Storms Observed This Year

The "Liberty's Crown" Storm

...and a Few Other Supercells from KS to the TX Panhandle

SHORT: Observed series of HP supercells from SW KS to Pampa TX.

LONG:

We slept in late at Kit Carson CO, still intending to meander in the direction of central OK while keeping our eyes out for interesting skyscapes. Supercell potential still existed on this day, another round of NW flow aloft characterized by marginal speeds but strong directional shear, and worked-over air with scant moisture, portending high-based and/or outflow-dominant storm modes. Foci for low level forcing were very uncertain and nebulous. As a result, so was our storm observing strategy for the day, if one even can call it a strategy: Point homeward and pick off whatever may happen along the way.

A critical decision from the start was to head to LAA and eat lunch there, instead of at the restaurant adjoining our motel in Kit Carson. Doing the latter might have bought us an hour or so of valuable time, and almost certainly would have allowed us to see and photograph a few "landspout" tornadoes just a few miles from town!

Instead, we headed S, with a few deep Cu (that later became the spouty towers) off to the NNW and NW. After a decent lunch at a family restaurant in LAA, I noticed a pile of fuzzy looking Cb about 50 miles N-NW. By then the spouts already had finished, and the storms were amalgamating an outflow pool. I hadn't looked at reports yet, and still didn't know about the spouts. But we decided to push S and hold out for any later development away from the "junk" to our N.

After a short construction delay on US-287, we encountered a photogenic wind farm just W of the highway and N of Springfield, festooned with assorted farm windmills that made nice foreground objects for the big electrical turbines: 1, 2, 3.

After that photo shoot, I made one more mistake: Looking at the storm reports page and seeing those spouts, whereupon my mood plunged straight into the sewer. At Boise City, we decided to get some dessert at Diary Queen, along with one more data check. A supercell had emerged or evolved from the midday storms near Kit Carson, and was plunging SE toward SW KS. Another, smaller, discrete supercell was forming rapidly immediately to its E, and fortuitously, we were in prime intercept position. The old Kit Carson convective complex burned me once, but we would get a second chance to make lemons from lemonade with it.

So we charged NE from Boise City to get in front of the mess of storms, thinking, "Maybe we can salvage something convectively photogenic over the High Plains before we head home." When ensured was a series of HP supercells that formed a baton-handoff process from the original Kit Carson-to-Stanton County storm down across GUY into the northern TX Panhandle. The CO/KS border supercell already was starting to gust out when we got in viewing position (looking WNW). That second supercell that formed to its E, N of Rolla, gave us a very photogenic, multi-hued shelf cloud over wheat field scene. Another storm developed quickly in the warm sector, just ahead of the outflow boundary from the first supercell and SW of Rolla. This storm quickly began rotating, taking aim on GUY.

We headed into GUY for a bathroom break -- a really quick one, because the rotating skirt of the newer storm was spiraling its way toward town, and looked like it meant serious business. After navigating the seemingly ceaseless string of unsynchronized Guymon stoplights, we escaped town just in time, watching from the E as the west side of town got gored by the nasty, deep, dark, butt-munching HP.

We briefly saw Paul Sirvatka's COD crews E of Hardesty. They were turning N (apparently giving up on the storm) while we turned S to stay ahead of it. Granted, it was on the way home for us (and their N turn, likewise for them), but this chase day simply wasn't overwith! The GUY storm's hand-off progeny moved SSE across Srn Hansford County to our WNW with a sharks-tooth shelf below some midlevel banding. Headed S on US-83 with the storm to our WNW (crappy picture while moving), the objective was to go to PPA -- in its path -- and let it roll over, hoping for some LTG action both in front and behind the complex. We also decided to bunk down in PPA instead of driving home through the night in the lightning and rain, then head to Norman the next day under more safe and alert circumstances.

We got to PPA well ahead of the onrushing HP's, so we snagged a cheap motel room before taking up a position on the NW edge of town to let the convection roll in. It was a sight to see -- a striated storm lighting up the sky and ground with mainly in-cloud electric discharges and moving right toward us. As it approached, the storm took on a more wet, outflow-driven appearance. One brilliant eruption of in-cloud anvil lightning overhead set the ground aglow, with fainter discharges inside the storm reversing the usual dark-ground/bright-storm nighttime shot just enough to make the scene look very strange, surreal and ominous. It gave me one of my personal favorite shots of the chase vacation by virtue of the combination of crazy cloud structures and unusual distribution of night light. As the storm got closer, it gusted out some more, but its midlevel skirt took on a spiked, Liberty's Crown of Thorns appearance that I've never seen before, much less photographed. Here we were, almost 35 collective chase seasons between the two of us, still marveling with amazement at a brand new scene!

The lightning stayed in-cloud as the storm closed in, Liberty's crown spreading overhead. We broke down the tripods and headed to town for dinner, ending up in the dying storm's moderate rain as yet another supercell developed to its (our) WSW. The back side of the complex didn't offer any decent crawler shooting, so we turned in for the night, and celebrated before departing the next morning with our last Allsups burritos of the season.

One of the amazing experiences of storm observing is the domino effect, or cascade of events, from one convective process to another, each dependent on the stage before in its precise alignment, location and strength. And so it was this day. The end result of those midday, nonsupercellular tornadic storms we missed outside Kit Carson was a great skyscape after dark on the outskirts of Pampa TX, after nearly nine hours, four states and 300 miles.

Spouting Off around Cheyenne Wells

Cheyenne Wells and Kit Carson CO storms
19 Jun 8

SHORT: Viewed three nonsupercellular tornadoes (NSTs) over S-central Cheyenne County CO, from line of TCu located S of persistent left-moving storm.

LONG:

We started the day in Colby and didn't have to travel very far. Surface analyses as early as late morning showed a well-defined boundary -- convergent and weakly baroclinic -- from near the central KS/NEb border WSW through a kink (later a mesolow) in the Colby/GLD area, arching SW across the Cheyenne County CO region. The portion WSW GLD was drifting S with NE winds to its N, while the rest stayed quasistationary most of the day. The mesolow, at times, was visible as a curl in fine lines when looking at reflectivity products from the GLD unit. Juxtaposition of 0-3 km CAPE and surface vorticity kept appearing hour after hour at and ENE of the mesolow in automated mesoanalyses.

Despite convection erupting 150-250 nm away in almost all directions, I decided to hang around the mesolow all afternoon, growing ever more impatient but not giving up. So, after lunch at the rest stop with the fake palms, we went SE to Oakley to watch the boundary from a slight distance. This offered a broader perspective than sitting right under it with more limited view through Cu in Colby.

