MARCH 23RD, 2009 - SUPERCELLS IN SOUTHERN KANSAS
This was the preliminary map I had made 5 days before the event on March 19th. I call it a success as severe weather DID occur in the red area but if I had to adjust it I would throw it east 150 miles and north 150 miles.
SUMMARY: Adam Lucio and I left Chicago at 9 P.M on Sunday night (22nd) and arrived in Wichita Monday morning at around 830 AM (23rd) and met and stayed at Mike Nelson's house. Left his house around 1 P.M and intercepted a hail storm just East of Kingman, KS. From there we followed the storm for about 10 miles before abandoning it and headed South to SR 49 and intercepted 3 LP structures all in a row just north of Conway Springs, KS. We then got word of a large supercell coming north out of OK and intercepted that near Hunnewell, KS. We then followed this amazing storm to near Cambridge, KS where along the way it dropped at least 1 brief possible tornado and over half a dozen wall clouds. We then abandoned that storm and picked up our last near Cedar Vale, KS, and were treated to a rainbow and beautiful sunset. On our way back to Wichita the dryline lit up so we had a great light show. We went to bed at about 1 AM and left Wichita the next day for Chicago at 9 AM and arrived back at 8 PM. All in all it was about 1,950 miles roundtrip, talked with some nice people, and met a great chaser in Mike Nelson.
DETAILED ACCOUNT: For the past week I have been eye-ing this very dynamic system. There was a lot of things not to like about this system, namely instability/moisture return. Being from Illinois we are used to having a high shear/low instability system this time of year. This was the first time I was ever baited to Kansas on such a hit or miss basis especially this early in the year.
We about called the chase off on Thurs night/Friday as it just looked like the moisture wasn't going to return and it would have been a huge waste of time. Although many chasers out there still claim it was a waste of time that was not the case in our experience. By Saturday the chase was still off, but there was light at the end of the tunnel with some shallow moisture returning into S Texas. I had my first burn tower day on Sunday morning and a Saint Patricks Day dinner at 5 PM with my family so I was about 90% sure I would not be going. After the burn tower and fire house I got home at 3 P.M. and looked over data. To my surprise, moisture WAS advecting north into the Red River region and even further north than that. With the directional shear being as strong as it was in S Kansas and now some decent moisture return I couldn't help but get the chasing bug again. I clicked on the SPC homepage and was pleased to see a MOD risk for S KS and N OK. They too mentioned the moisture return and even mentioned "strong tornadoes." Adam and I decided to take the bait and head out at around 9 P.M.
We hit Iowa at about midnight and stopped at Iowa 80 in Walcot. There is a Wendy's there and normally it is just outstanding (even this time it was scrumptious) but it definitely didn't agree with Adam and I lol. All I will say is thank god for rest areas! There was some crapvection moving through the Des Moines area and I was hoping from some lightning but it never materialized. We turned south off of 80 onto I 35 and headed south toward the KC area. We then ran into elevated convection with some lightning which was nice to see. I was extraordinarily tired from being up since 3 AM and then going into 500 degree heat for 4 hours at the fire house. I tried to catch a few ZZZ's and did so for about 20 minutes, but there is something about me trying to sleep in cars that doesn't quite work out. I guess I like to be aware of everything that goes on and never want to miss anything. At any rate we hit KC around 3 AM and gassed up. It was only 4 hours until our destination and I know we both were feeling the wear and tear. Our GPS told us to head to Topeka via I 70 and then South on 335 to Wichita. I believe this was a longer route than just following I 35. But as it were we hit Wichita at 8 AM and got some sleep for 3 hours.
I just want to say that Mike Nelson is a great guy. Adam has known him for some time now, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to meet him and he made his house feel like our own. I look forward to chasing with him on several more occasions this year and after. Only bad experience was he has 2 dogs and I am allergic to big dogs so I was sneezing and hacking up a lung the whole time I was there lol But it was so worth it!
There was a mesoscale discussion out by the time we woke up and were extremely pleased to see it for our area and target area. A little earlier than normal it seemed as I wasn't expecting initiation until about 21Z. Initiation had begun in N Oklahoma around Vance AFB and was heading NE for the Kingman area. We set off from Wichita, but first needed to gas up. While gassing up I must say....Wichita has some really scary looking people. It was weird standing in line with someone that had bright orange hair on one side and bright yellow on the other lol We finally set off on US 54 for Kingman, KS.
* Adam, Mike, and I were on US 54 west of
Wichita with a lot of blowing dust. Very strong synoptic winds with gusts over 70 mph in some
cases. We are driving to intercept isolated cell coming out of Kingman,
Kansas.
We entered Kingman County and the storm appeared on the SW horizon. So at least it wasn't a blue sky bust at this point. We positioned ourselves with GR3 to get right in the hail core and christen Adam's near chase ride in style. I'd say we were about 6 miles E of Kingman when we started getting forward flanked. As if US 54 KNEW where we wanted to stop.....it opened up a nice little rest area directly in the path of this small storm. So we pulled over and Mike wanted a smoke, just as he lit up the storm let out!
