09/24/05
Gloria, September 27, 1985; Bonnie, August 28, 1998; Floyd Sept 13, 1999; and now Rita, Sept 23, 2005, all very unassuming name for monsters in disguise.
All are hurricanes and some of the most destructive storms ever to hit the shores of the United States.
Covering a hurricane is like a hurry up and wait scenario, you rush to get into position and you wait for it to approach, blow things around and then you wait until it blows over in order not to get too wet. And no matter how hard you try, you always get wet.
The winds drive the rain sideways and it can soak you to the skin in seconds flat.
The worst thing is the human toll. Driving down to Beaumont, TX to get into place was a major task. Gas was at a premium, and I give the gas station owners credit for not raising prices in the days leading up to the evacuation for Rita.
We (Dennnis Roddy, of the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, and I), topped off our tank at every station we could. At times, I know I have complained about high gas prices, but on that trip from Tyler, TX, to Beaumont, I would have paid $10.00 a gallon just to have a full tank. We made it to Beaumont with just under a full tank left and four gallons of gas, in cans, strapped to the top of our truck.
We passed nearly a hundred cars abandoned along the road, their tanks empty. One woman, Pat Trahan was sleeping sitting up in the back of her pick-up truck, waiting for a convenience store to open, hoping for a few gallons of the liquid gold, after taking 14 hours to drive 60 miles in the lines heading North to flee the impending wrath of Rita.
The day after Rita, we headed out the the small towns of Vidor, Orange, Port Arthur, and Lake Charles. The towns were devastated by exploded windows, torn off roofs, downed trees, and flooding. It was impossible to get there from here and the only open major road was I-10 east and west, but you still had to dodge an occasional tree across the road.
By the end of the first day, tree service trucks started to stream in by the dozens, army helicopters flew through the skies, and an occasional gas truck was seen.
The gulf coast dodged the catastrophic damage predicted when Rita was a CAT 5, but she still made her presence felt in a big way.
As we pulled back into Beaumont to head back to the emergency operations center for the night, a truck, loaded with gas cans was parked on the side of the road. We pulled up and asked if he could spare a gallon or two. After a few seconds he replied “Sure” in a German accent, and he handed me a can. After pouring the liquid into my gas tank, I asked the good samaritan what I owed him for the gas and the sacrifice.
He replied“Nothing, consider it international aid.” Once again the human spirit shines through in a disaster.
05/18/05
We left Nebraska this morning and headed for Kansas, hoping for a last
hurrah, with a ridge of high pressure setting in next week, severe weather will be
scarce. After a long drive, we had a bust of a day and headed towards KC for
the return trip home. We will be overnighting in Emporia, KS, and heading to KC
tomorrow to drop off Josh and Nancy. It was an amazing year, we have made many
strides over the years and are a top notch chase team, with only better years
to come in the future.
05/18/05 - 450 miles
05/17/05
We left Salina, KS and headed right towards North Platte, NE, which Josh Jans
and Chris Howell called as an initiation point for storms before we went to
bed. As we drove towards the area, a cell popped up just SW of North Platte.
The cell grew and within 30 minutes, was given a severe thunderstorm warning
and then a tornado warning. We hit the cell perfectly from the SE and tracked it
just a few miles NE of Great Platte. The cell and others formed a line and
headed rapidly off to the east. We called it a night in North Platte and headed
east through the storms. We jumped off the highway in Lexington ahead of them.
The front of the storm was producing gustnadoes and eventually a very dusty
gust front. After dinner, ECHO and occupants decided to call the chase a wrap
and headed home. The probability of severe storms looks like it is low the next
few days, so we may be ending up the chase soon also, we will see!
05/17/05 - 558 miles
05/16/05
We left Dallas, TX today and headed north to get into position for tomorrow's
chase, we finally have another chance for severe weather in western Nebraska.
We are spending the night in Salina, KS and found one of the nicest Super 8
motels we have seen on the road. Another high speed connection, this year's
chase has really changed due to the high speed connections on the road. We had a
couple of nice restful down days and are itching to get back on the road. We
stopped at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, OK so Chris Howell could say
hello to SPC employee Dan McCarthy, Josh Jans showed him some video from May
12th in Silverton, TX. After purchasing some shirts and stickers we headed
farther north and stopped in Wellington, KS at the Welling steak house, for
dinner, one of our past haunts, and then onto Salina.
