5-29-08 Kearney Tornado Photos

Note: for those of you who want art prints or want to license anything shot below, you can order them here.

Prints will be printed in Kodak Metallic Pearlecent paper (very nice stuff) and arrive matted on matteboard, meaning that they will be professionally mounted on a hard surface.

On May 29th, I chased and photographed a storm in central Nebraska. It looked from the get-go like it was going to go gangbusters, and it didn't disappoint, Sadly, the storm produced several tornadoes; a multivortex F2 that struck Kearney, and a F2 that ran over Aurora. I photographed the storm from around Elwood, Nebraska, to just east of Kearney, Nebraska, before breaking off of the storm to check on family living in Kearney. Below are the photos I shot; all can be enlarged in a new window/tab by clicking them. If you are interested in getting prints of any of them, toss me an email at digicana at gmail dot com. I'll put print prices (pretty cheap) at the bottom of this post. Note that there are a ton of photos with this post, so if you're low bandwidth, you'll probably want to mosey along and get a cup of coffee while this loads. So, let's begin...



I started out from Lincoln and drove west to Lexington, Nebraska. From there, I dropped south on highway 283 to try to get ahead of a developing storm to my west. By "get ahead", I mean that I wanted to get to an east-west road option somewhere on the south side of the storm before the storm over ran it. Doing this meant punching rather close to the core of the storm; it was a good three solid minutes of driving through dime and nickel sized hail. When I popped out of the hail, I saw this:





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This is the inflow area of the storm, where the warm air is drawn up into the storm like a giant vacuum cleaner on the prairies. To the right, you see the updraft base, which was rushing quickly east (left, in the photo). My goal was to get to the east/west option and jam it east before the updraft base and the mesocyclone (i.e., the rotating part of the storm) arrived; the mesocyclone is a perilous thing to be driving directly under, especially in a tornado warned storm, such as this one. As I made the east/west option at Elwood, the inflow winds (winds flowing into the updraft of the storm -- i.e., the vacuum cleaner winds) were quite strong and actually rocking the car, and I drove through a few waves of what chasers sometimes call "atomized rain" -- a very fine mist that makes the senses perk up a bit as it seems to pop up from time to time near tornadoes. A little hotfooting on highway 23 and I got enough ahead of the storm to snap a few photos:






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These are taken at various points along the journey; I kept darting ahead a bit and then letting it overrun me before darting ahead again. You can see in the last couple of shots the sort of horseshoe shape the storm was taking on; here's where I think it began to evolve into an HP, or "high precipitation" type supercell. An HP supercell is the type of storm that produces rain-wrapped tornadoes that are hard to see; very frustrating for photography, of course, but usually far worse for the people in the path of such a storm, who often don't realize there is a tornado bearing down on them until a split second before they're sandblasted by debris.



Now the problem is that highway 23 runs southeast, and the general storm motion at this point was east-north-east. So the storm was getting steadily farther and farther away. It seemed to be accelerating a bit, as well, and I found myself on the back end of the storm. I didn't want to be behind the storm; shooting a storm from behind it -- or from west of it, in this case, is not usually as photogenic as shooting it from ahead of the storm. So, I took a left and jotted up a county road somewhere west of Overton, Nebraska, and then followed east on a somewhat paved road named "747", and then "748". The problem with this is that the rain and wind was getting pretty intense as I went east and was slowing me down quite a bit. Eventually, I made it to the road that intersects with the Odessa interstate exit. It was a tough choice, but rather than linger behind the storm I decided to hop on the interstate and punch the hook, drive under the mesocyclone, and get in front of it. At this time it did not seem to be visibly putting down a tornado, and radar wasn't showing very tight circulation, so this seemed like a safe idea, as I felt I'd likely see any circulation forming before it landed on me. (In retrospect, this was probably a bit too presumptuous on my part, considering the HP nature of the storm.)



I booked it down interstate 80 towards Kearney. I wish I had a picture to show you what this looked like, but this was far too white-knuckle driving to document. Imagine driving into what appears to be an apocalypse, with black as soot clouds overhead, every vehicle on the interstate going half speed with their flashers on through buckets and buckets of rain, before finally exiting the rain and trying to keep your car driving straight through the inflow winds, which were ripping in from the southeast. I even hit a tumbleweed, if you can believe that. Definitely not time to try to snap off a photo!



Now, as I was booking down I-80 and got within 4 miles of Kearney, I noticed something distressing ahead of me. Thin... very thin curtains of rain were falling. This, in itself was not a problem. But the rain curtains were moving very, very, very quickly from the south to the north. Following them with my eye, I saw that as they got north of the interstate, they began curving left, or to the west, in a very large arc. There was clearly a broad, very broad circulation on or very near to the ground, and I was driving right under and in it. I wasn't sure what was going to happen when I hit the rain curtain, as it was really moving. I slowed down a bit and as I popped through the curtain, I got a sudden staccato blast of very strong wind from the south that rocked the car a bit and was gone as fast as it came. And then everything calmed down. I was ahead of the mesocyclone.



