May 12, 2004 Chase

One of the best chase days I've ever had started when I left Yukon about 10:55 A.M. with a target "in the Woodward area". After hanging out in the Alva area for awhile looking for internet, I went out to 3 miles south of Alva to wait. At 5:07P.M. there, I measured 90/64 while the observation from Woodward indicated a very low dewpoint. I completely liked my postion and waited for the event. Clouds began to bubble to my west but not quite get going. The strongest looking updraft was to my northwest, so I moved to just east of Alva by 5:58 P.M. CLICK ON IMAGES TO GET LARGER IMAGE


View of cloud to the northwest about 5:58 P.M.

I decided to move east but soon realized that I actually should have gone north into KS. Needing to also continue east (or so I thought), I went to highway 8 and crossed into KS. I moved up highway 8 to KS2 and to where it turned to the east.

I stopped a little too far to the east about 2 east of where highway 2 turns to the east and about 14 miles west of Anthony, Kansas. To the west, to my surprise, a high based cloud was about to produce a beautiful tornado.

CLICK HERE for tornado #1 "windows media" time lapse 20X speed (7MB)
CLICK HERE for tornado #1 "REAL media" time lapse 20X speed (6MB)

Tornado weakens. Tornado on the ground from 7:12-7:24 P.M.
Rope lasted until 7:28 P.M.

After the tornado disappears, the rope briefly reappears!

Tornado #2 was small and harder to see.
Tornado #3 started about 8:01 P.M. and affected Attica, Kansas. My view to the north:

CLICK HERE for 6 minute "windows media" video of tornado (regular speed)
CLICK HERE for 10X time lapse also "windows media" format
CLICK HERE for 10X Real Media time lapse

After that tornado disappeared with little visible motion, I continued east to Anthony and then went a couple of miles north of Anthony.
To my north, the very large tornado #4 (8:23-8:30 P.M.):

CLICK HERE for tornado #4 time lapse 10X (Windows media)
CLICK HERE for tornado #4 time lapse 10X (Real media)

After this, I went west to a few miles west of Anthony after I couldn't go east from Anthony and concluded I wasn't going to see another tornado on the storm anyway. (too dark and position). From west of Anthony after dark looking north...tornado #5!! (9:08-9:22 P.M.)
(These are my first ever nighttime tornado pictures...leaning video captures)

CLICK HERE for nighttime tornado (Windows media)
CLICK HERE for nighttime tornado (Real media)


An outstanding supercell and chase day. :)

Kenneth