*Intercepted the cell about 5 miles east of Kingman on US 54. Getting some forward flank rain and preparing for a hail shower
Harder the rain fell and finally what we went west from Wichita for.....hail. It started as peas and then grew to sporadic dimes. I had the window down to enjoy the whole experience and got a little excited even though it was just a tiny hail shower. What can I say, I just love being in and around thunderstorms and severe weather!
*We sat outside of Kingman and let the storm core us. Had some pea
to dime sized hail for 3 minutes or so before meandering NE at 50
With no other imminent development in the area, we decided to try to tail this storm and see what may or may not happen with it. We turned around a mile ahead and in doing so I got great video of a fake tornado. What I mean is a rain shaft that is very intense in a concentrated area that almost look like a cloud reaching to the ground. It is commonly called a "sherffinado" as a lot of untrained law enforcement, public safety officials, and/or spotters mistake this to be a tornado.
*Nice lil lookalike wouldn't you say? Then more view of the base of the now severe warned cell moving NE at 45 mph.
When we turned around on headed E on US 54 the base was directly over the highway and exhibited some nice rising motion. I was getting antsy and ALMOST said it was rotating when it clearly wasn't at that point. Just some decent turbulence from a high based storm. We went north on NE 70th Ave. where I took the following videos.
*Base was trying to get loosely organized and some rising motions were noted, but nothing to significant at the current time.
As we turned north on 70th Ave. the storm started to look a little better organized and even exhibited a wall cloud that was beautifully lit by the sun. It was now severe warned with a possibility of quarter sized hail (which we obviously didn't get sitting on 54). Speed limit was 65 on this road and we were doing about 75 when some d-bag (chaser or not) pulled out literally 50 yards in front of us. Luckily there was no incident, but it goes to show you, not everyone out there is paying attention to the road and even though you may be safe in what you are doing, the people around you may not be!
*We followed the storm NE from 54 on a road to Hutchinson and saw this beautiful wall cloud about 5-10 miles to our NE
*View of wall cloud on 70th Ave and Smoots Creek Rd.
*Same view of wall cloud at 70th ave and Smoots Creek Rd.
*Pretty low base maybe even a funnel, but likely a wall cloud than anything else
We hit Smoot's Creek Rd. and headed east to SR 17 where we went north and eventually decided it was game over for our opportunity of staying with this cell. Adam's tail-light was giving him some issues so I figured it would be a great opportunity to get some backside shots and some structure. The follow is just video and pictures of us chilling on the side of the road enjoy the Kansas prairies.
* Damn powerlines.... didn't dawn on me at the time
At this point there weren't any plays so we decided we would make it back to our original target of Wellington. We made it back to US 54 but didn't want to fight Wichita traffic again so I found SR 49 south out of Garden Plain and headed south through Viola and Conway Springs. A point to know, we were basically without data all day long due to our crappy AT&T connection. So I was joking about to throw Adam's laptop out the window when I looked and saw the BOOT. It was majestic, breathtaking, this alone was worth the trip! (lol)
All joking aside, we went through Conway Springs and tried to fix our connection issues. As we did that, 3 BEAUTIFUL LP's moved in from the W and SW. I will let the pictures do the talking.
*Adam was trying to get a shot so I snapped a quick pic lol
This is where the fun began. We were heavily frustrated with the laptop so I whipped out my phone and tried checking the radar and to my shock it worked. Our jaws dropped when we saw the storm coming up from the Medford, Oklahoma, area. I get NWS warnings with my phone and noticed a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for the mention of golf ball sized hail and winds to 60. We all 3 looked at each other and said Giddy up! The plan was to drop south to US 160 and E to US 81 for an intercept. This worked like a charm and 20 minutes later we on the outer edge of the core to this storm. We just passed Hunnewell, Kansas, when this video was taken.
*We ditched our storms to the north and heading toward Wellington,
our original target, and got word of a large supercell heading
northeast out of the Medford OK area. We shot down US 81 and briefly
caught some of the rain and hail core before we re-emerged into the
hook/updraft region just over the border in OK. Nevermind the people
blocking the dirt road we wanted to turn down. Good ole Mike with his
commentaries ;)
We broke into the hook region and noticed a lot of scud to our west. We had just crossed to border into Oklahoma where we realized we needed to stay in Kansas. So we turned around and parked on the side of the road for a while and watched this very broad area of rotation starting to organize. Now I could be wrong, but I think this is when the storm finally decided to start rotating as in Oklahoma it could never really get its act together.
*We turned around and parked and watched a very broad area of rotation in the updraft region as the storm moved ENE into S KS.
We started to fall behind the storm a little so we raced back north on US 81 toward South Haven with the plan of heading East on US 166. We did so and had to break through the hook echo precip. As we did the winds shifted to the north and rocked us a little as I kept filming to the S and SE as I thought that would be the best area for rotation and or a tornado. As we started breaking out of the precipitation I realized we needed to stop.
