June 7, 2009 Seneca, KS-Gallatin, MO

Link to youtube video

Since Saturday the 6th was a blue sky bust, Bill Oosterbaan and his brother Tom Oosterbaan and I were already in SW Iowa.  After looking at all the model runs I knew that we needed to be near Hwy 36 in North East KS. Bill and Tom agreed.  I thought about Marysville, Kansas (KS) for a initial target but we wound up in Hiawatha, KS were we had a fine cuisine. A Walmart salad with ranch for me.

We met up with Randy Cooper by the Phillip 66 abandoned gas station where several other chasers converged.  I got to visit with Scott Currens whom I had not seen since 2005, it was good to see him. I also met a few chasers from Illinois, Brandon Sullivan and a few others whose names fade in my mind, you know who you are.

The storms began to fire North East of Concordia, KS. Watching the first few scans on the radar the guys and I decided to head west to intercept.  As we moved west another storm developed to the initial storms SE.    I have learned from past chases that I need to stay with the storm I am on until it looks like it will just not make it.   We decided to observe the storm to the SE of the main storm near Seneca.  So I will refer to this storm as the Seneca storm.

This is the first sequence of shots from its birth.

Started out elongated which it would struggle with as it cycled:

Storm starting to tighten up some striations coming in from the NE:

The NW storm was tempting my colleagues so the vote was 2 to 1 in favor of going to the NW. However, we all agreed that we just wanted to look at the NW cell so we core punched the little core our storm had to see the other storm. It must not of impressed us enough because we stopped and watched the back side of the Seneca cell which was very photogenic.

So after watching the Seneca cell develop some better structure and wall cloud, we headed east once again to get on the SE side of the storm.

Taken as we moved east, now almost due north of the cell. I believe this was taken west of Sebetha:

After we got to Sebetha the storm was cycling and looking weak once again. So the decision was made head west again since we could see both cells. So we left our storm which later became the storm of the day. Heading west left getting back to the Seneca storm nonnegotiable and we were committed to going north into Nebraska (NE).

This was the Seneca storm now as we drove west and then north to intercept the NW storm and then reroute to Rulo for the river crossing:

As we approached the NW storm it was in process of weakening. This helped us make up our minds that we needed to head east once again to catch up to our initial storm. We headed east on 8 along with everybody and their mother. As we headed east we saw Reed Timmer and his armada coming up fast behind us. We reached Falls City and Bill tried to navigate by stair stepping the streets in the city to try and stay ahead of the the armada from the discovery show and the Vortex 2 teams. Well as we came upon the intersection of 159 and 73 Reeds vehicle got there at exactly the same time we did. We all had to turn left and Bill squeezed in front of Reed. Sorry Reed. We did not want to be stuck in that caravan.

As we entered Rulo to cross the river I witnessed some of the best structure I have ever seen on the back side (west) of the storm.

After crossing the bridge we soon encountered very large hail. Baseball to grapefruit size hail was falling all around us. We were blessed to only suffer a few dents. Scott Blair lost his windshield. I think it was Simon Brewer who measured a 5.25 inch hail stone.

The storm took a hard right turn to the ESE and we had to drop south to Forest City, MO during this hail barrage. We finally made it out of the hail as we entered Forest City and continued to Oregon, MO. As we entered the city of Oregon we witnessed a very brief but well defined funnel pretty much right over the town. A very large clear slot was cutting in at this time. As we exited the town we found a hill to observe a very well developed walled cloud. However, in the occlusion near the back side of the wall cloud we observed a very cylindrical tube/funnel. Rotation was very evident and this too was just south of the town of Oregon. It looked like it wanted to touch down but after about 2 minutes it dissipated.

Video Grab:

From Oregon we headed east to Savannah, MO, were everybody and their mother seeemed to be gassing up and observing the storm. We were able to stay ahead of most of the hordes of people, taking a few back roads further east and stopped to observe a developing wall cloud and some descent structure near Union Star.

From there we headed SE to Weatherby. I do not have any still pictures that turned out very well here. But my video on youtube shows a very beautiful back lit supercell with a rain wrapped occlusion, which look to have a cone shape funnel. Someone had reported a tornado at this exact time near Weatherby, so there is a possibility that what we saw was a tornado, I wont hold my breath. After this occlusion we headed to Winston where we observed our last wall cloud. I put a time lapse of this wall cloud at the end of my video. Well observing this structure we were barraged with very close CG’s. Chris Collura was parked behind us as a very very very close strike hit the power pole 50 feet from us. I was outside of course trying to shoot lightning.

We then headed to ward Gallatin and encountered more large hail golf balls and slightly larger. From there we had to head home because I needed to be at work by 6am. Thankfully I work outside and we got rained out, I would of been an hour late.

We periodically met up with Bob Hartig but I never got a chance to talk to him, we kept having to reposition, and my focus was on the storm.