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From May 13 - 17 the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Atmospheric Science Club took part in our annual storm chase. 11 chasers and four forecasters were involved in the chase that took them on a trip across parts of the Midwest and High Plains. This year two "chase teams" were involved and were guided by forecasters from UW-M. These are the reports from our two chase teams.

Chase Team #1

Chasers: James Frederick, Roman Berdes, Jim Brusda, Brian Wisniewski and Brian Jalas

DAY 1 MAY 14:

We left UWM around 3PM and headed southwest toward a possible severe weather situation to develop in Illinois. The plan was to meet team 2 in Moline, Il and decide where to go from there. Team 2 called us and decided to scrap the meeting. We decided to scrap chasing any further since the severe weather threat shifted further south than expected and many of the storms weakened as they moved into Illinois. The threat of severe weather had diminished. We got a motel in Galeburg, Il and planned Day 2's strategy at a motel which seemed to be located in a train yard (wish we had realized that before we decided to stay there).

DAY 2 MAY 15:

We decided to stay near a developing warm front moving northward through Illinois. This region was in a slight risk for severe weather and it appeared that severe weather could develop near this front at any time. The pattern appeared to be a "Ring of Fire" pattern where storms fire up around the edge of the developing upper air ridge. The problem was exactly where the storms would form. There was little going on near the front so the team decided to go down torward Champaign and Urbana, Il to see if we could investigate some of the tornado damage from a major tornado outbreak that affected Illinois in April 1996. We first stopped at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana to see their Atmospheric Science Facilities. After a brief tour of the weather map room, we gathered some weather data which comforted us in our decision to stick with the warm front. The weather data we gathered pointed toward possible severe weather in NE Missouri and West Central Illinois so after inspecting tornado damage in nearby Ogden, Il we headed west toward Quincy, Il. Thanks University of Illinois for the weather data! Ironically some storms fired up just north of Champaign-Urbana...after we had already gotten to Quincy. When we got to Quincy it appeared that things would stay quiet for a while. We were happy that we were finally out of the 40 degree temperatures and dense fog that plagued us for much of trip so far. We went to see Twister since we had seen no twisters of our own yet.

DAY 3 MAY 16:

Unfortunately for us a bunch of severe weather popped in Nebraska overnight. The storms in Nebraska and Iowa were part of a mesoscale convective system that included a bow echo on radar. Numerous reports of high winds and large hail came with this system. We knew that these types of storms could form along the warm front...but were hoping that they would form a bit further east. When we found out about these storms we jumped out of bed and raced northward into Iowa. We carefully plotted the location of the storms but seemed to lose them in dense fog as the line of storms literally split as we reached them near Cedar Rapids, IA. We had lunch and then our frustrated bunch regrouped and decided to head west to get set up for a potentially large outbreak of severe weather in northwest Iowa and southwest Minnesota the next day. Meanwhile, severe weather started to fire up in the Dakotas. We wanted to get to the Dakotas but we were only in Des Moines at the time. It is now about 5PM and we wanted to get set up best for the predicted big outbreak. I should mention, that while we did all this, storms fired up in west central Illinois. The storms were real scattered so we opted not to go back. We were getting very tired so we got a room in Sioux City, IA. We had dinner and crashed for the night...we really wanted to follow team 2 to the Dakotas but we didn't feel safe driving over-tired and in the dark.

DAY 4 MAY 17:

This was the day we were waiting for. Much of eastern South Dakota, southwest Minnesota, and northwest Iowa were in a moderate risk of severe weather. A strong cold front and low pressure system in conjunction with upper air support were supposed to trigger widespread severe weather. Weather discussions were talking of supercells and tornadoes in this region. We moved to Sioux Falls, SD and waited for weather data from our forecast team at UWM. Our contacts sent us to Worthington, MN where we sat and waited 5 hours for severe weather to pop, the cap was stubborn at first. We grew impatient and tried to catch some storms to our north not initially realizing that they were move northeast at over 60mph. Most of the storms popped well to our north and well to our south...initially. On our northward journey we encountered very strong westerly winds gusting well over 40 to 50mph. We probably should have been more patient and waited....

Heading east we noted the development of a line of cumulus just to our west. We were hopeful but not overly excited yet. We continued to observe these clouds. Within about a half an hour these clouds had matured into a line of thunderstorms which developed into a squall line almost directly over us at Redwood Falls, MN. We video taped much of this storm development.