At Oakley, we toured the Fick Fossil museum for the first time, while waiting for initiation. This is a diversion I strongly recommend, especially for those with paleontological and geological inclinations. They've got a great collection of fossils and minerals of all sorts, most donated by private individuals. A couple of the rock and fossil specimens are wrongly labeled, and there are numerous misspellings (sloppy, sloppy!), but if you know what you're looking at, you can ignore the errors and appreciate the specimens for what they really are. They've also got a small insulator exhibit too, and I did take some photos for Steve Corfidi and any other insulator enthusiasts who haven't seen there: A, B, C, D, E.

Best of all, they were running a big National Geographic exhibit of absolutely stunning Flint Hills photography by Jim Richardson, who is based in Lindsborg KS and has a gallery there. His work appeared in the April 2007 edition of the magazine; and all those photos (plus a couple dozen more) were displayed as posters at Fick. Elke, who is a Flint Hills appreciator of the highest order (read PrairyErth twice), says that some of the photography nearly brought her to tears, in a good way. The exhibit will be in various towns in southern and eastern KS through Nov. 24.

We saw a thick cluster of towers to the distant W upon leaving the museum, and moved to the Buffalo Bill statue overlook to watch towers bubbling back over the Colby part of the boundary, E of the now-retrograding mesolow. Meanwhile, a vigorous Cb sprouted from the earlier TCu clump, near the trailing portion of the boundary, WSW of ITR. The chase was on.

As we entered CO, a pronounced left-moving supercellular updraft (mirror image) came into view on the NE side of the convection, with occasional stingers extending toward the NE at various levels (wide angle view across the fields of young corn, and mirror image). What is it with photogenic, NW-flow left-movers moving E across the Colorado plains for Elke and me? [See 15 Jun 2 storm near Aroya.] Meanwhile, intermittent right splits would form brief bases before dissipating.

The left-mover appeared to be slightly N of the boundary, not on it, based on a zonally aligned line of growing TCu to its S, with enhanced storm-relative inflow from the backed (E to ENE flow) on the N side of the boundary. The left-moving portion took optimal advantage of the ENE-NE winds N of the boundary, and resultant enhancements to its storm-relative flow, for 2-3 more hours, moving only slowly E and ESE.

While driving on US-40 W of Cheyenne Wells and SSE of the left-mover, our attention got diverted to the TCu line fast. An NST suddenly appeared to our SSW, manifest as a partly translucent dust tube extending about 1/2-2/3 upward from ground to cloud base (wide angle view). Two more rather crappy "spouts" appeared under the line in short order -- one to the W (normal and super-enhanced views) and another E (no photo) of the original. It was about that time I got a cell connection, managing to call GLD. They already had reports of one of the NSTs, but not the other two.

I've deduced the geospatial specifics the best I can, obtained from our GPS logs and estimates of distance:

Spout #1: Tall dust tube without funnel, 2332-2339Z, looking ~5 SSW from 4.5 E Firstview CO, putting tornado location at ~6 SE Firstview CO

Spout #2: Diffuse, POS dust whirl under a ragged funnel that persisted after the dust went away, 2336-2337Z, looking ~6 E from 5 SE Firstview CO, putting tornado location at ~4 S Cheyenne Wells CO

Spout #3: Diffuse, weakly rotating dust plume 1/3-1/2 way up to cloud base without obvious funnel, 2336-2342Z, looking ~8 W from 5 SE Firstview CO, putting tornado location at ~5 SW Firstview CO

The TCu line filled with rain after that and produced no more NSTs, eventually evolving into a somewhat discrete, high-based, rainy CB that we watched from a wide open Great Plains vantage N of Kit Carson. Another storm, initially with backshear and overshoot, went up fast NNW of Kit Carson, but got undercut by outflow from the left-mover -- whose forward-flank rain shield treated us to a gorgeous double rainbow. Meanwhile the left mover lurched on ESEward toward the KS line, finally dying as a pretty, chicken-neck updraft, bathed in the sunset light.

We spent the night in a funky motel in Kit Carson (the only one I've ever seen with a screened-in porch front-to-back), leaning toward going home after wherever we would chase the next day. We had fun with the NW flow for a few days there on the High Plains, but each day's round of MCSs was performing a slow torture on the air mass; and we don't want to spend much more time and money on it. Fortunately, this day's chase used less than a tank of gas, nabbing us some "landspouts" and decent photos.

Blobulus Barfus Windbaggus

All-Afternoon Stern Chase
SW Nebraska and NW KS Outflow Dominant MCS

18 Jun 8

SHORT: Unsuccessful (if inflow view is the goal) stern chase of HP-turned-MCS and later tail-end supercell across SW NEb and NW KS.

LONG:

Elke and I lingered too long in AIA over lunch and got a late start, driving S then SE away from some junky midday convective development near AIA and beneath a large plume of middle and upper level clouds. The goal was a forecast target zone around SNY-IML. Even as early as late morning, that area looked very good for a starting point, given

Subtle, SSE-NNW oriented outflow boundary from west KS across NErn CO to near SNY,

Newer outflow boundary from early central NEb MCS, extending Wward across southern Neb into the same area,

Moist axis between them, under

NW flow (to enhance deep-layer shear) for the third of five consecutive storm observing days for us

As we moved S toward SNY, the target area changed slightly eastward, away from us, as a thick chunk of occasionally precipitating mid-upper level clouds (associated with a weak shortwave trough ejecting SE from the mean ridge) shaded most of the southern NEb Panhandle. The differential heating zone, evident along the S edge of this cloud mass, coincided well with a low-level convergence max, into which the surface map showed a SE-NW aligned moist axis. Slam dunk for an easy target, right? Sure! Problem was, we were behind it. My laziness in bolting AIA cost is a shot at getting ahead of the huge HP storm that erupted with astonishing speed right in that area, near OGA, then moved SE across Perkins County and the MCK area.

In the meantime, the big backshear of the anvil provided us with some cool views from the wrong side, as we rounded Lake McConaughy. We wanted to shoot the gap between the growing complex and an inexplicably blanket-TOR-warned line of storms to its SW that didn't look too impressive to me. [I thought tornado warnings were supposed to be storm based, targeting a small polygon in the path of the mesocyclone, not blanketing an entire line when only tiny fractions of said line ever could/would produce a tornado. So while she was driving, Elke had to listen to me express some rants that basically reflected much of the same befuddlement that I later heard from other seasoned storm observer-meteorologists.