After a few miles, I pulled off onto the Kearney interstate exit and parked for a moment. A few other chasers were set up along that road (one was one of the Discovery Channel camera units) and were packing up. I hopped out of the car long enough to snap this photo of the storm rolling into Kearney:





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It was a bit hard to reconcile that five minutes before I was actually driving underneath that thing. I didn't linger long in Kearney; the sirens were blasting at full tilt, cars were scrambling to either get out of town or find cover, and a general sense of "Oh No" was radiating from everyone nearby. I booked back onto I-80 and called some family members of mine who live in Kearney and told them not to come up from the basement until the radio told them it was all over. This turned out to be somewhat fruitless advice, as the radio station went off air only a few minutes later and only would play the occasional creepy "boing" sound as multple tornadoes tore through town, exploding power transformers, ripping down buildings, overturning almost an entire 100 car train, and bending dozens of power poles to the ground.



I followed the storm east on I-80, stopping at the Gibbon, Shelton, and Wood River exits. Most of the following photos were taken from the Gibbon exit, with a few of the later shot from the Shelton exit (or somewhere near it.) I kept running into the Discovery Channel guys; they're all over the place this year.






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Speaking of the Discovery Channel, I ran into what I suspect is Sean Casey's (a storm chaser featured in Storm Stories who is trying to penetrate a tornado in an armored truck) new vehicle, the TIV 2, which looks like something out of Mad Max:






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This is quite an amazing looking vehicle; judging from the rear markings, it appears to have been custom built by a military armored vehicle company. I know the TIV 1 is still out there in service; I've seen it this year while chasing. I haven't watched Storm Stories in a while, so I have no idea if this has been worked into the documentary yet, but if not, I suspect that it will. It's quite a strange sight. And as for roads, well...







ROADS? WHERE WE'RE GOING, WE DON'T NEED ANY "ROADS"!



I finished off the day by going back to Kearney and surveying the damage and making sure my fam was okay (they were fine, though a tornado did apparently go right down the street of their neighborhood, and destroyed an apartment building and a house and stacked a couple cars on top of each other a few blocks away.) As the sun set, a rather spectacular display of mammatus clouds burned orange over Kearney:





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Some time in the next week or so, I will post damage photos. I had a chance to survey and shoot damage inside a destroyed home in Aurora, Nebraska (and offered the shots to the Lincoln newspaper.) It's quite a heartwrenching thing, and it's difficult to understand the kinds of damage that tornadic winds can produce without seeing it yourself.

On the Road

Today's photo is of a couple of friends who were extremely generous to me and my wife during our honeymoon in England. They drove us all the way up into the Lake District, which is a long haul for the UK, at $9 a gallon, no less. Not sure why I like this one -- it just reminds me of what a car trip feels like. Click to enlarge.

London Eye?

Today's photo is a bit of an abstract of the London Eye. Not the most exciting shot, but there's just something about it that keeps nagging me to post it. :)

The River Aire

Today's photos are of the river Aire in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK. Leeds is a beautiful town. Click to enlarge.

Moss

Today's photo is of some mossy rocks atop the Pheasant resturant/inn in Cumbria. Click to enlarge.

Baaaa!

I'm told that my other photo from today is an accidental repost, so here are a few (I hope!) new shots:










There are typical sheep that roam around the countryside of my favorite part of England -- Cumbria. Sheep are quite tasty; something I never realized until I had a classical Cumbrian Shepherd's pie. Here in the states, it's all beef, beef, beef, with occasional pig -- finding lamb in Nebraska usually requires going out of one's way.



One of my favorite aspects of Cumbria was the way they have the land parcelled out; in small lots, separated by loose stone fences. You won't find 10,000 acre farms there.

Urban caterpillars

Today's photo is of a London tube train -- above ground. Much of the London Underground's network is, in fact, not really underground. Click to enlarge.

Yorkminster at sunset

Today's photo is from atop Yorkminster in York, England. It's a heck of a view up there at sunset. Click to enlarge.

Tube connections

Today's photo is a shot walking through the tunnels connecting the tube trains in the London Underground. Click to enlarge.

In Leeds

Today's photo is a candid from Leeds, England, near the Victorian Quarter. This young woman was waiting to cross a crosswalk.

The Guardian

Alamy makes it hard to find tear sheets (I think they fear the Alamy 'togs will try to solicit licensers, thus cutting them out of the revenue loop), but I managed to find an image of mine in The Guardian licensed back in April:






Spiffy!

