Here is a wrap up of the tornado chasing expedition my brother and I went on last week. It was definitely a last minute occurrence, but we were rewarded with a successful day on April 23, 2007 in Protection, Kansas.

I arrived at Oklahoma City’s Will Rogers Airport late Sunday night on April 22, 2007 after getting a last minute flight a few days earlier.

I decided to get a few photographs of OKC at night, although a lot of the buildings had their decorative illumination turned off.

Another shot of downtown Olkahoma City at night.

After the outlook for the location of supercell storms changed on us overnight, we repositioned to Shamrock, Texas and then Canadian, Texas. We waited around at the public library for a hour or so when storms began to fire. Things didn’t look as promising as a storm we initially targeted began to weaken, so we took notice of a cluster of cells north of us about 35 miles. We raced to catch up to them, crossing back into Oklahoma and eventually into Kansas. We chased this supercell for several hours and began to get discouraged as it just wasn’t producing anything strong enough- though it was tornado warned.

Our storm nearly produced a tornado here. The funnel failed to reach the ground, however.

Storm chasing may be a bigger deal than some think. Many were on this storm, including one of the DOW (Doppler on Wheels) trucks.

After this near-tornado, we decided to keep ahead of the storm as it moved northeast. This meant entering the core of the storm (normally something to avoid due to large hail) as the road network didn’t allow diagonal movement and a non-passible stream to our east prevented that as an option.

Punching the core of a storm, straight ahead.

After exiting the core which contained some pretty good sized hail and gave us a little scare about the windshield, the GPS was showing we were coming to Protection- Kansas that is. We drove a mile or so to escape the rest of the precipitation and got out of the car to quickly set up again.

The structure of the meso, fresh from the core.

With tornado sirens blaring in the nearby town, the roar of hail crashing down a few miles away and lightning accompanied by booming thunder, the ambiance of the environment was exciting. Before we knew it, a thin pencil shaped funnel came down in front of us.

We watched for a minute and suddenly the storm finally dropped a tornado.

While this qualified the chase as a success, this tornado wasn’t exactly what I was hoping to capture. But the storm wasn’t done.

Shortly, a second rapid circulation possibly reached the ground.

This next tornado was a better specimen, if only it had better contrast from our vantage point.

Behind it, another tornado touched town and was persistent.

It’s crossed the road.

Moving along.

The derbis cloud is visible here.

This tornado began to dissipate, leaving a transparent tube behind before vanishing.

We kept our eye one the rapid circulation visible in the wall cloud, and a final tornado touched town wrapping up the day’s chase.

The final tornado reaches the ground briefly.

We packed up and moved along, stopping for 15 minutes when we noticed the distant storm had a great appearance to it as the sun went down.

Our storm had moved along, and provided a vivid lightning show at dusk.

Zoomed into the storm.

April 24th promised an even better set up for tornadic supercells and we were very optimistic. After a night’s sleep in Pratt, Kansas, we headed up to Great Bend, KS to ponder more data. To sum it up from there, we bounced around and followed another storm that looked decent, but today’s cells were filling in and becoming part of a large line…something that is not ideal as the storms compete with one another before absorbing into the line. This discouraged us so we abandoned them and opted to photograph a nice rainbow and whale’s mouth formation.

Rainbow over the chase vehicle.

I think I can see the pot-o-gold.

Powered rainbow.

Pumping rainbows.

Whale’s mouth.

Little did we know, while looking at this formation, the tail end storm of the line became tornado warned and in fact produced a few tornados just 20 minutes away. While disappointing, they turned out not to be very photogenic. We called it a night and had a steak dinner in McPherson, KS.

The following day’s chasing was uneventful, and we ended up spending the night in Wichita, KS followed by Mount Vernon, IL on the long way back.

WichitaSkyline.com?

Were spent an hour or so in Saint Louis so I could grab a few more shots.

The ‘Bu.

St. Louis arch.

The end.

Here is a fast paced video of very low quality (since I focused on stills):

My brother, on the other hand, capture these tornadoes in 1080i HD video. Interested? Visit stormscenes.com.