*We fell behind the storm on 81 so we blasted north to 166 and
heading east from South Haven, KS. The video picks up when we were
punching through the hook precipitation into the bears cage near
Ashton, Kansas.
*This was the image at the time of the core punch and video.
It was a great idea to stop as I looked up and noticed a whole LOT of rotation going on. We stopped and got out and were in absolute awe to what we saw. Intense rotation was going on directly over head and just to our Northeast. I started by filming directly West and a little Southwest and eventually panned over to the Northeast where a possible small tornado occurred.When I did turn around to the Northeast there was one are directly in the middle where that little gap is in the video. Clouds from both sides were being sucked up into that area and a lowering formed. A bunch of scud and fractus eventually developed. The motion was absolutely phenomenal it was some of the most violent rotation I have ever seen. I thought for sure it was going to put down a tube, but all it did was kick up some dust for 30 seconds or a minute before moving off to the Northeast. As that was going on I looked up and noticed the clouds divebombing on us. There were little vorticies within the actual rotation in the clouds and I kept an eye on that. We basically were unwelcomed in the bears cage with steaks arounds our necks, poking the bear with a stick.
As the storm moved to the Northeast, the chasers followed. We were trying to keep up with the storm after our encounter. At this time a cone tornado was reported by a couple of chasers and since we were following right on the storms heels we thought we would have a great view of it. Unfortunately we were not able to pick up on that (I actually thing the cone was what we DID get on camera, but due to our close proximity the appearance was drastically different) The next couple of videos show us tailing the storm to Arkansas City, Kansas. We did however, run into some jackass on a county road just West of Arkansas City. He had a grass shoulder to pull off on as well as a dirt road 1/2 mile up, but they chose to block 1/2 the right lane and get out and gawk at the storm holding up traffic. I did make one OOPPSIE in the first video here lol I meant to say RFD not low level jet....whoops!
*We were near Gueda Springs as the intense rotation moved to our
NE. There was a cone tornado reported to our NE at this time and
looking at this video there is a decent cone lookalike in the beginning
off the video but I am not about to call it one from this angle. The
whole are was rotating but more than likely it was just scud/fractus
clouds being lifted into the area of rotation.
*We got off 166 and raced north on a county road as the wall cloud
was crossing the road in front of us. We ran into a group of dumbasses
that literally blocked the right lane of traffic and go out and filmed
when there was big grass shoulder to the right and a dirt road (where
we turned off) 1/2 mile ahead..... Yahooooooo. At any rate we pulled
off and viewed this beautiful wall cloud churning over the field just
in front of us.
*Strong rotation churning above the field about a 1/2 mile away.
We were hoping it would put something down but it became obvious that
this storm was starting to cycle down and we would lose it for a while,
while trying to navigate around Arkansas City
As luck/fate would have it we lost the storm after this point because of Arkansas City. Speed limits, slow traffic, and even a couple of ambulances. We made on last ditch effort to catch the left over wall cloud just NE of Arkansas City, KS. It was clear that it was game over with this storm at this point.
*Shane Adams reported a tornado a couple minutes before this video
was shot. We got lost through Arkansas City and speed zones and
ambulances and Sunday drivers etc so when we re-emerged this was left
over to the ENE of ARK City. I couldn't pick up any rotation as I think
it was just scud left behind under the flanking line as the storm was
to the NE by now. Once again we had chasers gawking in the middle of
the road as we were coming up from behind. Have a whole shoulder and
dirt road all to themselves yet they decide to park in the middle of a
main highway......I'll never understand.
We were going to call it a day since we had no data again and figured the dryline was on the move to the east when I pulled out my phone and noticed a pair of discrete cells moving in from Northern Oklahoma so I took this video of our departing storm and we turned around and blasted South toward Cedar Vale.
*We were just about to abandon this storm when we were treated to a beautiful rainbow on the back side of the supercell.
We set up shop on 166 and waited for the storm to come to us and hoped for at least some hail. There was some intense CG all around us and a little forward flank rainfall. Finally we started to get hit with some dime sized hail and our base came into view. There was an interesting lowering that exhibited weak rotation as it passed over head. That alone baited us to the east and I am glad it did as we got an amazing view of this supercell (since it did have rotation) that was lit up by the setting sun. Hail core on the left, rotation in the center, rainbow on the right.
*We abandoned the other storm and headed south
to this one coming up from OK. It had weak rotation and a pea/dime
sized hail core as it passed nearly directly overhead.
*We then drove E on 160 into the wrap around region again and into
the mesocyclone/updraft region where the wind and rain just ceased and
left a beautiful view of the wrap around literally yards away in the
field.
*We pulled off and let the storm go and were
treated to a beautiful scene. Hail core to the left, wall cloud in the
center, rainbow to the right. Perfect! this is what Kansas chasing is
all about!
After this we called it a day. Were treated to a beautiful sunset and then watched our last storm float away in the distance.
*We capped off the day with a beautiful sunset as another weak storm was moving in from the SW.
THE END
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