05/16/05 - 480 miles
05/15/05
We rested today, washed laundry, and shopped for necessary electronics to
make our net surfing a hassle free zone in our hotel room. We bought a four
outlet hub so we all could surf the net at high-speed, with just one outlet in the
room. After solving that problem, we uploaded photos, and necessary things. In
the afternoon we went out to eat and to a movie at a 30 screen theater in
Dallas, TX.
It looks like we may be chasing again, sooner than we thought in the TX
panhandle, OK panhandle or western KS. and farther north the next day in either KS
or western NE.
After getting our batteries recharged, literally and figuratively, we are
ready to hit the road again. I will soon have videos of our May 12th, 2005 chase. Keep
checking back!
05/15/05 - 45 miles
05/14/05
We drove to Dallas and got a motel, tomorrow we will rest and catch up with
laundry.
Note: One of our members from Austin, TX came up to meet us for dinner and to
view our chase videos from the 12th, I will soon be posting some URL's to our
videos on my chase page soon. Stay tuned!
05/14/05 - 268 miles
05/13/03
Well it is Friday the 13th and our chase today lead us down south of Childress, TX, on a massive supercell, which looked like a nuclear bomb went off. We chased the many areas of shear all day and nabbed 4 tornadoes, which were short lived, because of the massive amount of rain that accompanied this cell. We ended up the day in Abelene, TX, and were forced into staying in an over-priced crappy motel, due to a local festival, so I apologize for the delay in posting the photos. besides, I was so tired, I fell asleep while toning up my photos. It looks like we will have a few down days, we all really need the rest.
Note: The storms we covered just south of Silverton, TX were reported to have 62,000 foot tops by the Weather Channel. There were just two large tornadoes that day, the second one you can see on my site was reported to be on the ground for 45 minutes.
05/13/05 - 569 miles
05/12/05
Happy Anniversary - May 12th has been a significant day for our chase team, we had Attica, Kansas last year and Silverton, TX this year. This account is courtesy of Nancy Bose, I am just too beat to write, and I need to pack for today's chase. We patched up my windows with Duct tape and plastic, to make it through another day.
We would like to dedicate this blog to Jason Sebastian, John Griswold, and Greg Ramon, who stepped down from the chase for a few days to do necessary repairs on ECHO. They selflessly insisted that we “go on”. You were with us, guys…
We awoke Thursday morning to find that an old friend, chaser Bill Tabor, was in the area…just too close not to meet up. Nancy volunteered to ride with Bill in his truck, and Chris, Al and Josh continued in the MESO vehicle. We had radio communication as well as cell phones…and before the day would end, needed both. Badly.
The team was looking at the Woodward, OK area at first, and Bill decided to join us for the day. Conditions developed that made Shamrock TX a better target, and on the way to Shamrock, we started to see development in the TX panhandle near Silverton TX. Though the cell we were going for didn’t show a whole lot of shear (a necessary component for tornadic development), it was at the moment…the only show in town.
We had near brilliant vantage on the cell, which dropped a couple of really low wall clouds, and a funnel or two, but nothing really juicy. We did get a lot of really cool shots of some very interesting cloud formations, but no brass ring. However, another cell was following in the first one’s footsteps, and that one DID drop a small, short-lived tornado. Then came the third cell. Mobile ThreatNet, an awesome program that allows us a satellite feed to radar images and certain bits of storm data, indicated that this storm had all it would take to go all the way. We moved a little South, a little west, and waited.
Other chasers had started to arrive shortly after the first cell popped, and the entire area became a sort of chaser’s tailgate party. Many had departed, chasing that first cell, some chasing the second. What made this third cell different was that it had tremendous shear…over 130 mph of shear. To our thinking, if any of these storms was going to give us a show, it was this one. It was trying so HARD. We got faked out a couple of times, with rotating wall clouds parenting slender fingers that would reach to the ground and then be caught up again. Redeploying to gain better visibility, every chaser there had been teased in to near madness, waiting for this storm to produce something dramatic.
