Chased May 21st near the Topeka area. Shear didn’t look that spectacular, nor did moisture, but with some Kansas magic anything can happen. We sat just west of Topeka watching towers go up north and southwest. Finally we committed to two storms southwest of us, one left mover and one right (that ended up developing into the Topeka storm). This storm had superb structure almost its entire life cycle, and finally produced a tornado near Lake Perry that I could only get a 30 second video of. All the shots below are from my 5d Mark II, but one last video grab from my Z7U of the tornado as we lost it in the trees. ARRRGHH! To be sitting there the entire time and then to not be able to get close to this tornado was frustrating to say the least.
April 3, 2011 Lawrence, KS Gustnado/Tornado
April 3rd brought Caryn and I to eastern Kansas to play the dryline/front intersection. By late afternoon a supercell developed and tracked just north of the boundary, occasionally pulling it into it. The high based nature of the storm limited its ability to produce a significant tornado, however, just north of Lawrence on US24 the storm spun up “something” that has been dubbed a tornado, landspout and a gustnado. It did cause damage to irrigation systems, trees and destroyed a building. Due to the strong RFD associated with this, I would be more inclined to call it a gustnado or a weak tornado. The debate will go on.
May 23, 2010 Northwest Kansas Nighttime Tornado
Not much to show here as the only shots I got were in the dark of the slender cone. There was another tornado just after this, a tapered elephant trunk that the NWS in Goodland could see from their office. The shots here are all video stills.
April 29, 2010 Washington, Kansas Tornadic Supercell
April 29th took us to central/northern Kansas to play a boundary. Moisture was not optimal that day, but lift and shear were great. A supercell formed southwest of Cuba, Kansas and looked pretty respectable. It had a decent non-rotating wall cloud for a long time. Finally as it moved north of Washington, a new lowering started spinning rapidly, eventually putting down a brief tornado as it came directly overhead blasting us with strong WARM RFD winds. The wall cloud passed directly overhead giving us a moment of intensity hoping it would not drop a tornado until it passed us. It was on the ground off and on for about 3 minutes before dissipating.
Check out this video time lapse:
July 31, 2009 Kansas Tornadic Supercell
What a pleasant surprise this day was! I was hoping for a couple of high based supercells in western Kansas and certainly got much more than I hoped for! Several supercells developed from southwest Nebraska southward along a boundary in western Kansas. Caryn and I intercepted a tornadic storm just south of Gove that produced hail almost golfball sized as well as at least 2, possibly 3 tornadoes.
July 20, 2009 Kansas Beautiful Supercell
July 20th had decent promise for severe storms. An old boundary lay northwest to southeast across Kansas, with increasing shear and lift with an approaching wave. Severe storms formed along the boundary, with a storm I intercepted in central Kansas near Great Bend. The storm of the day was in southwest Nebraska, but this storm as well was tornado warned. Check out this new time lapse video:
June 15, 2009 Kansas Tornadoes
June 15th was a strange day. Early on it looked like the area along the Kansas/Nebraska border would provide the best opportunities for severe storms and tornadoes. We ended up playing the dry punch in southwest Kansas, and intercepted a tornadic supercell near Belpre, Kansas. Later that evening, there were tornadic supercells in southern Nebraska as well.
First 25 days of April, 2009
This is a collection of photos from storms I chased during the first 25 days of April. They are at various locations as shown with each photo’s caption.
March 23, 2009 Arkansas City, KS Tornadoes
March 23rd was a day full of strong dynamics but limited moisture/instability. My plan was to head to the I-35 corridor south of Wichita and play where the best moisture/instability intersected the dryline. We caught a nice supercell, albeit high based near Kingman, KS which was severe, produced tons of hail and had a respectable wall cloud. However, the best storm of the day would form south of Enid, Ok and move into the Arkansas City, Kansas area by late afternoon and produce two fairly weak tornadoes. The structure of the storm was by far better than I had anticipated. Later, we dropped into the Oklahoma City area to play the tail end storms for lightning. We weren’t disappointed.
March 7, 2009 Hutchinson, Kansas Tornadic Supercell
March 7th was a day of decent kinematics, but limited moisture. Nonetheless, intense supercell storms formed along the triple point in south central Kansas and intensified as they moved northeast through the instability axis. Most of these storms had decent structure and rotation, with several tornado reports occurring around the Hutchinson area. We intercepted on tornadic storm and several other rotating nicely structured supercells.
