May 12th 2004 Medicine Lodge and Attica, KS Tornadoes
chase partner:Blake Michaleski (www.convectivetrends.net)
Blake Michaleski and I departed Lafayette, LA for our two day chase vacation Monday may 10th and drove toward the Amarillo, TX area. We decided to chase the dryline Tuesday knowing the big day would be Wednesday May12th. After statying the night in Lubbock, TX with a friend, we got a late start departing the area around noon. We arrived in Woodward, OK several hours later and decided to make a quick data check after talking briefly to our nowcaster a few hours earlier. We decided to head NE towards the NE part of the dryline just east of the triple point with an initial target of Alva, OK. Shortly after departing Woodward, the first towers broke the cap and we had the first storm to our north.
This storm ended up being further north than we had initially throught. Yet, as we headed north, we noticed another storm further south beginning to develop. It appeard multicellualar, so we continued north towards the first storm, keeping an eye on the southern. Once we arrived at the intersection of highway 50 and 64 in northwestern OK, we made a bad decision to take a back roads northward. During our offroad adventure, our southern storm became much better organized and visually appealing. So we decided to stick with this storm, and it turned out to be a wise choice. We finally crossed the KS border and on to a paved road near Hardtner,KS just as the southern storm became tornado warned. Turning onto KS highway 281 north we witnessed the first tornado of the day south of Medicine Lodge or Sharon, KS.
We kept on Hwy. 281 to Medicine Lodge turning onto KS Hwy. 160 east towards Sharon, keeping an eye on the cyclic storm. Arriving near Attica, it appeard the storm had just cycled again, as an old meso was visible to our east. Based on some anticylonic cloud motion and outflow dominant features, we continued eastward. We arrived in Attica, KS just as our second tornado touched down. This was a gorgeous cone with red dusty base to it.
Video Clip: ©Deroche/Michaleski 2004
Broadband Med Resolution(2.66MB)
Broadband High Resolution(15.8MB)
We observed this tornado for approximately 5-7 minutes before it roped out and dissipated. Heading up the road again on hwy. 160, law enforcement officials blocked the road up ahead due to downed powerlines and debris coving the road. So we turned around and headed south on a dirtroad toward hwy. 2 observing baseball sized hail on the ground. Keep in mind, this was approximately 10-20 minutes after the tornado touched down, so the hail size at the time it fell must have been near softball sized. Anyway, we finally reached hwy.2 and found ourselves with a new storm to out west. We decided to stick with it until dark rather than trying to catch up with the old storm to our east. Our new storm was very visually appealing with noticable stacked plate meso, beaver tail and violent wall cloud rotation.
We did notice a lowering after dark that resembled a cone shape, however, we could confirm it due to sparatic backlighting. We ended the day south of Attica and took the long drive back home to Lafayette(about 10-11 hours) with my best chase day to date in the bag.