and the top tier extended to a point and had a laminer appearance. Awesome sight. This storm also had a very well defined hook on radar. We stayed with this storm until dark and got blasted by very high winds and heavy rains as we headed into OKlahoma City, OK (OKC). Some damage was seen in OKC as well as much power outages.

By SLT Guide: Roger Hill.

May 23, 2001 tour 3:  Rocksprings, TX supercell.

We drove to San Antonio May 23. After eating decent texmex and even better hamburgers for lunch today, we visited the Alamo and then departed rather late (we had to turn back to ditch one of our vehicles that had blown an  alternator) going NW on I-10 and then west on 41. We could see several highly electrified cores as soon as we got west of Kerville but we were targeting the cell that formed west of JCT while we were enroute. By the time we got to the intersection of Hwy 377 and Texas 41, the old Junction storm was a smallish, somewhat high-based updraft with a pretty intense looking hail core. A new updraft was developing to our distant northeast and an extremely electrified storm was visible to our west. We went SW on 377 intent on sampling some of the hail in the storm now to the southeast of Rocksprings. We never made it. As we were driving south on 377, we noticed that the storm to the west of Rocksprings was developing an incredible tiered shelf cloud with a horrific amount of CG/intracloud lightning/anvil crawlers. Desperate to get a good vista for photography in the midst of  hills/shrubs/trees, we took SR 2630 north and eventually settled for a relatively open view to our WSW. This storm was absolutely beautiful, featuring a fantastic tiered, rounded shelf with amazing lighting and hues covering the visible spectrum from gorgeous yellow/orange northeast of the storm's central core to deep hues of turqoise blue. It was a truly spectacular sight. Even the border patrol (who had joined us by this time) seemed to really enjoy the view. Also, we noticed lots of 1.5-2" diameter hail stones, presumably left by the storm SE of Rocksprings) melting in the scrubby grass/weeds. On the way back east to San Antonio, we were treated to an incredible non-stop anvil crawler display. What a great chase!

By SLT President and Guide: Dave Gold

May 20, 2001:  Ada, Ok area supercells:

Summary: McBungle in the Jungle

I've had the last few days off between tours, spending them with my girlfriend who has been in OKC for the weekend. After blowing off Saturday due to too many storms (I hate chasing over-convective scenarios), we decided to try Sunday. With an initial target of Ada, we left OKC at 2pm, going to Tecumseh and looking around. Soon, a CB
developed quite rapidly to our SE so we wasted no time blasting south and then east on 270. However, I noticed a new CB developing to our SSW so we stopped moving east and dropped south on Hwy 9a, going all the way to the small town of St. Louis where we caught sight of the storm's underside. It developed a quick occlusion on the NE side with the updraft base becoming elongated/outflowish - typical rapid evolution to HP. We dawdled a bit too long on Hwy 59 going back NE to try to advance ahead of the developing storm and at Maud I made the decision NOT to punch the core (which looked pretty mean). A core punch would have been necessary to make the remaining distance up 59 and then east/southeast. I just didn't want that kind of chase this day and gladly accepted the risk of missing out further east later on. Miss out we did, of course. We continued south, eventually meandering our way to Ada to see if a new storm struggling to form NW of town would get interesting. It quickly mushed out (most storms this day looked terrible with sheared over/soft updrafts and confusing looking bases/unfocused rotation) but we followed it anyway with the idea that it was moving through/into a region that supported tornadic development. This decision cost us the tornadoes near Ada with the
second big storm that formed west of town. However, many times I have seen storms that looked so terrible early on go absolutely crazy as they move through a favorable environment. Recent example: the Northfield, MN storm of May 9. We actually got on this storm as it first
developed north of New Ulm. I have never seen a crappier looking storm - bases at 15,000', mushball towers, no consolidated updraft. For this reason, we lost our patience (a real virtue for storm chasing many times) and went after instant gratification with much better convection to the south. Anyway, we ended up racing back to the southwest once we got to Calvin, OK, giving up on a storm that just wasn't getting the job done. We got back to east of Ada and dropped south on a paved county road east of town, getting 1" hail. SE on Hwy 3, we watched as a wall cloud rapidly formed beneath a tower on the flank of what I presume was the storm that produced the earlier brief, weak tornadoes SW of Ada. The motion WAS really impressive with lots of gyrations/condensation/funnels. Then, it poofed as the main storm had already become quite outflowish with a scalloped shelf and roundish core. We gave up at Coalgate and went home. I could have been much more aggressive early on near Maud but I'm not sure it ever would have made a difference. In my experience, unless you're willing to take any risk and drive any speed, once you get behind a storm moving away from you at greater than 30mph, you are toast.

By SLT President and Guide: Dave Gold.

May 16, 2001 Tour 2:  The Jefferson County, NE supercell.

Well today ended up being much more than I thought it would, with a 
beautiful horseshoe shaped supercell and funnel in southeast Nebraska.

