May 23, 2008:

The Twistex crew started our day at the Best Western in Hays, KS, leaving around noon. Our initial target was to head to Colby, KS but we decided to stop at Oakley, KS - which turned out to be a great decision for us. Upon arrival we stopped and ate lunch at the Subway, and hung around Oakley for little bit, and then decided to catch the disorganized convection that fired to our south as it got near I-70.

Once on the road, we traveled east on I-70, and exited at the Quinter exit, heading south on Castle Rock Rd. We traveled south a ways, and the road quickly turned to gravel/sand. We decided to continue, to get out of the forward flank rain and to a place where we could observe the storm develop to our southwest. I'm not exactly sure where we ended up, but if I were to estimate, it would be about 10 miles southeast of Quniter. The roads were starting to get pretty mushy, a factor that was definetly on our minds. We paused at this location for about 15 minutes, and watched the storm rapidly develop. I noted that the storm had near vertical updraft, with a nice back-sheared anvil. Thus, the storm was looking better and better.

As the southern edge of the storm was beginning to pass to our west, we decided to get in our cars and head back toward Quinter. Our intent was to just stay with this storm and see what it does. During our drive back to the northwest, the storm kept looking much better. A few miles south of Quinter, the road turned back to pavement, so we turned west on to a small hill to observe what the storm was doing. To our surprise, when we popped over the hill, we observed a powerful, mature tornado. We were within a quater of a mile of it. It was moving very rapidly to the north, so we jumped back in the cars to proceed north.

When we got out of the small valley we were in, we could still see the tornado. It still was very powerful, and maybe a bit closer to us now. Then, in a matter of seconds, it vanished. This was amazing to observe - one moment it was a large, mature tornado, and the next it was gone. Looking to the north, we could see what appeared to be a new mesocyclone, thus we proceeded north to stay with this storm.

We continued north on Castle Rock Road through the town of Quinter. North of town is when things really became interesting. Here we observed several small satellite tornadoes, rotating around the parent mesocyclone. One of these satellites evolved into a large stove-pipe tornado. At this time, we believed this was the only tornado with this storm, so we wanted to proceed north to sample the RFD associated with this tornado. We didn't realize that to our west was a multi-vortex wedge tornado that was rapidly developing. We didn't realized it was developing because our driver's side windows were covered in mud from our adventures on the sand roads just mintues before. Dangerous to say the least.

As we continued north, the winds began picking up from the southwest. At the time, I didn't know what this was from, but now we know this we the leading edge of the RFD associated with the wedge tornado. When this RFD hit us, it brought the powerpoles down on the road, and the powerlines landed on the mesonet instrumentation. Winds from this RFD were measured to be over 100 mph +. We were very concerned about our safety at this point. A car in front of us was refusing to move, thus we couldn't escape the danger associated with the powerlines. Eventually they moved, and we were able to drive north to reconvene with Bruce and Cathy. Meanwhile, the wedge tornado was passing to our northwest and north. It was very large (1 mile wide +). It appeared as though the entire mesocyclone had descended to the ground. We were lucky that it passed us to the north.

When we got back up with Bruce and Cathy, we found them in the ditch. Bruce decided to ditch the car, rather than have the powerlines come down on the car. When Tim arrived, he towed the car out, but accidently bent the suspension. Using his engineering expertice, he was able to fix the suspension by using the car to re-compress the spring. This process took us roughly an hour, and by this time, the next supercell was in our area, with the potential to produce a tornado.

Bruce and Cathy made the decision to drive away from Quinter, as the town looked to take a direct hit from the next tornado. We proceeded east to the town of Collyer. We got split up from Tim, as he stayed behind to help others who were stuck in the ditches. As the tornado passed near Quinter, we lost radio contact with Tim, and became very concerned for his safety. After the storm passed Quinter, we decided to drive back toward Quinter to find Tim. For the longest time, we were unable to reach him via radio contact. Tony was eventually able to reach him on his cell phone, much to our relief. Tim was very close to this tornado, and deployed probes in the town of Quinter - which resulted in a miss.

We were never able to meet back up with Tim, as he advised us to proceed east to intercept the next supercell on the line. So that's what we did, traveling east on I-70 to the Hayes, KS. Again, we thought that Hayes was in the direct path of this storm, and could very well have a tornado pass through the town. Since we arrived well in advance, we headed south of Hayes on Hwy 183 to near Antonio to watch the storm pass. By this time, it was getting very dark, and our visibility was rather limited. From our vantage point, we couldn't observe anything. So, we decided to wrap up the chase and proceed back to Hayes to spend the night. Tim was able to intercept this storm near Ellis, where they observed a large tornado. The National Geographic crew had two windows blown out of the their vehicle as well.

We eventually all met back up, and went to supper at Applebees again. Several chasers converged on this restaurant, many of which had their camcorders with lots of stories to tell. I enjoyed a juicy steak. Later that evening, I realized I'd need an external hard drive to store all of this amazing video.