That strange circumstance aside, we stopped briefly to admire a clean, post-MCS convective scene beyond young corn, N of IML (looking SE). Notice in that shot the corn leaning left to right -- meaning a NE wind. That was outflow, which we never escaped S of I-80 on this day except for a very brief advance ahead of the boundary at Colby. We finally gave up on catching the HP/bow/MCS mess when we hit Colby, and got a room -- as the boundary whooshed through town. At least one advantage of driving so many miles through outflow is that we didn't need to use the car's air conditioning. Nature provided that.

While unloading in our room, I noticed that a storm that blew up along the trailing outflow boundary -- in the next county to our ESE -- quickly developed a hook and a meso. Could this be another post-hotel, near-sunset chase rebirth, for the second consecutive day?

Unfortunately there also was a mess of nonsevere mush forming to its own SW, ahead of as well as along the outflow boundary. We bolted SE on I-70, but still couldn't catch up, at least not at safe driving speeds. The storm merged with the mush, and we easily could have taken a demoralized, tail-between-legs retreat back to Colby.

Instead, we found solitude and solace in a big wheat field a couple miles S of Grainfield, bisected by a dirt road upon which nobody traveled in the hour or more we were there. Our company was each other, along with the cool, moist east wind, carrying the call of western meadowlarks, pheasants, and horned larks. We shot quite a few photos of the chaotic sky behind the retreating MCS, its clumps and rings of mammatus, and other sky scenes across the waving wheat, finally leaving shortly after sunset.

Strategically, this was a failed chase attributable entirely to slothful behavior on my part, and a self-made supercellular bustola of the first order. Making a good forecast doesn't help when you don't get your butt there in time. But we ended up salvaging something from it all, and went to sleep that night at ease by that.

The Carhenge Supercell

Near Alliance NE
17 Jun 8

SHORT: Intercepted beautiful classic supercell N AIA, storm became outflow dominant, picturesque sunset at Carhenge.

LONG:

Techno-Frustration in Colorado

The day began in electronic ignominy in DEN, as we found ourselves suddenly saddled with a bad air card and no weather information from which to compile a morning forecast. The night before, I began leaning toward the NEb Panhandle based on somewhat stronger forecasts of flow aloft and of deep-layer shear, but it wasn't a strong preference. Meanwhile the card was unable to connect to the network despite 4-bar signal in its own software.

The hours passed from morning through mid-afternoon, frustration growing through phone calls to so-called "support" and a lengthy visit to a local AT&T store, which (to make a very long story short) bogged themselves and me down with tremendous heaps of recordkeeping red tape in addition to troubleshooting the bad air card. Unable to exchange the card free without a new contract (which I did not want), and needing to get the hell on the road, I bought another one out of hide instead. Then came another 45 minutes of hassle getting it to work, while the senior "techie" dude on staff looked over my shoulder, had me try this obscure setting and that, uninstalled/reinstalled various drivers and software, and often, simply scratched his head in utter bewilderment.

Any wonder why I have such an aversion toward techno-chasing? Every year, something goes terribly wrong with completely different and unrelated sets of hardware and/or software, and I end up wasting hours and hours on error messages, malfunctioning equipment, and mysterious problems that invariably result in huddles of "support" types offering nuggets of encouragement such as, "Wow, I've never seen this before. I don't know what's wrong."

Finally, at least 2 hours after I had hoped to leave, five hours after the trouble began, and a couple hundred bucks poorer, we had a working air card again and were on the road.

Ignoring a Powerful Left-Mover

Still simmering with frustration, I had looked at very little information, and fraught with indecision, finally picked the NEb Panhandle option over the eastern CO option based on largely a day-2 forecast and gut feeling.

It worked. The difference between frustration and elation on any chase day is a magnificent Great Plains supercell. It wasn't easy, but it was worth all the trouble and then some. As we headed NE up I-76, we saw what looked like slow-motion thermonuclear convective eruption off to our SE, S of I-70. To our relief, it turned out to be a powerful left-moving supercell -- so intense, in fact, that it compelled GLD to issue TOR warnings. From a distance, the sucker looked great aloft, with big overshoots one after another. On radar, it sported a northward-extending hook, looking every bit the mirror image of any butt-kicking, classical, cyclonic supercell. Shortly after that storm finally hit stronger CINH and died, another formed to its N, also a left-mover.

Reserve a Room, then Chase!

We kept going into the NE Panhandle, watching initially promising storms near Harrison fizzle for a long time, then finally evaporate into a baseless carcass and float away. Anvils from other storms could be seen way off to the NNW, just above the horizon and in the Black Hills. We continued N, aiming to get a room in AIA while watching that Black Hills development in the event it peeled off the hills and headed SE.

Meanwhile, we noticed a huge new convective eruption off to the NE, inaccessible to us before dark because of the road voids of the Sandhills, but beautiful no less. It developed huge overshoots, a ring-of-Saturn anvil wrap with long backshearing, and a thick flanking line. This storm eventually resulted in a few tornado reports in them thar (sand) hills.

We grabbed a good, cheap motel room in AIA, then looked northward with amazement. The complex rolling SE from the Black Hills redeveloped westward in discretely propagating flaking towers that in turn exploded into a new supercell with classical backshearing, overshoots, knuckeles of inverted convection, a flanking line and (as we closed in) wall clouds. We stopped to shoot the towers behind Carhenge, then headed N another 12-15 miles to a great vantage point where the Carhenge road (old US 385) turns NE as NE-87.

A Great Plains Supercell - Rare This Year

The initial wall cloud got undercut by outflow, but a new, small, tightly wrapping, lower-based cloud mass developed on a new occlusion to its E (our NE). The whole spectacle -- the High Plains storm we've been wanting all year -- looked great through a wide angle lens, viewing N up a gravel road that neatly bisected sunlit fields of verdant wheat.

We also got zoomed shots of the new meso in all its many evolutionary forms. Initially sporting a tail that pointed under the vault, and toward the forward-flank core, a very tall, slanted wall of convection rolled up its E side with amazing speed. The upward motion was some of the strongest I've seen, but the storm's cold pool obviously was strong enough to doom the new circulation in short order.

