Gorky

Where abouts are you gus staying? I'm at the Super 8 with some police people at the moment.. don't ask!

Cool.. I'm an hour from there.. let us know where you book in to!

You guys staying in Springfield? Might head up that way...

Seeing tor reports on that cell. Shame I headed for the garden city one instead. Hope the team are seeing these tornadoes!

Road option have run out for me. Heading to the SE CO storm... looks like a beast. Is that the one the team is on?

Today is rapidly becoming a bit of a tornado fest! about to watch number 6 touch down north of Tribune I think...

Left Aberdeen with a target of Faith, SD. Got concerned I'd miss the storms there time wise as they were already forming so sat for 20 minutes trying to work out if I should play for a more northern target. Eventually saw the storm firing a bit further back which would go on to produce the tornadoes between Howes and Faith, so jumped on that.... 20 minutes to late to witness the tornadoes. Frustrating as if I'd not stopped to check data, I'd have caught the last half of the spectacle. Terrain didn't even give me a view of the base till I was almost on the storm. I can't say I'm too bothered though. After the mayhem of 2 days ago I was pretty so so about chasing at all today, until I was almost on the storm at least Headed south afterwards through the strong winds from the linear storms in SW SD. Came across a lorry blown into a ditch at the same time as a few other motorists. Jumped out of the car to assist, straight into ankle deep mud water and diesel combined and it turns out the driver was long gone and no one had put up signs to indicate it was being dealt with. Given the amount of spilt fuel and potential for fire, I found it quite surprising the truck was left as it was. As we all left I saw more cars stopping to assist so that's probably still going on now... Second time in 2 days I've wrecked shoes and trousers/shorts in muddy fields... It's starting to get old quickly!

Looks like some beautiful mammatus where the team are. I can see them from sw SD as I head south!

My target today was Faith.... Set off too late and missed the show. Not sure if this area is now to lined out to give us anything more. Lots of wall clouds forming but they are hardly rotating if at all...

Only managed to get 2 of the 4 videos uploaded so far. Internet connection keeps cutting out mid upload on the larger files. Videos will be posted when they are all up including a nice 4 minute lifecycle of a cone tornado similar to the one in the photo above, but a bit later in the life cycle of the storm. Thanks for all the comments.

Tis a bit late so I'll just post some pics and a general overview. Target Pierre. Initiation ended up being 50miles north. Made it to the storm 20 minutes after the first Tor warning but it had not produced Watched as it wrapped up into an incredible meso rotating very fast. Massive RFD cut dug in spinning up the meso even more. Cloud motions were beyond unreal. Dropepd a fat cone which morphed to a stone pipe. This rotated around the outside of the rain wrapped meso, then another large tornado wrapped around again. I presume it was multivirtex at this time. Those tornadoes ended and it changed to a multivortex tornado with the wall cloud pretty much on the ground. It wedged out near a town but missed all but 1 house apparently. It ingested a cell to the south and cycled. I got in position for a beautiful cone underneath a mothership. It then produced a barely condensed multivortex tornado under the meso also. I got ahead of the storm on an east road which just ended despite Streets and Trips saying otherwise. Turned around but was blocked by more chasers doing the same. Rope tornado formed behind us and crossed the road near the highway junction. A second cone forced us east to the farmers field and crossed the road where we are knocking down a few power pole in a nearby field. A third funnel was heading for us a the field and we all headed south on the field. We got stuck as expected, that tornado passed to the north, but sod's law, another tornado developed over us. A multivortex with suction vortices dancing around the cars. WE didn't get hit by any and hail wasn't too bad but needed to wait a day to get bailed out. Pictures! Video of the entire first tornado evolution of cone-multivortex-wedge is being uploaded to Youtube this evening! Shall post a link tomorrow if it uploads ok. Also need to get vid caps from the later tornadoes as I'd stopped shooting the DSLR when things got manic...

Yeah, unfortunately, in dodging the multiple vortexes I drove deep into a farmers field, along with 7 other chase cars. The farmer is left trouser leged and we can't get to our cars. Police came, one chaser was arrested and taken to jail! Then ran out of gas in Bart Comstocks car as power was out everywhere. Checked in at 4:30 to a motel in Aberdeen. Will try get the car out tomorrow, but the farmer said he wouldn't tow it out til the farm dried, which given current forecasts, would be middle to end of next week! Gotta conserve laptop battery power so will not be about much till things are sorted... Left charger in the car I think...

This is not where you want to be when there are half a dozen tornadoes heading your way!

