Convective Addiction

Danny’s – June 7th, 2009 – Atomic Supercell in NW MO

Posted on 07. Jun, 2009 by Danny in Uncategorized

Whew! Where to start. After a somber bust the day before, a moderate risk would try to shake me out of a bad mood. After spending the night in a crummy hotel in Council Bluffs, IA where we did get some good boomers overnight, Skip Talbot and Brad Goddard joined Adam and I for breakfast at the Perkins across the street. I ate the corned beef hash…. mmmmm delicious. We plotted our route and what we wanted to do that day. Very nice boundaries showing up on sat and radar, only problem was the CAP and if enough low level instability would occur. Turned out the instability set off some bombs but not enough low level instability to get the storms to sustain their rotation. As it were, we had a great chase day and saw everything but a tornado.

We got to Holton, KS, and met back up with Brad Goddard who fell behind after having to go to an ATM. We pulled into a gas station and talked with Kelley Austin from Arkansas about our target and all that. We migrated to the Taco Bell where Andrew Pritchard, Mark Sefried, Scott Weberpal met up with us. A little later Fred Plowman and his chase partner joined the party and Joel Wright and Jeremy Ludin came in. We had quite the little chaser convergence!

Well we had initiation popping up and blasted North out of Holton. We were going 10 over north oot of Holton when a black and white flipped around and pulled us over. We thought a ticket for sure was coming. The cop was VERY cool.

“I clocked you going 67 no 76 in a 65″

Sorry sir

“Where ya headin’”

North sir, we don’t know yet.

“You guys chasin’?”

Yes sir.

“I don’t think you guys need a ticket to slow down a lil do ya?”

No sir, but I understand if that is what needs to happen.

“Well be safe, I don’t want to keep you from your storm, Have a nice day”

Thank you sir,

Probably the nicest police officer in the road…. it makes you think what some people really do or say to cops to make them not like them and give them an attitude.

Anyway, back to the chase we went…… We were following the radar on our target storm and noticed it took on more of a pendant shape. No need to think about whats going to happen next!

*Words can not describe the power of this 52,000 foot supercell.

*WOW!

* After about an hours drive on back roads we finally re-emerged out ahead of the storm and were in awe of what we saw. This was textbook. I wish my camera could truly give you the sense of what this cell really looked like. A rainwrapped tornado was reported to be in there at this time but we definitely did not see it.

*The storm started getting closer so we moved south through the town of Winston, MO with tornado sirens blaring and a large wall cloud was bearing down.

* We sat and watched this wall cloud churn but nothing would come of it and we decided to find some hail.

* Tornado sirens blaring as we head east out of Altamont, MO.

* We finally caught up with the hail just outside of Gallatin, MO.

* After the hail passed we stopped at a gas station to fuel up and talked to a local about the storms. As we left I looked out to the south and told Adam to STOP. This lightning display is as good as it gets. WHAT A BEAST OF A SUPERCELL!!!!

FINAL THOUGHTS:
* The TIV and SRV have about 100000000000 followers, most of which are not even chasers

* The top of this storm exceeded 50,000 feet (52K)

* We traveled 2,400 miles round trip

* Tornadoes didn’t form today because the low level instability was just not there…..