Before being completely undercut, the storm briefly tried to wrap a tight, low-hanging vortex of some sort under the tall, scupted wall cloud (here's a deeply enhanced zoom) but nothing we could confirm as unequivocally tornadic. Still, we fired off shot after shot of excellent structure and rather unusual cloud formations in the warming hues of near-sunset. At one point, the undercut mesocyclonic cloud mass took on the form of a big, rotating bubble or inverted polyp beneath and to the left of the vault.

Back to Carhenge

The cold pool undercut the entire updraft area, splashing a multicolored mélange of scud and elevated convection across the sunset sky. And best of all, a good deal of this visually tasty treat kept going on while we drove back to Carhenge. Elke and I took lots of shots of various oddities of Carhenge amidst a colorful backdrop that changed minute by minute, even casting subtle warm hues on the cold gray cars themselves, thanks to reflected frontlighting from the rear of the small MCS to our E. The day was saved, ultimately becoming one of my two or three favorite chases of the season.

We got back in town in time for a great celebratory dinner at Ken and Dale's Steakhouse in AIA. Food and service both were excellent, and they're open 'til 2130 MDT. [Attention BC or Alnado, for your next excursion to the NEb Panhandle: They serve Blue Moon and Boulevard Wheat brands of "shasta."]

Feeble Central Colorado Storms

Franktown to Broomfield CO
16 Jun 8

SHORT=LONG: After the adventuresome chase of the 12th, and photographing abandoned buildings with the Doswells on the 13th, the pattern aloft turned to the dreaded Rockies ridge, shutting down even the most marginal chase opportunities for several days and sending us to the DEN area for some R&R at Elke's mom's place. Starting on the 16th, enough flow began to sneak through the ridging and enough moisture began to creep back northward in the boundary layer that we again became concerned for supercell potential in the great Plains. One target area was for high-dewpoint HP storm potential in southern OK and north TX, 8-9 hours away. A secondary but far closer threat practically was in the back yard: high-based storms on the Palmer Divide near the mountains, with barely enough shear to consider some storm rotation potential.

Not desiring to drive hundreds of miles and burn away hundreds of more dollars in fuel money for the Red River HP setup, then potentially try to whipsaw way back N to Nebraska the following day, Elke and I chose Option 2. We stayed close to DEN in hope for high plains magic that didn't really arrive. Still, we had some photographic opportunities and stayed in decent position to head N in the ensuing couple of days toward stronger midlevel winds.

The day's progs of 50+ F surface dew points panned out only over that portion of CO S of the Palmer Ridge. That air mass stayed under stratus and remained rather cool for most of the day. With very strong capping evident in the morning DEN RAOB, and only a narrow corridor of potential near the Front Range before storms would move into cool, capped air, we knew we needn't wander far.

By mid-afternoon, some high based junk started to build along the Front Range N of Pikes Peak, so we meandered SE to high vantages near Kiowa and S of Franktown to watch. The beautiful countryside, especially S of Franktown, formed a splendid foreground for the junky, high based convection that was trying but failing to become supercellular soon after initiation, before losing definition. CAPE just was too feeble today. It was that rather uncommon afternoon when 50s dew points lurch back into the Front Range and nothing of consequence happens.

We then retreated back to Stearns Lake near Broomfield for sunset photography of dying storms over Rocky Mountain NP, followed by a short line of Cb that developed beneath the rising moon to our SE.

It was pretty much a bustola, but one that still yielded a couple of decent pix and didn't use much fuel. Got a lemon? Do what Ryan Jewell would: Make some fresh LEMONADE! [Inside humor...]

Supercells and Funnels near Emporia

Eastern KS, 12 Jun 8

SHORT: Supercells intercepted W and S of Emporia, then pretty sunset shelf in Flint Hills between Eureka and El Dorado. But there's so much more...

LONG: We started the day in Council Bluffs IA, across the MO River from OMA. A cold front -- reinforced by outflow from the line of storms that we had observed the evening before -- had moved through the area and was decelerating a few hours' drive to the S. After a little bit of analysis, it became clear that we would have to head into northern MO or eastern KS to have any decent shot at seeing a supercell on this day. Storms probably would fire earlier, with a very slightly greater chance of a tornado, in northern MO, but in unfriendlier, hilly terrain with hazier sky and lots of small towns to hold up the interceptor's progress. Had that been the only option, we would have sucked it up and gone there. I've lived and chased in northern MO before, so familiarity with the area has helped both when I had to observe storms there, and when I decided not to. Today, we decided not to.

Instead, we targeted the southwestern section of the front, under somewhat weaker winds aloft, between the south-central KS dryline and the MO border, specifically mentioning EMP as the place to go. The fastest -- not necessarily shortest -- way to get there was to head down toward MKC then SW along I-29, I-435 and I-35. When we reached STJ, we knew these things:

The boundary was nearby to our S and moving at a crawl.

We were hungry for lunch.

There are plenty of chow sources in STJ.

We would have no problem with laptop card reception in a big town like STJ to browse over lunch.

In the unlikely event things changed enough in 2.5 hours that the east-central KS option soured, we simply could adjust to the nearby secondary target of northern MO (with less stern-chasing than if we rounded SWward first then changed our minds).

This mild, moist, overcast air on the N side of the boundary would not heat up the car's contents (namely our camera equipment) while we ate, unlike if we stopped S of the boundary in MKC, OJC or EMP.

Lunch at Ryan's "feeding trough" was very good, as usual, and examination of surface and satellite imagery said, "Go SW, young persons." TCu already were bubbling along the area of maximized convergence, just N of the front-dryline intersection, between ICT-EMP. The EMP target was looking great, which allowed us no guilty conscience or second-guessing over totally blowing off some slowly developing storms not far ENE of MKC. A couple of tornado reports eventually came from those storms when they got to northeast MO, but nothing significant nor well-documented, that I've seen so far.

By the time we hit EMP, the TCu had blossomed into several young Cb. Great timing! The nearest was to our N, as seen from near Americus, merging with a line of towers and showing weakly supercellular characteristics such as diffuse midlevel striations, tilted updraft towers, a ragged, weakly rotating (at best) wall cloud. We briefly contemplated keeping up with it, but instead targeted a darker visual area to our WSW that represented a rapidly strengthening storm on radar (still getting good card reception from EMP nearby).