Nancy: Bill and I were a little more South than the other MESO truck when the funnel dropped. Starting as a well defined cone advancing downward from the wall cloud, it formed into a classic tornado…picture postcard stuff.
The tornado intensified rapidly, and very quickly became a roaring brown monster…one which we, and about every other chaser there…was on the wrong side of. “In an effort to get away from the Rear Flanking Downdraft, which had already shown signs of horrific winds and large hail, Bill and I made a break to beat the tornado across the road. This was our first close call…we got close enough to kiss it before sanity took hold, and we aborted the run. We did a 180, and retreated to a safer distance.
Our other MESO truck had taken a jog to the east a bit, and Bill and Nancy moved to fall in behind them….but realized that the RFD had caught them but good, and there was no option but to try to “get out” safely.
MESO’s eastern deployment was to follow the tornado, which had briefly roped out shortly after crossing the highway. Chris Howell said “I knew that twister wasn’t going to rope out because of the intensity of the storm and the tremendous shear”. The boys deployed and watched the twister re-form right in front of them. That was their first close call.
Meanwhile, back at the Ranch….Nancy and Bill have become hopelessly trapped in the RFD. Pummeled by 100 mph winds was not enough….hail began falling, with an alarming intensity. Hard hail, not the spongy stuff they encountered in Nebraska days before. Double jeopardy: while trying to escape one area of rotation, they were entering another. Suddenly, the windshield literally exploded, showering both Bill and Nancy with glass. Then again, and again. Sheltering was not an option. The hail was bad…but not the worst thing this storm could offer. Another example of going on what you know, not what you think.“We were in the area of rotation, according to MobileThreatnet, but you have to remember those images are 10 minutes old. The storm was going NE. We were going north. The greatest shear was to our south. North was our only option. We committed to that option, and stuck to it.”
Back on the Eastern Route, the MESO truck was getting kicked as well. The price of chasing this Texas Twister to them was 4 windows, and the Sirius satellite radio. Both trucks were seriously marred, Al’s truck sustaining the worst whupping of the trucks, and Bill’s truck receiving the worst whupping of the people. (Bill had a cut under his eye and glass in his eyes, Nancy had glass in her eyes, mouth and throat). There were a lot of chasers out there, some also lured in maybe a little too close by this siren’s song, and we are hopeful everyone made it ok. We were seduced, then we were sucker punched.
The lesson here folks is manifold. Could we all have placed ourselves in a better position? Perhaps. We made the best decisions we could at the junctures they were made at…there is, though, always room for discussion when the heat of the moment has passed. We’re safe, we’re alive to tell the tail, and we have been reminded that there is more than one part of the storm you need to be aware of.
05/12/05 - 367 miles
05/11/05
Today started off with the promise of being one heck of a chase day, but
ended living up to the promise, but we chased blue skies and a high cap that
decided to break at dusk, several hours too late. The show we anticipated in
western Kansas, broke after dark near Garden City, Kansas. We had reports of a large
tornado on the ground, but it was basically dark, every chaser in several
counties ended up where were, the National Weather Service Doppler on Wheels
truck rolled south as we were positioned watching a cell just north of Garden
City, KS. We then moved to the South side of the city for a show, a night
Mesocyclone with embedded lightning, a good end to a long day. Tomorrow looks good
also, we spent the night in Liberal, KS. We are in a good position for tomorrow,
hoping for the best.
Note: Brian McNoldy and the CSU crew headed home last night, we may be joined
by another chaser friend today, Bill Tabor, and ECHO later tonight, which
maybe on the road again. We also have slight risks for severe weather for the
next couple of days, we are slowly heading south to Oklahoma and Texas.