Looks like I am spending the night in a field.. with good company. Road ended despite being on GPS and we were forced south into a farmers field. Now truly stuck. Hoping not to get too badly hailed by training cells. Anyone watching the TVN stream earlier will understand where I am.... ... Got closer to a tornado that I ever wanted to be (i.e. within the circulation of a huge multivortex, with suction vortices all around. Not much I, or the other guys could do.. both streets and trips and Delorme said this road linked with the main highway, but it ended 1 mile short... if the road had been there, I was several miles ahead of the storm and was planning on heading south away from the hail core. would have had 10 mins to spare, but cars got stuck behind and the field was the only route ahead... At least I won't have to pay for motel rooms on the most expensive weekend of the year!

I got stuck in road construction and missed a north road I should have took leading to a 40 mile search for the next one (too stubborn to turn back ). As a result, I was still in Co at initiation and missed the tornadoes on the Wyoming supercell. Caught it as it was spinning up another nice wall cloud but it wouldn't put anything down. Shortly after I arrived I ran into a problem with the road I as on (a name highway!) just ending in a mud road. No other option than to retreat south 20 miles and I never caught up again. Very few photos taken. One is attached below. I have a timelapse showing the storm as it started to spin again (inlcuding some anticyclonic spin!) but the focus is out of whack. I might still post it if I get time. AS it is, I'm in good position to chase SD tomorrow which should be a tornado day if I play things right. Want to get to the NE side of the secondary surface low which is currently forecast to be SC SD. Hopefully some better luck tomorrow with the storms... Also.. Paul, those photos are kinda ok I guess.... Now let me pick my jaw off the floor!

Sorry guys.. but I'm fairly sure that isn't a tornado in that video - just rising scud.... Can't see no rotation at all there... nope...none at all... The flashing lights aren't power flashes either. That was the local outdoor roller disco which kicked off at 8:30pm They have some pretty powerful strobe lighting.... I can see how you were mistaken though! (This is me being not jealous at all!!!!! ) Seriously though.. that is pretty impressive. Couldn't you just have had James ram those trees out of the way with his chase vehicle before filming I know the area south of Paul's Valley is pretty crap as far as terrain. If the cell had been 10 miles north, it would have been over open fields! Next time, you should have had a separate camera set up focused entirely on Pat. You'd have needed a wide angle converter just to fit his jaw in it would have dropped so much I'm sure ROTAAAAAATIONNNNNN!!!

I shall have to look at the teams photos tomorrow. After only a couple of hours sleep last night.. I'm about ready to crash. Not going to chase tomorrow... Recuperation day for me and then looks like SPC seems to support my NWKS/NECO/SEWY area for Friday! Shall leisurely drive up through central Kansas to that sort of area tomorrow (500 odd miles of leisurely driving probably! Why does America have to be so big!)

I got caught up the the chaser convergence craziness in NC OK. Had trouble keeping up with storms going 30mph and barely missed the east road at Hitchcock which would have given me a East West road option (and the only one at that) with good views of the tornadoes the storm produced around Hitchcock, Loyal, Oakwood etc.If there had been a few hundred less chase vehicles on this storm, I'd have probably got them! Day started off well with a nice cone tornado near Leedey. Was quite brief and was off the ground by the time I switched to a zoom lens, but seeing the tornado with the full storm above it is quite unusual! I'm sure people will find it interesting to see where in the grand scheme of things, the tornado forms! (Super Wide 10mm shot. It really is much closer and much larger than it appears ) The second possible tornado I saw, though I'm not convinced to say so. Embedded in rain - image contrast enhanced a little to try and draw out the features. I personally say it could easily be just rain shafts but it correlates with a report. Wouldn't be surprised if this is just nice structure though A few structure shots, taken pretty much all taken whilst driving in convoy Hence blurry foreground and some funky angles. Had to concnetrate on who was the enxt person who was going to pull out right in front of me forcing me to slam on my brakes! The best part of the day for me.... Sick Mammatus on my drive north after the storms.... Utterly beuatiful and made up for missing out on the Loyal - Guthrie tornado action.

Sounds great. I'd have got all the tornadoes on the northern cell I'm sure, if it wasn't for the insane chaser convergence. Missed making the East West Road through loyal by mere seconds as the core came through and I had to shelter and let it past. The amount of people just pulling out in front of others, causing entire lines of cars to slam there brakes to avoid accidents was just stupid. Saw a number of cars with fresh looking fender damager and 2 cars wrecked completely in ditches. I swear there were 400-500 chase vehicles/vortex guys/curious locals following that storm. You'd get to the crest of a hill and there would be 100 people with cameras lining the road for half a mile with one of the DOW's and a few vortex vehicles. Then a couple of hills later, you'd see the same thing. Then the same at the next good viewing spot. It was utterly insane and NOT FUN!. I imagine most people there were not seasoned chasers. The coverage has really attracted a lot of people who honestly don't have an idea what is going on, to go out and look at this...