We headed S from Americus to US 50 just W of EMP to intercept the storm's projected path between Cottonwood Falls and Plymouth. By the time we got past that first rise W of EMP -- the one that always gives Elke and me peace and gratitude upon entering the marvelous Flint Hills from the E -- the storm loomed directly ahead of us to the W. We had driven this stretch of road several times while staying in the Flint Hills for exploration and landscape photography (not chasing), and the sight of a big, fat supercell looming ahead actually was quite peculiar in such a familiar place. Even though a collective anvil shield lowered contrast, it exhibited classical supercell structure -- bell shaped, with striations, NE-leaning inflow tail, and tilted updraft towers on the rear flank. By now, "Three Dudes and a Dog" (DF, Roman, Keith and Thunder) had joined us, after driving the more direct route from OMA-BIE-EMP.

Two areas of cloud-base rotation formed beneath -- both visible here as wall clouds, the southern one over the road and the northern one beyond a clump of trees. The northern wall cloud, though more ragged, dominated and persisted, and even developed a stubby, conical and somewhat ragged funnel. The cloud-base mesocyclone broadened while also strengthening. This is counterintuitive to those who employ the infamous ice-skater analogy, but can and does happen sometimes when a storm's vorticity value increase by other means is greater than the negative effect of loss of stretching. Seeing this rapid development gave us some hope for tornadogenesis, if the circulation in turn could tighten again. Alas, that same rotational invigoration hauled a bunch of rain around the wall cloud and obscured good view of the most interesting area.

By this time, with precip wrapping up the mesocyclone and other storm's precip areas beginning to impinge upon ours, I thought this one was about finished. Lo and behold, with absolutely astonishing speed (5 minutes!), a brand new wall cloud and very tight low level circulation formed on what had been an invisible occlusion point farther E, and to our NW. At 2308Z, one small, rapidly spinning area under the base tapered into a conical funnel and developed very low toward the ground (24 mm wide angle view about 20 seconds later). This easily could have been a brief tornado, hut we could not see evidence of any debris or dust above the distant tree line -- either then or while super-enhancing the photos later -- in order to be certain. Its location would have been about 5 NW Plymouth in extreme NE Chase County -- stony terrain with grass, shallow soil and few structures, and not a very friendly area for confirming weak tornadoes. If any other observers were closer, they couldn't confirm it either, based on the lack of tornado reports from this storm in the daily rough log, and I wasn't about to report it as anything more than a funnel without just a little better evidence. [The next storm to the SW had a couple of reports in the same county later the same hour.]

The wall cloud itself looked even more classical and menacing a couple minutes later without the funnel, rotating broadly but obviously, then developed another very low-hanging area of vigorous spin that looked like it could plant a "fat hose" very quickly; but we couldn't confirm ground contact before it became diffuse and rain-wrapped. After this, unfortunately, DF, Keith and company separated, with them heading SW on the turnpike to get closer to the next storm sooner.

Though the SW storm was getting intense pretty quickly, this one didn't appear done yet. I've learned not to give up on storms too soon, lest they pull last minute surprises, so we zigzagged NE toward Americus once again to stay with it for a spell. The next occlusion formed quickly but also got bifurcated and undercut fast. I now was losing confidence quickly for any mesocyclonic tornadoes with this storm and was about ready to bail, when a thinly rain-wrapped, nonmesocyclonic funnel -- the best defined and longest lasting funnel of the day for us -- appeared unexpectedly in the damnedest of places: under the shelf cloud of the rear-flank gust front to our W! We couldn't confirm ground contact here either, nor could a few other reliable storm observers I know who witnessed it from varying distances. The funnel (shown here at 2335Z) lasted four minutes before narrowing and dissipating.

I spent just enough time messing with the gust-front funnel that the surging, increasingly bow-shaped mesocyclone area to our N cut off the north road option. By now, the SW storm was sitting on I-35 in Chase County, and we didn't want to risk not being able to turn around on a limited access road with very few exits, and an HP supercell rumbling right up the tollway. So we made the stoplight-infested transect of EMP, then headed S of town to await the arrival of the SW supercell. Of course, it did produce one confirmed, small, rain-wrapped tornado while we were tangled up in town. After some zig-zagging, we found a decent W vantage at the EMP airport - at least, as decent as a late-afternoon, poor-contrast HP can afford. Awaiting us were Chuck and Vickie Doswell, who had been there for a good 20 minutes or more and couldn't see the tornado from that distance. As the storm moved NE toward the town of Emporia, a big, blocky wall cloud came into view to the W, soon expanding somewhat, then developing a pronounced, persistent, bowl-shaped lowering that extended over halfway to the ground beneath. Once again, we couldn't detect any evidence of damaging ground circulation.

That storm also rapped in rain (surprise, surprise, eh?). With dusk nigh, we all called off the active part of the chase and decided to head down to El Dorado for dinner and motel rooms. Up we cruised into a less-traveled, somewhat flatter, but still gorgeous stretch of the Flint Hills than the northern part described so deeply by Heat-Moon in PrairyErth. That truly is green carpet country at this time of year. Up there on the elevated, tallgrass prairie, the earth seems to fall away from horizon to horizon. I've been through this stretch of US-54 a few times, but never with its skyscape so splendidly bathed in stormy colors and textures. This experience made a wonderful ending to the chase day. Due to darkness, we ignored a supercell to our SW, threading just N of the meat of its forward-flank core.

In El Dorado, we found rooms and ate a rather bizarre dinner at the only place still open (barely!) -- a Chinese restaurant that was out of almost everything on the menu by the time someone finally remembered to serve us. The hosts were very apologetic, and gave us whatever was left from the kitchen. The food actually wasn't bad, and for those who had it, neither was the wine. Before we turned in for the night, Elke and I spend a romantic few minutes together behind the motel, in light rain, quietly watching a nice lightning show off to the SE. It was hard to imagine, there and then, that we had begun the day in western Iowa!

Despite the difficulty of visibility imposed once again by unfriendly HP storm structures, I was satisfied with the chase overall. The forecast target worked great, in that we saw two supercells and three funnels within 10 miles of EMP, and that twilight experience in the Flint Hills can't be done justice with words alone, or even photos. The storms themselves were rainy messes (what else is new in 2008), but I'll take this over any of the many seasons in which I saw few storms and/or no tornadoes at all.

The next day, we headed NW with the Doswells to tour and photograph some abandoned farmhouses and schoolhouses near Ellsworth, before parting ways. I also released Black Betty II (our latest pet black widow spider) at an undisclosed location that will provide her with plenty of shelter and isolation from humans, as well as abundant bugs to prey upon. Her new home will be much better for her, and for us, than where we found her (our garage). She accompanied us on our early June chases, devouring assorted insects and spiders we picked up along the way, entertaining Fogelissimo, Chuck, Keith and other curious onlookers at various times, and generally living the good life in her jar. I guess taking a dangerous but beautiful spider along on our chase trips is becoming a tradition of sorts.