05/11/05 - 540 miles
05/10/05
What can I say, but we had one HELL of a day!!!!!!!! Well, we nailed a
supercell, which produces a mesocyclone north of Grand Island, NE. This was just the
beginning of the wild ride. The structure of the MESO, was amazing, it looked
like a comma in the air. The MESO produced many funnels and was drawing dust
up and trying to for a full blown tornado right before our eyes, and
eventually it snuck up on us. We got separated from Brian McNoldy and and his CSU
friends, as they did their best to stay out of the hail shafts associated with the
storm. We were in a fairly safe notch in the storm. We has inflow on one side
of us and out flow on the other, it was a very rare thing, to have the two so
close to each other according to Josh Jans. We looked to the West and realized
that we had a rotating funnel approaching us, and were quickly enveloped in the winds as we made a quick escape, the rotation crossed 281 and headed to just
North of Grand Island, NE in the area of the airport, flipping over a trailer
and bending over two telephone poles. What a trip, see the main photos for
the day! We chased several other areas of circulation, and ended the night back
in Grand Island, NE, for a late dinner and lodging. Tomorrow looks like it
will be a wild day also. Stay tuned!!
05/10/05 - 284 miles
Note: Our storm chase vehicle ECHO is out of service for a few days due to
power problems, the guys and the truck hope to re-join the chase in a few days.
ECHO was the hit of the chaser convergence in Grand Island, NE, as everyone
waited for the storms to break. Chasers from Australia, England, Netherlands,
and Canada. We nailed today's storms again, right on the mark!
05/09/05
Today we left Mitchell, South Dakota and headed down to North Platte, NE, to
meet up with Brian McNoldy and his friends for Colorado State University,
Chris Rozoff and Greg Elsaesser. We are setting up for the storm potential
tomorrow and Wednesday. It was a leisurely drive down today, topped off with a great
steak dinner in North Platte, NE.
Notes: My son Noah Detrich has been watching my storm photos on the net and
with the logic only a four-year-old can muster, he wondered why I was not in
any of the photos. Today, I went against my best instincts and lead with a photo
of me for him. I will hopeful be able to post a few more over the next weeks,
but promise not to bore you with photos of me.
05/09/05 - 365 miles
05/08/05
We hit the road in search of a moderate risk in South Dakota, so our trek from
central Nebraska was a relatively short one. We ended up heading east into
Minnesota for a bust of a day, we saw many pretty clouds, but nothing severe. We
are spending the night in Mitchell, South Dakota for the night an will set up
to meet Brian McNoldy and Chris Rozoff tomorrow in Western Nebraska for
Monday's chase.
05/08/05 - 534 miles
05/07/05
Josh Jans and I left Lincoln, Nebraska early into he morning to head to
Kansas City to pick Nancy Bose and Chris Howell up from the airport. We have a
pretty good risk of storms in Central Nebraska, so we headed back up the same way
we came. After some time and travel, we located a strong cell near St. Paul,
NE and proceeded to have quite a bit of fun. We had a journey through several
hail shafts, and saw one of the coolest rainbows I have witnessed in many
years. As the day ended, we drove south towards Grand Island, NE and came across a
maturing supercell with a billowing top at sunset. After stopping and making
some photos, we decided to grab some dinner and look for a motel. After driving
just a mile, we had an absolutely AMAZING sunset. The sun rays from the
sunset went from the place we were watching, 180 degrees, to the horizon behind us,
I have never seen anything like this before. After dinner, we exited Golden
Corral to a lightening show which was unparalleled. We will be joining up with our storm chase truck, ECHO 1, and its creators John Grizwold and Jason
Sebastian, along with their search and rescue dog Radar. MESO member Greg Ramon will
be joining the chase for the first time this year also.
05/07/05 - 734 miles
05/06/05
Today I awoke to Josh Jans sleeping in the extra bed in my room in the
Smithville, MO, Super 8. He came in last night and I was so sound asleep, he did
not wake me when he got in. In the morning, we put his car in storage, and
headed out for one of the longest days of chasing, either of us has seen in a long
time, we left for Nebraska at 9:00 a.m.
