College of DuPage Storm Chases

1996

I first filed this post after the first two trips (in May)...

The 1996 chasing has been a struggle with the first trip (May 3-8) becoming the victim of an incredible early May cap and the second trip (May 23-29) producing, but not as well as expected. The first trip saw 582 heights at 500mb into southern Kansas. An annoying east-west boundary was the focus for MCS development every night along and north of the boundary. This convection's ouflow helped push this e-w boundary further south into the cap. There were absolutely no chaseable days....only nighttime severe, and for the most part elevated, convection. The second trip had 3 chase days and 2 moderate risk busts. The first day of chasing brought us to the northern Panhandle of Texas near the Pampa area. Storms fired along a shallow cold front/warm front. For the most part they developed mid-level mesos but nothing at low levels...although towards evening, one HP like storm did develop a low level meso briefly at the south end of the forward flank/north end of the rear flank. The second day would be the day of annoying dust. The best storm, that did produce a tornado, was in the Friona, TX area. We breifly viewed a wall cloud and funnel before the strong 30 mph inflow winds carried in West Texas dust so much that the vis went to zero on the storm. Thank you very much drought. We kept up with the storms but eventually, with grunge from convective boundaries and shallow cold air...we left the stomrs to head to LBB. A few HP's formed there but because of Flash Floods due to major league run-off, we couldn't get there. First dust, then floods, great!! Day 3 we sat southwest of SPS along a dryline. Cu's went up and died, twice! Bust city! Upper low did not spit out as we expected. Most of the energy goes north where instability was low. Day 4...bust again south of Dallas, although we did not expect much anyway. Day 5..south of Dallas again, we see a storm that took on a couple of splits and had pretty decent shape/structure to it. However, very weak inflow winds didn't allow updrafts to sustain themselves and they gusted out....but a good day none-the-less. So, this trip wasn't so bad, just frustrating b/c we couldn't get the looks we wanted and some of the days didn't pan out as well as we hoped. Major league chaser convergence out there which was scary, but all real chasers...no yahoo's...so thank God for that. Next chase in June...17-22 or 23rd...a little late (we hate quarters), but we'll give it a shot. May be in the way up north, eh?

Matt

After the third trip, I filed this report to the SCH

As Gilbert mentioned we did get a pretty nice cell there near OMA..on thursday not friday. I'll have more on it a little later once I get some work done first. Basically, we sat near the GRI/HSI/EAR area of Nebraska trying to figure out just where to play. Plenty of grunge in northwest as upslope/warm advection was the story out there. Central Nebraska had some of the best heating and so one of our areas to consider was along a warmfront that basically ran from northeast CO thru northwest Nebraska. However...some warm advection in the mid levels was a concern as the cap was already pretty strong. Our other area to consider was eastern/northeastern Nebraska where the cap was weaker, and some outflow boundaries were around...left over from convection that rolled through then night before. At 4 or 5pm things were a bit bleak as nothing was really firing. However, Gilbert gave us the info that some TCU's were firing in NE nebraska and we should head there. WE weren't very far at all and by the time we got there a CB's had taken shape. It wasn't that impressive at first and the winds weren't that strong at the surface. We were able find our storm that had a well defined RFB and some scud moving up into the base...some pretty decent vertical motion...and occasionally form into somewhat of a wall cloud. At this point it was probably 7 pm or so...maybe a bit later. After chasing it for about a half and hour it began to take on this rather well defined bell shaped tower...very impressive. Had some tornado warnings with it, but it just wasn't a storm that you could be very aggressive with. It wouldn't suprise me if it had a tornado, but I can't imagine being able to see it. But who cares, I say, because it was a fantastic storm to watch. Again, I'll have to look at the video and reiew my notes to get a better grasp on times, roads, etc. All in all, it was a great storm. I'd also like to mention how great the Oak Tree hotel in OMA is. They had security guards all night brining people downstairs to shelter and constantly asking Paul or myself to go outside and check the weather. They were very on top of things and I just thought that was great. Not to mention, it was a fantastic hotel. Has a golf course inside, so, how can you beat that?

We also were on a storm that couldn't have been more of a tease. We like to call it our miniture, or shall we call it our microscopic, supercell. Believe it or not, there was a radar-detected tornado warning with this storm. It acually looks much more impressive in this picture then it was in real life. The storm is only about one mile away in the shot.

Here are two images of the Omaha Storm
Large Image
Smaller Image (I think this is the best image)