It was great to spend some time with the Doswells on the 12th, and of course, with DF, Keith B, Roman and Thunder earlier, while taking in the splendors of stormy skies in KS. All these folks deeply appreciate not just the stormy skyscapes but the landscapes and the many facets of the Plains experience. Elke and I were honored and grateful for their company, before they all had to disperse homeward.

Stair Stepping Several Supercells

LeMars to Defiance, IA
11 Jun 8

SHORT: Difficult stair-step chase. At least 5 tornado-warned, line-embedded supercells intercepted in NW/W-central IA. Several tight HP mesocyclonic wrap-ups observed including rain wrapped tornado near Pierson.

LONG: We chose FSD for lodging the night before given our good history with motels there and its likely proximity to the next day's tightly would surface low. While munching lunch, it became apparent that the "bent back" area in close proximity to the low wouldn't destabilize enough to give us an early show of tornadic bliss. In caravan with the "Three Dudes and a Dog" chase team, we then headed SE toward SUX to get into a narrow notch of solar heating -- purifying warm-sector air just ahead of the bulging blend of cold front and dryline -- where the morning's persistent low clouds were breaking up. On the way down I-29, and through breaks in the stratocumuli, we saw towers bubbling along the boundary to our W in Nebraska - a good sign.

After a short stop in SUX for data and refreshment, we cruised NE to LeMars to stay just E of the slowly progressive boundary and its line of discrete, gradually deepening towers, some of whose convective plumes got very steeply tilted in their early stages by the strong vertical shear. Small Cb's began to pop all along the line from our NW southward, but one especially vigorous and expanding storm very nearby to our WSW captured our attention. Right after it went up, and while it still was in this rather disorganized, multicellular stage, out came the TOR warning! I was surprised. FSD was wasting no time jumping on new development in that regard, even if little or no shear yet was evident in the low levels (via onboard GR interrogation) and the radar and visual structures weren't yet supercellular. I called to inform them that I had a great view of this storm, and that had a rather rainy and featureless base with no rotation visible. They seemed glad for the information. Unfortunately, cell phone access got surprisingly spotty the rest of the chase, which surprised me also, since Iowa has a rather dense road and town network.

As we watched this storm grow and move nearer, a tall, lanky and very old farmer pulled up and chatted for a spell. I guess he picked me because I wore a Cowboys jersey, and he immediately professed his disdain for the Packers. :-) He was a Korean War vet, very fit and nimble for his advanced age, clad in overalls, his bald pate dappled profusely with splotches of variously colored melanin and a few stray gray hairs, his face leathery and deeply weather-worn from decades in the field. His wit was keen as a good knife, his tongue even sharper. He was happy to entertain me with a story of a tornado he saw "pretty near ten years ago.

Here is what he said, nearly verbatim:

"Yes sirree Bob, that son of a b__ch came right past that hill, that rise where the road goes now. Stretched out so long the top of it was right over my head and the bottom was spinning out in the field a quarter mile away like a g____mn washing machine. That motherf___er tore the haystacks all to hell, blew up the shed and threw my tools all over the g____mn place! But I gotta admit the damn thing was fun to watch, I tell you...scared the s__t out of me when I first saw it over yonder because it was a lot bigger at first, and looked like it was coming straight at me..."

I would have liked to hear more of those passionately told, profanity strewn tornado tales from years of yore, but the forward-flank precip was spreading onto us, and it was time to bail E through LeMars and beyond. It is insightful to converse with these old folks when there's time to do so. Hearing storm stories from the nonmeteorological perspective helps to keep a scientist well-grounded in the understanding of why we do what we do for a vocation -- forecast severe weather -- and as an avocation, observe and document them both for pleasure and for learning. As we parted, I advised the old soldier-farmer not to drive west. [Oh, don't worry, I'm not about to drive into that g___mn mess!"] I also did take the time to thank him for serving this country. That's important. It's the least we can do for those still left from the dwindling numbers of what Tom Brokaw aptly termed the Greatest Generation.

That storm moved off to the NE along the expanding line and got better organized as we headed E to a vantage near Oyens. For a short time, it wrapped a mesocyclonic occlusion with a broad, conical, slowly rotating lowering, but soon entrained too much precip from another storm to its immediate S. That storm was a little more ragged and disorganized (looking W), but did show cyclonic shear in its short-lived updraft base.

By now the whole boundary had lit up, way off to our SW into SErn Nebraska, and was moving E as a string of at least loosely connected supercells. Our strategy by now was to slowly work SSE just ahead of the line, intercepting embedded supercells one by one until something looked interesting enough to stay with. The next one in line exhibited a broad, ragged wall cloud on the W end of a large inflow band (looking NW from near Remsen), so we kept ahead of it a short while to 1 N Marcus. The wall cloud tightened up into a weakly rotating lowering with strong rising motion, until it, too, was engulfed by rain. Onward...

As we drove SE toward Quimby, the sky to the SW grew noticeably darker, and Keith's descriptions of a much stronger supercell, gleaned from the radar images they were seeing in their vehicle, sounded very promising. We headed W out of Washta toward an excellent vantage point located 2 N Pierson, with an intense HP circulation and suspicious, partly rain-wrapped lowering coming into view to our WSW. In wide angle views, this one actually had some structure, and the lowest part of the cloud mass began rotating very fast -- tornado fast.

Even though storms were moving quickly up the line, our advance position allowed some time for Thunder the dog, who was rather unperturbed by the thundering mass of whirling clouds and rain to our WSW, to get out and get some exercise. While he was doing so, intermittent fingers of condensation -- some on the ground -- appeared under the area of intense cloud-base rotation (super enhanced zoom of previous image). Other spotters in the area also reported the tornado. We were unsure how long it had been going on, and how long it lasted later, since the tornadic circulation got ever more deeply buried in rain (enhanced crop-n-zoom) with time, the tornadic portion retrograding farther into the precip while the storm as a whole kept moving N (enhanced crop-n-zoom). [In fact, though confident we had seen a tornado, it took a good look a the LCD screen of my camera later that night to be positive.] The storm's front flank rain area surged out NE of the mesocyclone and across the road to our W, and all visibility of the circulation was lost.