Long Distance Chase: A murky forecast was in store for Friday as we woke up
to a milky sunshine; however, we were determined to make the best of the chase
ingredients offered. The Storm Prediction Center (SPC) was calling for a
slight risk of severe thunderstorm across western Nebraska and South Dakota. An
overly aggressive NAM model was once again calling for a widespread moisture return in the northern plains with dewpoint values of high 50's to low 60's. Cape values were forecasted for 1000 to 2000 JKG by the afternoon hours. Our focus was on a westward moving trough coming out of Colorado with a short wave moving into the Nebraska panhandle and a retreating warm front by the SD/NE border. Deep layer shear would be marginal (30-35 kts) for the development of scattered thunderstorms with long lived updrafts.
The Plan: Head west on I-80 towards the Nebraska panhandle to get in the
vicinity of the low pressure area taking place in Colorado and extreme western
Nebraska. This appeared to be the best environment for scattered t-storms to
develop with a limited window of time for the storm to take on tornadic characteristics. Our main concern was if there would be enough forcing for initial to occur
before dark. The cap would become an issues as cloud cover was slow to break
up during the mid morning hours.
By 3:41 PM, a MD was issues by the SPC for western South Dakota and the Nebraska panhandle. The cap was still in place, however, rapidly weakening should allow for scattered t-storm development in the next few hours. We continued to stick to our game plan and ride near the NE/CO border where a couple of small cells where starting to go up west - southwest of McCook, NE. By 5PM, we had found our dominant cell in Dundy County producing a spectacle of mammatus clouds. Although very slow to develop its dominate role and organize itself, by 5:30 PM the cell took on a hook shape with a tornado warning issues by 5:40 PM. We were able to observe the formation and reformation of a well-defined wall cloud with on and off funnel cloud action. This was the only tornado warning issued for any of the storms that fired - not bad for day one of chasing.
The chase went off very well, except for one slight mishap, a chance meeting
with a very nice Sheriff Deputy in Dundy County, I think. The Chief Deputy
hit the lights after passing us on Nebraska SR 25, south, and when he realized,
we were after the storm, he was fleeing from. He gave us his blessing and sent
us on our way. No harm, no foul!! Whew!! He said he had a hence encounter
with a severe storm a few week earlier and had to have the windshield of his
cruiser replaced.
We made the long trek back to Lincoln, NB, so we can head out early and pick
up Nancy Bose and Chris Howell at the KC airport. It was 11:15 p.m. and I just
could not drive anymore today.
05/06/05 - 857 miles
05/05/05
Happy Cinco de Mayo - It is 2:30 Central time and I am just a couple of hours from Kansas City, awaiting word from Josh on tomorrow's chase. I am making a stop at a Wi-Fi friendly Best Western in Foristell, MO to write this journal entry. It is surely warmer today than I have felt since last summer, it feels so good to be heading out to the Plains again!! I stopped at a casino in Boonsville, MO to give myself a break from driving, I was starting to dose off and needed some caffeine. I played some Let it Ride, because that will be the theme of the chase for the next few weeks, I am sure. I did fine, I was up $30.00 after playing for 1.5 hours, I got a little bored and went to play some Three Card Poker, lets say I did much better at that. I hit a three of a kind, which paid me over $300.00. I played some more and walked out $250.00 up for the three hour break at the casino. I hope the rest of the chase goes this well. I then drove the rest of the way to Kansas City, and then up to the Super 8 at Smithville, I an sending this from their slick Wi-Fi. I will be joined by Josh in the middle of the night. Tomorrow morning, we will put all of his equipment in my truck and head out to Nebraska for a chase day!! It looks good, but Saturday in Kansas is looking even better, until tomorrow.
05/05/05 - 459 miles
05/04/05
I left from work at the Toledo Blade, so high and ready to chase it is hard
to explain. The recent string of cold weather in the Toledo area included over
6 inches of snow just last Sunday, hardly looks like Spring. I have been in
contact with all my chase buddies, Chris Howell, Nancy Bose, Josh Jans and
others as we all prepare to converge on Kansas City, Saturday morning. Looking at
the Storm Prediction Center forecast products, let me to speed up my trip out
west, because it looks like some storms may happen in Nebraska on Friday. I am
going to meet up with Josh and maybe chase one day, before we pick up Nancy
and Chris at the KC airport Saturday morning.
05/04/05 - 325 miles
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