We had to head back to Milwaukee after this. We encountered a beautiful lightning display much of the way home and numerous strong to severe storms. No tornadoes for us, but we learned a lot...this was a true learning experience. It seems that many were fooled by the location of the tornadoes (most of them formed with the warm front and not the cold front). We are currently researching the events that transpired during the trip and hope to learn from this further research. Ironically the next day numerous tornado reports came from the areas we were in the day before. Too bad we had to return home.

Chase Team #2

Chasers: Mike Westendorf, Mark Gehring, Phil Lawson, Chad Stingle, Doug Jiershek and Chris Kuk

Tuesday May 13

We left Milwaukee in a cold fog with a temperature in the 40's. Our plan was to travel with Chase Team #1 and work together. We were going to go to Iowa and set up for Wednesday. After losing them in a traffic jam we decided we would head south towards Springfield where some thunderstorms were rumbling across northern MO. and southern IL. We arrived in Springfield in the darkness and had to make the decision to stay in the Midwest or to move on towards Oklahoma or Colorado. A dry line was developing in western OK. A strong mid-level cap was developing at the same time which would prevent storms from developing. If something did develop and break through it would more than likely be big so we decided to take a gamble and go to Oklahoma. We arrived in Enid OK. about 11:00 A.M. after observing a beautiful sunrise with some interesting virga events.

Wednesday May 14

Our gamble did not pay off this time. The convective temperatures for this area were about 110 degrees so we did not see anything break through the cap. We did however enjoy the clear blue skies and 95 degree temperatures. According to the weather channel Milwaukee was in the 50's with an east wind so we still felt good about our decision. That night we decided to chase indoors and went to see "Twister". The rest of the day was spent catching up on sleep. That night we made plans to move north towards Nebraska in the hopes that another MCC might form.

Thursday May 15

We left Enid about 11:00A.M. and headed north through Kansas and up the western side of Missouri. There was a good chance of severe weather in Nebraska and the Dakotas for later that night, so we spent the day trying to get up there to intercept if something popped. As it turned out a Severe Bow echo developed to the west of Bismarck producing baseball size hail and a 79 mile an hour wind gust at the airport. There were numerous reports of tornados in central South Dakota. We began chasing the storms at about 12:00A.M. just to the east of Aberdeen. The storms produced heavy rains, some pea size hail and gusty winds. It did produce an enormous amount of lightening some of which we got on film. We chased the storms all the way to Lidgerwood ND. There we stopped because we were just too tired. Before crashing we saw this huge Thunderstorm right out our window at dawn. Unfortunately this picture does not do it justice.

Friday May 16

We finally woke up about 11:00 and were on the road by about 11:30. This was supposed to be the day that everything came together. We were sent to south central MN where the best chance for severe weather was for that day. Unfortunately the storm system did some unpredictable things. We believe that the warm front we were following was bent back behind the low pressure system. This forced the most severe region of activity further north and west than was forecast. We did, however, have our share of chasing that day. It started about 7:00P.M. while we were eating. Sustained winds of 40 - 50 mph moved through the area the result of turbulent mixing according to the sounding from that area. It produced a massive dust storm that actually decreased visibilities in some areas. Fortunately there were no leaves on the trees and they were spared for the most part. We followed this line of high winds east until we decided to stop. The line was moving at about 60+ mph and we couldn't keep up with it.

Still no sign of storms so we headed south towards Gaylord MN. A band of clouds was developing to our west, but we didn't think much of it until we called the other team. They were under that band getting pummeled by heavy rains, so we decided to stop and observe this line. The line of storms fired up very quickly and soon lightning was visible as far north and south as we could see. We stayed and filmed the line as it approached. We were again given quite an electrical display but most of it was in the clouds. Because of the lightning we did observe what may have been a wall cloud developing in the distance. It was in the proper location according to theory, but it was moving so fast (possibly 70 mph) that it was basically sheared off the bottom. In any case we observed no rotation with it (not all wall clouds rotate), but we know that it indicated the position of the main updraft for that cell. Unfortunately this all happened at night again and so we did not get a chance to see cloud structure for the most part. We did learn how to chase at night. On the way home we encountered 3 series of storms moving up from the SW. Some of these storms dropped pea to marble size hail and heavy rain.

Forecast Team

Forecasters:

Dr. Paul Roebber (UWM Atmo Professor & Undergraduate Advisor)
Michael Thomas (Atmo Masters Graduate)
Ron Ingram(Club Alumni)
 

Content written by: Ronald Ingram

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