We skipped down the line into Ida Grove, fueling up as sirens began going off, and right before the staff closed the Casey's gas station. At the time, no warning was in effect for that county, and it was between the paths of two storms in the line. Our best guess was that the local authorities pressed the button because of the scary dark (and harmless) clouds all about. Beneath the pall of gloom, Thunder the dog casually greeted passersby while Scott Weberpal drove up and showed us some of his tornado video from the day. Then, the chase resumed...

The next storm in the line was tornado-warned somewhere through the murk to our SW, over NWrn Harrison County. The meso looked tight and deeply wrapped, at least as intense on the .5 deg SRM presentation from Omaha as anything we had seen elsewhere, all day. We didn't know it, but at that moment, that storm was spawning a tornado along a 14-mile path of rampage through the Loess Hills, killing four boy scouts at the Little Sioux camp. We intercepted it just S of Denison.

This was the most electrically active storm of the day, CG strikes slamming with fury all around the mesocyclone region. We saw all manner of "hangy downy thingies" -- some of which appeared under the broad area of rotation, but nothing certifiably tornadic. While I was trying (with only modest success) to shot more daytime lightning shots, the Three Dudes and a Dog headed to a nearby higher vantage. Alas, neither the dudes nor the dog could see any debris or power flashes under the circulation, which (like its predecessors) quickly enshrouded itself in rain and raced off to the NE.

We briefly considered intercepting yet another wrapping circulation to our SSE, but road vectors and impinging darkness caused us to reconsider, and wisely so. We rode out the NW fringe of the storm's core (nothing certifiably severe) n Defiance, then headed through Harlan and several heavy rain cores in the backside of the MCS, toward dinner with the crews at the Council Bluffs Applebee's. It was there we heard about the Little Sioux tragedy. TV stations in OMA were showing an ugly mess there, with injured scouts and adults from there still are arriving at various regional hospitals. It had been a long day, a hard chase, and a sad ending -- but still memorable in some good ways too. It was a fascinating event meteorologically, shared with friends, generating stories to carry for a lifetime. By the time we found a room and went to bed, we it was after midnight, and we were mentally drained and ready for a good night's rest.

Tornado-Warned Junk

Creston/Osceola IA area, 8 Jun 8

SHORT: Rather nondescript, linear but still TOR-warned convection observed S DSM after photographing remarkable river flooding in Story City.

(Not very) LONG:

After authorities closed down Story City, we headed S to meet the "Three Dudes and a Dog" chase team in Ames, ate lunch there, and headed SW. We wanted to play any relatively discrete convection developing near the cold front and moving through the vorticity and helicity rich outflow boundary from the latest flooding MCS. I had hoped against dread of linear structures, but before we left Ames, the lines already was developing to our SW. For about 3 hours, we watched several rather dense cores pass NE, some with updraft bases along their SE flanks, none rotating visibly. Yet the tornado warnings began flying like confetti at the grand parade.

We watched at least two TOR-warned blobs of amorphous garbage go flying by us SW through S of DSM, between Creston and Osceola. The storm structures, such as they were, so failed to impress us that we took no stills, nor even a millisecond of video. It wasn't worth the effort to dig out the camera equipment to document how lame and featureless this line of storms was. GR-level-3 SRM presentations showed little or no shear in low levels, and we all were flabbergasted by the warnings. Maybe they were receiving erroneous reports of funnels from some of the many non-rotating, very low-slung, hangy-downy scud chunks that would move by from time to time...I don't know. I tried to call DSM twice to let them know this was outflow-dominant mush, and got busy signals. I did hear of some cheesy, questionable tornado reports later and farther E, but by then we had bid good-bye to the convective crapfest and headed toward LNK for the night, in anticipation of some high plains potential two days later that wouldn't pan out for us.

Along the way, we took advantage of some late-afternoon sunshine to admire and shoot some Iowa farm scenes (like that above). Our only stills of the day had little to do with storms, except that they served as nuisances and diversions for several hours beforehand. That, in turn, ultimately permitted us to catch that farm in the warm waning rays, with some elevated ACCAS to texture and frame the skyscape overhead.

Major Flooding in Iowa

South Skunk River, Story City, IA

8 Jun 8

The most interesting phenomenon of the day started out with a drive through Story City, where we had spent the night. We cruised through and around town at first to see the houses and barns, unaware that we soon would be diverted as eyewitnesses to an unforgettable event of record proportions.

On the way W through town, we could see the river raging under a bridge. On the way back, half an hour later, the water was out of the banks and spreading over all manner of land near the river. In the time it took to park and survey the scene, perhaps ten minutes, a few more acres of bottomland visibly submerged.

Up to ten inches of rain had fallen on the upstream Skunk River basin from the previous night's training convection. Prior deluges already had saturated the catchments, so up came the muddy water, already inundating a baseball diamond, a basketball court and nearby areas around the river, and abruptly halting the annual Scandinavian Festival.

We parked beside the main street, just on the E side of downtown, and fanned out for some flood photography. Within half an hour the water filled the riverside park, started rising up the tree trunks, and was lapping against my car's tires. Time to move over the bridge and well uphill from the E side of that river, so we wouldn't get cut off from leaving town that day!

This was starting to remind me of 1993, and for good reason. We watched the flood levels keep rising at a rate of 3-4 feet an hour in town until they got over the roads, cutting off most of the town -- which is W of the river -- from I-35 access just to its E. A constable asked me how fast the water was going up, and when I told him, he said a quick "Ooh, thanks," his face got noticeably pallid, eyes big as saucers, and he sped off in astonishing haste while grabbing the microphone of his radio -- presumably to summon more equipment and manpower. [It was a Sunday in a small town. Still, having extra people on duty or standby for the festival probably helped a great deal in their being able to redirect manpower to deal with the apparently unexpected speed and magnitude of this flood.]

Elke hastily moved the car uphill some more, and we resumed shooting for a very brief interval, until local officials started blocking all through streets and evacuating parts of town. Their response, quick as it was under the circumstances, still barely kept pace with the flood. Before the newly arrived public works personnel barricaded the main road, a local resident and I had to wave down several folks to implore them not to go into that rising, fairly fast-moving water.

A few other locals I spoke with, who were watching the spectacle as pedestrians, hadn't seen anything like this since '93, and one of them told me that he didn't remember the water being this high even then. This was serious, bigtime flooding. With conditions in town deteriorating fast into a genuine emergency, and wishing not to become impediments or distractions to first-responders, we evacuated the area and headed on our way.

