Josh Burress's Storm Chase Logs

My pics for best of trip...

WTHR video of our trip

WTHR did a write up and video segment on our trip. Here are the links:

Video
Write-up

It is rather well done. There is a section where they do a silhouette of me while I wasn't looking, so I was actually on it. I didn't think I was going to be in it at all since I didn't get interviewed and I tended to be less vocal and quieter than the others there. Anyway, it wasn't too bad.

Also, my local paper, the Lebanon Reporter did a story on it. It was rather nice.

This is a blurry picture of the farm that was hit by the tornado on our last chase day. You can see the roof was partially missing. There was more damage, but all the pictures are blurry.

We went sight seeing on one of our travel days. We went to Mt. Rushmore, The Black Hills, and Custer National Park.

Antelope mother and child.

We were chasing and ran into some trouble. Just kidding. We were at Custer National Park in South Dakota.

Look dead in the center of the picture. There is a funnel coming out of that white poofaroo of a cloud.

Storm we were chasing in South Dakota. This would eventually produce a large funnel and a tornado for us.

Here is the above mentioned funnel. It may very well have touched ground, but we were not in a position to tell.

This is the tornado we got for the day. It was probably the most well defined tornado for the entire trip.

The above tornado during its strongest point.

Wall cloud that produced the tornado and funnel earlier.

Storm and Wall Cloud over the badlands in South Dakota.

Awesome shelf cloud formation. This storm was running about 65 mph. We would drive for 20 minutes, get out and have about a minute to take pictures before we would get hit by the gust front again and have to leave.

Oops. I forgot.

Something I should mention, is that on our last day of chasing (Thursday), we were witness to the damage of an F1 tornado that went through Kansas. Luckily, the only damage we saw were two flipped semis, a flipped travel trailer (but not the truck), and a farm that was really torn up with part of the roof missing from the house. There were probably thirty carloads of people at the farm helping clean up. Oh yeah, and by the farm there were some vehicles flipped and thrown in the fields. It didn't appear to be serious enough for terrible injuries, just property damage. Anyway, I thought that would explain a few of the pics. Talk to you all later.

I'm back!

I have been in muncie since 1 AM Saturday morning. Between then and the last update we saw a very large cool funnel and a tornado from the same storm system in South Dakota. I got to see the Badlands, the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, and several states. I can't remember a whole lot about which day contained what event anymore, as it all sort of runs together, but I'm going to put up pics of the different events. This will be my last update for the trip. I'll continue to keep this up for my own chase adventures throughout the year. For those of you at home, I'll be in Lebanon next weekend. I'll see you all soon.

Very cool wall cloud.

Day 23 was a pathetic bust, but we did see this diner on the way.

Day 24 - The land spout tornado as we first spotted it. It kind of surprised us. If Jonah's car hadn't broken down, who knows if we would have seen this. As it is, this is the best formed tornado we've seen yet.

The landspout is beginning to dissipate at this point.

Nice rotating wall cloud. It was very near the area the landspout developed in.

The storm almost develops into a mothership. Yes, that is a meteorological term.

Day 25 - Nice picture of storm development. The towering cumulus are very fun to watch form.

Nice funnel out of the back of this rotating wall cloud.

I liked the cloud formations on this shelf cloud. I believe that was the start of a wall cloud, but I can't remember for sure.

Wall cloud that showed potential.

Wall cloud directly behind Fred's van. We waited out a TVS (Tornado Vortex Signature) that popped up right above us during a bathroom break at this rest stop. Kind of scary, but we were ready if a funnel started to form.

That spot is the sun. I thought it was a neat picture.

Nice sunset pic.

Best mammatus pic in my opinion. The coloring is wonderful.

Here's the clearest pic I have out of them all.

The first storm for Day 27 in Montana. We were so close, I couldn't fit the whole thing in the camera. This is the best shot at the front end.

The typical piece of hail we found out of the first storm. This wasn't even out of a precip core, but merely the anvil. In other words, there was much bigger hail in the main part of the storm.

This scud right above us was spinning radically at one point and formed a wall cloud above us.

Wall cloud we had a very good vantage point on. Note the small funnel.

This was taken shortly after the last pic, but this was right above us. About 10 seconds later this produced a funnel and we had to move.

Another nice looking wall cloud. Can't remember whether this produced a funnel or not. It all kind of runs together now.

Steve had a run in with some grass.

The turquoise color is the sunlight refracting off of all of the hail. It only happens when there is a large amount of large hail. It made for a very pretty storm though.

Sorry for the hiatus...

It took me a while to figure it out, but I broke my wireless internet card. I finally bought a new one, so here's an update for the last 5 days.

Day 23 - Thurs. June 2nd

This day was a bust. We were in the right place but got nothing but towering cumulus. I have a few pics, but of course nothing worth posting.

Day 24 - Fri. June 3rd

This day looked ok. There was a moderate risk put out in early morning, so we went to put ourselves in position. However, one of the cars broke (of a student who was following us) in the middle of rural Kansas. We had to wait for an hour or more for the tow truck. We considered this to be bad, but as we were following the tow truck back, we saw a landspout tornado. This was probably our best find yet. We continued following that storm, but did not see anything else the rest of the day.

Day 25 - Sat. June 4th

This day took us through Nebraska and Kansas. There was a high risk put out, with a 35% chance of tornados, and a hatched area saying a good chance for F2 tornados or greater. This was a bust day however. We followed a couple of storms, but they eventually converged into a massive MCS (Mesoscale Convective System). In other words, a line of very wet storms. Almost impossible to chase.

Day 26 - Sun. June 5th

Today was a travel day. We spent a good 14 hours on the road in order to put us in a good position for the next day. We did stop by Carhenge though. Ended up in South Dakota just north of Rapid City.

Day 27 - Mon. June 6th

Today we were in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. We put ourselves in the right position in Montana, and were soon rewarded with a nice supercell right over top of us. We didn't even have to move, we just stayed in the parking lot. We were actually a little too close, since I couldn't get the entire storm into the view on my camera, and we started getting quarter size hail out of the anvil above us. Eventually chased two other storms that had some interesting colors from the hail core. Spotted three funnels, one directly over top of us. Don't worry, we saw it beginning to form and immediately moved a half mile down the road. It was pretty neat. Only thing missing was a tornado touchdown:)

Next three days...

Oh man. The outlook for today has a 15% hatched area. The hatched means there is a 10% or greater probability of F2 or greater tornados within 10 miles of a point. And we're right in the middle of it. The SPC has already issued a public statement. Today looks great. Tomorrow and Saturday are also looking very good. Then again, a lot can happen in a short time. Still, this is the best outlook we've had yet and Doc gave up a chase day yesterday so we could drive here for the next few days activity, so he must think something's up.

OOPS

Kind of reverse the order of those last 4 pics (day 21). I did them out of order.

This is what 2 inch hail does to a 2 week old car. It's hard to see, but the windshield is cracked in it's entirety. The couple said they had to hold it up with their sweatshirts in order to get it as far as the hotel.

As the storm dissipates, it produces a nice full rainbow that was so big I could only capture part of it. I would see 2 total full rainbows and 2 partials over the next 2 days, but this was the clearest.