4/24/08 Storm Chase in Kansas

Short attention span? Scroll down for pictures. They clickity-pop larger in new windows, too.



I chased on April 24th with Darren Addy in Kansas. We started out in Kearney, dropped down to Arapahoe, then down to Norton. Caught the initiation atop Goodland and slid over a county to Atwood to try to get in place for it to come over top of us. It didn't look too impressive from Atwood -- but then the thing split and took a right turn; we backtracked to Oberlin and then south to the Seldon intersection to try to get underneath it. About that time it started to go crazy-go-nuts, and took on the appearence of a bit of a mothership -- we couldn't see much of it, because we were right under it. It put down a few very organized wall clouds before we had to jet east and then south to Hoxie to avoid getting run over by the thing. Lots and lots of outflow on it; continued looking like a mothership. We stopped a few times, snapped a few more photos, and followed it east. We stopped briefly somewhere west of Hill City to snap a few shows of the DOW armada; the key to the DOW armada, though, is to leave BEFORE they do, otherwise you get stuck behind their redonkulous convoy, as we did. Not cool when the softballs are on their way and you need to drive fast. We got to Hill City, went atop a hill south of the town, and snapped a few photos of the city while we wondered if they were going to take a hit. Luckily, they didn't. After that we called it a night and drove home. That supercell was still tearing across Kansas and actually put down a cone tornado four hours later -- one HECK of a long lived storm. I'm glad we broke the chase off, though; it would have been a bit of a dangerous storm to keep after at night. Well, that and it kept putting down baseball hail -- I could do without having to get a new windshield this year!





Headed towards Atwood. This is a photo of a large rain foot, which generally indicates some pretty strong winds near the downdraft.





Looking west as we drive south to Seldon. This is a wall cloud in the distance. The storm kept putting these down; they'd cycle away and then cycle back. Rather interesting how fast a storm can go from looking like nothing to putting down something like this.





This is looking back North near Seldon. A chaser is parked at right.








The wall cloud kept cycling. I'm pretty sure the dust below it is from RFD and is not a tornadic circulation.





Lookding west into the circulation. The sun is setting.










Looking back north again. There isn't anything particularly interesting about this storm feature (though there was plenty of rotation evident up there!) -- I was more going for interesting photo compositions. :)






This is where we bumped into the DOW squad, complete with their Discovery Channel overlords. No TIV in sight -- dunno if Sean is chasing with them this year or not. It was interesting to see the film crew doing an Anselesque shot from high atop a platform built on the roof of a van -- looked like a scary-as-hell thing to be doing in an electrical storm. :) This is the only picture I got of the DOW, as the core started catching up with us as we sat there.





Looking north as we wait to see if Hill City will be destroyed. Not this time, mother nature!







All in all, a very rewarding chase. Still zero tornadoes seen for this year, but it's early in the season. If only we could get this weather pattern to move some storms up north a bit -- Texas and Arkansas are outta my range.



BTW, on the way home, we stopped for gas in rural Kansas, and found some heavy debris blown into the gas station parking lot:

Snow Gooseageddon, or HOLY CRAP IT'S RAINING POOP, GET IN THE CAR!

NOTE: Click any of these photos to make them 1024x768 in a new window or tab.



Earlier this week, I took a drive out to Central Nebraska to look for this year's flock of migrating Sandhill Cranes. They're huge, beautiful, noisy birds, and they stop over these parts to chow down on waste corn for a couple weeks to bulk up for the last 5000 miles of their migration north to their breeding grounds.



While looking for cranes, I stumbled on a small, rural lake full of Snow Geese. When I say full, I mean FULL; as my friend Darren remarked, when they land together during migration, from a distance, they actually look like snow on the ground. This lake was pretty much overflowing with geese. I'm not expert enough to give you a count, but I think that 10,000 would be a conservative estimate. Below is a photo that shows you the side of the lake where they were especially thin:






That's the only good photo I got of them on the water. You see, these birds are crafty; they'll gladly pretend they don't see you trying to creep up on them. I had a 300mm 2.8 lens on my camera, so I had some good zoom power -- but despite being a four pound heavy, 16 inch long lens, it's actually a bit on the short end for bird photography, so I had to try to get closer. I crouched, I crept. I thought I was doing rather good. But oh yes, they certainly knew I was there. The moment I crossed in imaginary line, perhaps 50 yards from the birds, I heard one of the most bizarre sounds I've ever heard in my life.



