After three days of consecutive tornado encounters, a fourth transpired in southwest Kansas near Dodge City on May 24, 2016. I started the day in Amarillo with an initial forecast focus zone around Meade, Kansas by mid-afternoon. Fields near Pampa, Texas had turned into temporary lakes on the drive north, and at times momentary construction allowed for some stretch breaks under the sun. Cumulus began to percolate along the Kansas-Oklahoma border by early afternoon and some convective-allowing models readily advertised supercell development along a very pronounced boundary west of the Dodge City region by late afternoon.
The Storm Prediction Center issued a MD [mesoscale discussion] and indicated a high likelihood of significant tornadoes with any storm/s that developed in southwest Kansas. A bullseye was drawn around DDC, attracting masses of people in search of a spiraling sky.
I watched as robust cumulus development blossomed around Meade before proceeding east as the storm intensified towards Mineola. Storm movement was primarily north and at reasonable speeds, so I pulled off on a grid of farm to market roads and watched the evolution of the mesocyclone.
While I remained miles away from the up close and highly photogenic scenes chronicled by several others, observing the storm and tornado genesis as a whole from a distant perspective was perfectly alright for me. Once lighting conditions became underwhelming, I shifted north, halted by very muddy roads. The tornado frequently showcased two separate vortices at the same time, a trend during the entire lifecycle. Backtracking to US 283 after a very "bob's road" moment not showcased on this video, the immense mesocyclone and multi-phase tornado again came into view, witnessed by hundreds of other storm observers along and south of Dodge City. At this point I pulled off on a side road and just watched. My mood ranged from excited and yet surprisingly tired, running on little sleep from the night before.
The supercell continued to produce tornadoes well to the north and northeast of Dodge City, but by this point and faced with an extended drive south to Norman, Oklahoma, I concluded the day in a golden wheat field north of Greensburg with a spectacular sunset.
At 15:00 into the video south of DDC, the OU [University of Oklahoma] RaXPol mobile radar is shown taking rapid scans of the tornado. A full writeup on the event from that crew's perspective can be found here: https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/jou...
Out of the four consecutive tornado days in May, with a fifth inbound 24-hours later, this event produced the most diverse vortex shapes and sizes I observed during the entire period. While there was property damage near Ensign, as well as north of Dodge City and to some wind turbines east of town, the tornadoes remained predominantly over open country. It was also perhaps, one of the most well-documented tornado sequences, recorded by hundreds of perspectives and individuals at this point in history, aided by the ease of instant radar and forecast model technology, combined with excellent geographic visibility.
This is an extended remastered edit from my original video journal on that day, recorded with a Panasonic AG-HMC-150 3CCD HD AVCCAM camcorder.
Videography by Blake Naftel © 2016.
Other 'Days of May 2016' video journals include:
May 23, 2016: Memphis to Turkey, Texas Tornado: • Видео
May 22, 2016: Spearman, Texas Tornado: • The Spearman, Texas Tornado Chase, May 22,...
May 21, 2016: Leoti, Kansas Supercell and Tornado: • Видео
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