Dave Gold, myself and the Silver Lining Tours armada started the day in Sioux Falls, SD. After an extensive morning analysis, we decided to head southward to neat the front. Our plan was to drive towards York and re-evaluate data. As soon as we saw that surface winds were turning southeast in north central Kansas with 70 dews, we knew we needed to get towards the KS/NE border in south central NE. The Hill City, Kansas storm convinced us that the cap could be broken. Indeed, when we arrived in York, NE at 4:20 PM CDT, we saw an area of congestus developing south  of town. As we blasted south on US81, the storm absolutely exploded. A large rock hard updraft pushed into a gorgeous back sheared anvil with knuckles under it. The anvil spread out in a perfect circular appearance as we headed east of the storm to approach it east of Milligan, NE. By 5:00 PM the storm went severe. Soon, we blasted to the southeast of the updraft as a tornado warning was issued. However we soon found that the RFB was fairly high based. The rain was now falling through the updraft and we decided to back off and wait for more. Soon another updraft developed on the western flank.It took on a circular shape rather quickly by 6:10 PM (and went severe) and had disorganized areas of rotation under the updraft. Soon, a rather strong area of rotation developed and rain and hail started falling to the north of the updraft, then quickly wrapped around it. We decided to get in front of it to see what was now in the developing bear's cage. The storm had a nice appendage on radar and gained its supercell appearance rapidly. It was definitely rotating. By 6:40 PM, we were in front of the storm east of Fairbury, NE. It was a nice doughnut shaped updraft with a RFD slot forming on the southwest side of the updraft. This also happened to clear the rain curtains away to reveal a nice tapered funnel extending about 1/3 of the way towards the ground at 6:43 PM. At 6:47 PM the funnel dissipated and the storm totally fell apart. I really wonder what occured while the updraft was shrouded in rain.

This was much more than I figured in catching this day where things 
seemed totally out of phase. I guess this goes to show what large CAPE  and a boundary can do. I was almost surprised we didn't get a landspout.

By SLT Guide: Roger Hill.

May 6, 2001: Ardmore, Ok area tornadoes:

Today's chase resulted in the intercept of two beautiful tornadoes in 
the Ardmore area. The first tornado was a beautiful tapered cone tornado we intercepted about a mile west of the Springer, OK area at 3:58 PM. It lasted until 4:04 PM. The second tornado was a spiking elephant trunk tornado that we caught about 4 miles southwest of Overbrook, OK at 5:04 PM and dissipaited at 5:13 PM.

We started the day with Dave Gold, Alister Chapman, and  meeting up 
with Bill Gargan. We got a late start and did not leave OKC until about 
12:30 with our target near Ardmore. We arrived in the Ardmore area 
around 2 PM only to see the developing storms northward near Norman. After watching the storms struggle west of Ardmore, we decided, hesitantly, to head northward to get us closer to the Norman storm and under the anvil of our struggling Jefferson county storm. As we headed back northward on I-35, we could see that the Norman storm was multicellular, with our southern storm getting beefier by the minute. As we turned around, our storm exploded. A strong vertical updraft with a rapidly eastward spreading anvil was now very visible. The storm went from a struggling mushball to a supercell in about 30 minutes. It was like somebody turned on a switch. As we headed farther southbound on I-35 the storm started rotating rapidly. The updraft had that all familiar look, with a developing beaver tail, vault area and a very low wall cloud. Then we saw a nice tapered funnel to the west of Springer. It touched down and widened into a beautiful cone. Debris was kicked up and made for a beautiful sight. Soon the tornado resembled an upside down oil can with the funnel snaking to the ground and changing shapes rapidly. It roped out as the updraft continued to rotate.

Due to bad road options, we let the first storm go and targeted new 
developing storms southwest of Overbrook. We pulled off the interstate and sat and watched as this supercell gained structure and stature. It developed into an awesome classic supercell with a sharp knifing anvil, vault area, circular rotating RFB and a large low wall cloud. The awesome thing about this storm was the pronounced hail roar that persisted for over 20 minutes. As we sat watching this storm, hail to golfball size were occasionally thrown at us. Then, a funnel developed. It did not take long for it to touchdown, but it would lift and then retouchdown again for the next 10 minutes. At times it would look like a tapered cone, only to snake and spiral to the ground, then retake the elephant trunk appearance again. Very awesome tornado!!!

Finally, the storm started to line out, so we decided to head southward 
into Texas to chase developing storms there, under the stronger cap.  We headed into the Grayson/Denton county area to watch this nuclear bomb go off. We arrived east of the updraft, only to find an incredible liberty bell. One of the prettiest LP storms I have seen in a long time.

Finally, we left to target a splitting storm near the Plano area that 
became HP. At that point we decided we had enough and stopped to 
celebrate with a steak dinner at Outback :-) The awesome thing about the splitting storm though was the hook on the right split and also a 
reverse hook that was very apparent on the left mover. Bizarre!!!

