Gallery 2: Chronicles of a Beast -- June 15, 1992
On June 15, 1992 Bill, Gene Rhoden and David
Gold followed the largest and most prolific tornadic supercell
complex any of us had ever seen.
This record remains unbeaten to this day.
Early in the afternoon very strong low-level
wind convergence along a well-defined dryline "bulge"
initiated several severe multicell storms which quickly evolved
into two supercells. One storm, the left-mover raced
northeastward into Nebraska. The right-mover became one of the
longest-lived and most prolific tornadic storms in Kansas weather
history.
Beginning its supercell life as a
"classic" supercell, it produced a strong tornado near
Plainville. Rapidly evolving into a "high
precipitation" (HP) supercell, new cells formed on its
upshear flank leading to a complex steady-state evolution in
which new updrafts would form on the southwest flank of the
system, acquire rotation, and move counterclockwise around a
centroid about which several such updrafts revolved. The system
was thus a mesoscale supercell complex rather than just a single
supercell updraft. As time permits, I'll be adding additional
documentation describing the location, time and our observations
associated with each picture. All images copyrighted property of
Gene Rhoden.
