June 4, 2001 southern Kansas storm
This day offered much promise of significant tornadic storms in central Kansas. However, things went terribly wrong (or right, depending on your perspective) and none formed. Instead, we drove in circles until we stumbled upon a decent looking, if somewhat shabby, looking storm in southern Marion County, KS by evening. We began the day targeting a well-defined surface low-pressure system centered near McPherson. High instability, strong wind shear and the presence of a warm front extending eastward from the surface cyclone all pointed towards significant tornado potential this day. The first storm attempts of the day for us occurred just east of Salina, Kansas. This was about as close as I've seen to a storm almost developing but then fizzling.
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| Deep, thick congestus east of Salina suggest that thunderstorm development is imminent. We all knew that if a strong updraft could form here, tornadoes were likely. | The base of the slowly intensifying storm about 10 minutes later. Then, the updraft abruptly died because it had the misfortune of crossing the warm front into cold air. | About 2 hours later, we wind up on this developing cumulonimbus near Florence, KS. | The storm actually tries to somewhat get its act together, featuring a well defined updraft base and vault. |