By SLT Guide: Roger Hill

May 1, 2001 Tour 1: Three tornadoes in southeast MN.

We began the day at Omaha, Nebraska and targeted the nose of an apparent lower tropospheric dry punch occuring along the front from northwestern Iowa to southwestern Minnesota. We really liked the persistent backed surface winds, moisture flux convergence and stronger mid/upper flow to the north.

At 1:30pm we stopped for lunch in south Sioux City, Iowa. When we 
arrived at the restaurant our local observation was 86/63 and when we left 25 minutes later it was 92/55. We blasted east on 20 and then north on 140 (construction on Hwy 75 to LeMars). However, by the time we got to a point just south of the town of Remsen, IA, we couldn't help but notice the rapidly developing CB to our southwest back towards Sioux City. Reluctantly, we decided that since we were just 30 miles or so away from this cell, we'd play it first and then blast east and north to our original target area  if it didn't pan out. Quickly realizing that a whole line of convection was exploding along the south edge of our apparent low-level dry punch, we resumed our original strategy. Working our way east and north, we watched with disappointment as a quickly developing severe storm fizzled/struggled east and north of Spencer. Going east on Highway 3, we turned north on Hwy 69 with the idea/hope that maybe the tail end of the broken line of supercells ongoing in Minnesota would eventually become invigorated by the incident dry punch/stronger shear near the MN/IA border somewhere east and north of Algona. As we approached the town of Forest City, IA at 6:34 pm (near the site of Gene Moore's early day tornado of June 8, 1993) what came into view encouraged us. A somewhat small, high-based albeit circular updraft was just north of town. It featured a mid-level cyclonically curving collar cloud with convective turrets stair-stepping up around the south and east side of the updraft. The updraft base was quite circular with tiny dryslots evident in the southwestern portion of the base and scattered strato-cu feeding in the from the southeast. Our dewpoint had varied all day long as we drove in the warm sector. Once we got south of Forest City into strengthening inflow, however, the dewpoint did not vary from 64F for as long as I stared at the sensor. As we approached the updraft base driving north on Hwy 69 near and past Leland, IA the storm appeared to intensify rapidly with banding/striations sharpening in the main convective tower and a wall cloud developing rapidly under the center of the more or less circular base, the latter being about 5 miles in diameter. The developing core remained about 2-3 miles north and northeast of the updraft. The surface inflow was SSE at about 15-20 mph. The wall cloud clearly intensified, becoming a near perfect cylinder as it crossed the IA/MN border just east of Emmons, MN. Desperate to somehow get east and north of the rapidly intensifying low-level mesocyclone, we proceeded north on Hwy 69 and then east on CR13 just north of Twin Lakes, MN. During this time, the wall cloud was just incredible, resembling an upside down metal bucket with candycane-striped striations. The rotation within the wall cloud intensified steadily and dramatically, with occasional funnels forming beneath. It  was perfectly clear that this beast was going to produce a significant tornado at any time directly east of us. Blasting east on CR13 we passed I-35 and approached the town of Glenville. During this time, I called 911 to report that a tornado would soon form  over the hapless town. We stopped our vehicles 2/10 mile west of town and watched with horror as a huge fan debris cloud fairly exploded off the ground into a perfectly tapered condensation funnel that was rapidly condensing to earth. The white smoke column from a plant's smoke stack just northwest of Glenville was being pulled horizontally into the tornado. The tornado quickly widened to about 150 yds wide at base getting smoothly fatter towards the base of the upside down cake wall cloud. I decided on the spot that this tornado easily made my 'top 10' or at least 'top 20' list. We filmed for a few minutes and then tried to get into Glenville to go north on 69. On the western edge of town, we encountered downed/snapped power lines, badly damaged homes and wrecked trees. Could not proceed. We turned around and used muddy section roads to navigate around the south side of town. We drove north on 69 through Glenville, passing scattered destroyed/damaged buildings as ambulances screamed into the town. I'm not sure where the main damage path was. We eventually got to I-35 and I-90 going east on the latter freeway. Between Hayward and Oakland, a large raggedy, violently rotating wall cloud/barrel cloud with condensation fingers spiraling around the western edge came into view to our east-northeast. Within minutes, we could discern a large barrel tornado. We approached Austin, Minnesota, gawking at the 1/4-1/3 mile wide barrel tornado to the north of the interstate, just northwest of Austin very near Hwy 218. Proceeding east, we encountered yet another strongly rotating low-level mesocyclone that quickly produced a scorpion-tail/elephant trunk tornado that lasted about 1 minute. As this brief tube dissipated, it left a horseshoe funnel that lingered for a moment in mid air and then was gone. I'm going to end this here. What a fantastic storm. It was like so many of my best chases where things just don't seem to come together for the longest time and then, as if a switch is flipped, a storm goes absolutely bananas. What a day!

By SLT President and Guide: Dave Gold.