*WHOOSH*















HOLY...!!! I nearly fell over. It was as if the entire lake had suddenly come unmoored and lifted into the sky in a giant flapping mass of honking feathers. There were to many birds to see through, all blasting up into the sky. I don't know how the heck they kept from ramming into each other, but I think air traffic controllers could learn a thing or two from birds. They rose and rose and rose above me. I pointed my camera up:






Now there were many more birds than this -- this is just a small fraction because of the extreme zoom of my lens. To imagine how many birds there were, pretend your monitor is 10 times as wide as it is right now and fill it all with birds. Or just look at the photo below, taken after I back up and put on a wide angle lens:






Some of them aren't in this shot because they're high above me, but as you can see there are still quite a few swooping in circles around on the lake, quite ticked off, from the sound of it. And then I head another set of unusual sounds... *plop*. *plopplopplopplopplop*! HOLY CRAP IT'S RAINING POOP, GET IN THE CAR! Turd bombs were landing all around me. If you've never seen goose poop before, realize that these birds are nearly as large as a small dog and so is their poop, though much wetter and slimier. You could actually see splashes in the lake, as if someone were chucking stones in it. These little buggers were aerial bombing me. Looking up, I felt like I was in London during the Blitz:






So after they circle back over the lake, I run back to the car where my wife is patiently waiting and having a good laugh. We take off, but not before a goose manages to plant a nice one on our windshield. I go and meet up with another photographer friend (her blog is here; I assume at some point in the near future she'll have some pics of her own up and maybe some video too, as she got to video what's coming next) and make our way back to the lake. By this point the birds are back in the water, patiently paddling around. The three of us make our way slowly back through the prairie grass, this time being even more careful to be quiet and low to the ground. They were relatively settled down:








While I figured as some point they might notice us, I didn't plan on getting quite as close, since I did want a shot of them peacefully gliding on the water. But I pushed my luck and...





















We called it a day on that lake, and headed out to find some cranes. :)



I am always amazed by the large effects that random interactions can have over extended periods of time; for example, you likely wouldn't be here reading this today if your great-great-great grandpa hadn't sneezed at 2:47PM on some idle Tuesday. It blows my mind that simply walking forward in a field can set off such a massive biological energy expenditure, sending ten thousand birds high into the sky. I imagine several farmers from miles around probably stopped and looked up in the sky that day to admire the enormous flock of geese, and no doubt a few drivers out on the rural roads peered up through their windshields and wondered what the heck was going on up there. You've gotta love applied Chaos. :)

Mondays

Today's photo is of a man pulling a boat into dock in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK. Click to enlarge.

You don't need a car

In London, there aren't many places that can't be reached via public transit. These are the Northern Line trains approaching and departing Finchley Central. Click to enlarge.

A real ladies' man

This one kinda speaks for itself. Wow. Found this outside the Leeds Parish Church in Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK. (Click to enlarge).

York Minster Chapter House Ceiling Detail, York, North Yorkshire, UK

Today's photo is a detail of the chapter house of York Minster Cathedral in York, UK. Built in the 1300s, the style of the chapter house is of the early Decorated Period where geometric patterns were used in the tracery of the windows, which were wider than those of early styles. This is an HDR photo composed of 8 photos, tripoded and cable locked, assembled and downsampled in Photoshop. Click to enlarge.

Self Portrait in Sedbergh, Cumbria, UK

The sunset casts tree shadows on the local school library in Sedbergh, Cumbria, England. Click to enlarge.

York

View of York, North Yorkshire, England, as shot from the roof of York Minster. Constructed in 1338, York Minster is the second-largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. Shot at sunset; click to enlarge.

Written on the Door of the Anglican Church in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England

Today's photo is from Leeds. This was written on the entrance door of the local Anglican church. Click to enlarge.

Eclipse

This photo was taken at 8:47PM CST just west of the Nebraska State Capitol Building. The sower statue atop the capitol is in the foreground. The moon is about three quarters eclipsed; it is blood red from the last rays of sun filtering through the earth's atmosphere. Click to enlarge.






This photo was taken at 9:13PM CST from roughly the same spot. The moon is just entering total eclipse. Click to enlarge.

York Minster's Buttresses

Today's photo is of York Minster's flying butresses at sunset. Constructed in 1338, York Minster in York, North Yorkshire, England, is the second-largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. Click to enlarge.

York Minster (I)

This is the interior front entrance of York Minster in York, North Yorkshire, England. Constructed in 1338, York Minster is the second-largest Gothic cathedral in northern Europe. Click to enlarge.



This is an HDR photo created with 10 photos in 1 stop brackets, tripoded and cable released, merged and downsampled in Photoshop CS3.

The Corn Exchange, Leeds, UK

Today's photo is of The Corn Exchange in Leeds, England (click to enlarge). Built in the mid 1800's, the building was originally used as (surprise) a corn exchange. It was converted into shops in the 80's (fetching a strong patronage from counterculture clients) and is currently being renovated (i.e., ruined) into a food plaza. It is a beautiful building.