I'm very happy for you guys!.... bah who am I kidding.. you jammy sods.... grrrr...... :o

I'm calling it a day now. Everything is lined out... still probably producing but can't see anything north of OKC because of the rain! Saw the first tornado of the day near Leadley . Real picturesque... Then the chaser horde arrived (I'd estimate 300+ cars easily! lots of local yahoos as well as vortex). Not sure if I want to play tomorrow's likely moderate risk as I think it'd be the same sort of deal. I may head up to Colorado in preparation for A possible chase on Friday :o Just going to see if that looks like a good play, before heading north or south on I35. Good luck with the southern cells. They look a lot mor isolated, like when the cell up here first formed!

Beautiful LP Cell with wall cloud beginning to form at the near edge. Sunset backlit the wall cloud which had some crazy motions. Wall Cloud now looking utterly insane. It was essentially just a conveyor belt of cloud feeding into the storm. The rising motion was immense. Tried to get closer to see if there was any contact but got hailed on by 1 inch hail and bailed after the first pinged off the window with a loud thud... :lol: Watched this for a fair while and as dark set, it consolidated and dropped a few brief spinups west of Dalhart. Sure these will show up better on the video camera however! The storm split and the left split was what produced all of the following tornadoes (unusually). This tornado was roping out when I finally got a still of it. I'd taken a mud road by mistake (6 miles of mud road in fact!) and couldn't stop for fear of getting stuck. I was sideways for half of that drive! This tornado actually appeared to be a violent stovepipe at one point with a satellite tornado. The wall cloud to the right of the tornado goes on to produce the next tornado. I think I have a photo of it almost touching down but I moved to a new location shortly after. Multiple vortices with a massive wall cloud near Stratford. I only reported this as a funnel cloud originally, but I have 5 or 6 back to back photos with the right funnel touching ground! Tornado pretty much over Stratford. Not sure if it was the other side or not Token lightning shot :ph34r:

I checked in at 2am to my motel and am in the middle of the most insane thunderstorm I've ever been in. Didn't chase that big storm the team were on. Went up to SE Colorado and then jumped south onto the cell coming out of NM into Texas. It was the most beautiful LP I've ever seen, and as the sun set, it went mental with tornado after tornado. 2 at the same time at one point. Bloody video camera didn't work too well but I'm sure I've got a few of them lightning illuminated on my still camera! Chased the storm east, and it was showing Greensburg style lightning, and a redonkulous couplet. The southern flank of the storm was sheilded by rain and I think I got occasional views of either a floor scraping wall cloud or a large wedge but I couldn't tell. It had been doing the floor scraping wall cloud thing ever since sunset, so hopefully, the towns in the path were spared a big tornado.. VEry difficult day with horrible data issues. Without those, I'd have dropped onto your storm, and not the other and I'm sure both were equally amazing to watch so I'm not to upset. Still not sure why I couldn't access SPC or get any warning data all day, but Net wEather and other sites were fine... I ain't sleeping tonight... it's strobing outside, 2-3 flashes per second :ph34r: Lot's of loud CGs... In Perryton at the moment... Edit... Great Shots Paul.. That thing looked every bit as good as I thought it would I guess!

Had a great day, and a crap day all in one. Got on the Roswell storm way early before it was severe warned. Watched it sit almost stationary for 45 minutes, whilst I timelapsed it (kinda pointless when it barely moved!) It eventually started driftin SE at about 10-15mph over no mans land with very few roads. I ran into the Vortex lot who jumped on this storm. Was stalked by the TIV, had all my bandwidth eaten by them (cell towers couldn't cope) but could have outrun that storm on foot if I'd had to It started to show some nice structure as it approached Artesia, but then fell apart quickly. As it did, CG lightning went nuts. I think I have close to 40 daylight shots with lightning in them today, at no more than 1 or 2 second exposures. Some are a bit faint due to how bright it still was but I'm very happy with a few. As these storms died, a new storm got it's act together and gave a nice wall cloud before dying also. This was just prior to sunset and the resulting anvil gave a beautiful mammatus display. Now the bad... my camera tripod was sent flying by a passing big rig (on a gravel road.. .what it was doing there I have no idea...) The ND filter is a write off (massive scratch). The 10-20 lens has lost a considerable amount of the lens surround, but enough is left that the other filters still attach as does the hood. It does still zoom, although it grinds doing so. Autofocus seems ok and it still seems to take good shots. The Tripd is missing a chunk from the ball head but should not be a problem I don't think, and the camera took no damage, only the rubber camera armour was torn (and I thought that stuff was useless). Could have been much worse, but I'm usually careful not to leave it unattended near traffic. At least it appears to still be usable for the rest of the trip, although it looks in pretty bad shape... Hopefully this won't cause further problem for the trip. I use that lens for pretty much everything! Here are a couple of pics of the lightning I've taken for now (unmodified except to remove some dirt spots)