The storm intercept later that day would become a mere footnote to the scene of inundation that we had witnessed. We found out over ensuing days about the utterly catastrophic flooding in Cedar Rapids, which made what we had seen seem like a transient puddle by comparison. Our thoughts and prayers went out to all those affected, whether in the big or small town.

Messy, Wet, Western Iowa Storms

7 Jun 8

SHORT: Wrapping HP observed near FOD, squall line thereafter.

LONG:
We originally targeted the Bohemian Alps area of E-central/SE Nebraska, thinking we perhaps would end up in western IA. Instead, here we landed in Story City, N of DSM. One of the most fascinating aspects of this hobby -- when engaged fairly freely and without assorted yokes and chains -- is where the wind takes the wind watcher at day's end. Often it is far from the place(s) expected.

After lunch in one of our favorite Kansas towns -- Marysville -- we headed N on US-77 toward LNK. I had forgotten what a car-throttling, inexcusably rough ribbon of uneven and shoulderless pavement that is US-77 S of Beatrice, Nebraska! After inspecting the vehicle on the S side of LNK, to make sure nothing had fallen off, I noticed that a low-level mesolow had formed along the cold front N of LNK. This inflection was very well-defined in visible satellite loops and reflectivity imagery, and weakly defined n the surface analysis as a kink along the boundary.

We decided to get E of that frontal wave, in the event of somewhat backed flow and enhanced shear to its E, which didn't really materialize amidst a distinct absence of accompanying isallobaric perturbation. Towering Cu bubbled hither and yon, buildups cycling up and down, hopes for supercellular bliss swinging to and fro, until we got past Denison and some of the storms began to put down deep roots.

We cruised N from Westside to Wall Lake on some very well maintained county roads -- better by far than that Oklahoma-style POS highway around Beatrice. Along the way, a glacially tilled landscape eased past, bathed alternately in solar spotlight and anvil shadow. The land spread before us like a rolling quilt, bands and contours agriculturally stitched over and around the padded hills, as if the quilt covered a big padded mattress, giving the gift of relaxation to the eyes of two tired travelers.

By the time we got to Wall Lake, two primary subjects appeared: A young but already rainy, outflow-dominant storm to our W, and a bonafide supercell to our NE, moving away from us. The farther, more difficult but much better organized storm was the best option...of course! The supercell was visible as a curving precip core wrapping back into something. This got TOR-warned while within view, and we headed off to the E and toward FOD on some paved back roads, aiming to get the storm back off our starboard stern, before launching ourselves northward. We caught it near Moorland, just in time to watch a raging figure-9 with obvious storm-scale rotation bulge itself across the road to our N. Between Moorland and the southern fringes of FOD, along US-20, we saw a broad plume of rising and rotating dust under an updraft base, just E of the eastern apex of the "9", but the whirl was weak and short lived, and we couldn't ascertain cloud-base rotation above. I only managed two poor-quality, one-handed shots while driving and looking ahead at the road: crappy photo 1 (or super enhanced crop) and crappy photo 2 (or super enhanced crop).

The whole configuration wrapped itself deeply in dark murk as it moved into the FOD area (as seen from SE of FOD, looking NW). We bolted E then N to get ahead once again, but the storm got entangled with a thermally cool gust front from another TOR-warned storm over Wright County. The whole complex then strung itself out into a decaying squall line with a deep, turbulent, scalloped underside to its shelf cloud that faintly reflected some of the warm hues of the stubbly cornfields beneath. We briefly and unsuccessfully attempted dusk lightning photography, then headed into Story City for a room and dinner.

On this long day we drove from CNK to western IA to watch a tornado-warned HP supercell shortly before and during the sunset hour, when we nearly could have ridden bicycles westward a county or so from CNK for a tornado-warned HP during the sunset hour. Such is the nature of mobile storm observing. We didn't know it at the time, but the amazing scenes we observed the next morning in Story City would make the extra time, money and trouble well worthwhile!

Congrats to the Three Dudes and a Dog Chase Team (DF, Keith, Roman), who started out in the TOP-MKC area and got to the IA/MN border area storm just in time to witness a funnel and probable tornado therewith. We would link up with them the upcoming day for a caravan chase beyond these flooded fields of corn.

A photogenic tornadic supercell struck hundreds of miles to our E, S of ORD...ain't that a gasser? I wonder how many Chicago based chasers wandered elsewhere today, only to crank open the storm reports page and/or discussion boards, and learn of that! Far more than ever will admit to it, methinks...

Again, such is the nature of this avocation!

While in Story City, the line of storms sent multiple echoes over many of the same locations just to our NW and N before slowly moving over town...

Faster than Speeding Bullets

Northern KS "High Risk" Supercells of 5 Jun 8

SHORT: Two fast moving HP storms intercepted near Bennington and Alma KS as they roared by. Uncertain about anything tornadic on deeply wrapping circulation W of Bennington or in nearby front-flank vortex soon thereafter.

LONG:
Disheartened by the likelihood of messy and very fast-moving storm structures, yet buoyed by the prospect of some of those structures to rotate and produce tornadoes, we headed N into central KS for the start of our 2008 chase vacation. I worked a midnight-8 a.m. shift, that morning, but had rotated my sleeping schedule forward steadily over preceding days. Alertness was there. Life was swell.

We didn't get out of OUN 'til 1100 CDT, so our strategy was to get as far N as possible along I-135/US-81, into the lowest dew point depressions possible, in hopes of any discrete storms.

On the way up, we saw what we hoped to be a heartening omen in the form of a horseshoe vortex hovering over the Hutchinson exit. On radar (our first chase vacation with GR-Level-3 and a cell card), we noticed the initially solidly linear development was breaking up somewhat, which gave cause for optimism. Visually, the collection of storms was cranking out a nice mammatus display from its downshear anvil deck, as seen from the Crawford St. exit in SLN.

Several of the storms showed well-defined shear couplets and hooks by the time we passed SLN, so we set up shop farther N, and just SW and W of Bennington KS, to get in the way of one's projected path. Although the sky was dark, the contrast somewhat murky under the extensive and thick anvil canopy, we could see some towers ramping up into the SE side as it approached (looking SW). As the supercell raced past, a figure-9 supercellular configuration became apparent, and from our vantage located 1 W Bennington, there was a tight low level circulation a few miles to our W and then NW (see super-enhanced crop), partially cloaked in precip. This very same circulation went on to produce one or more tornadoes near Clay Center, just after it got out of our sight!

Meanwhile, the value of keeping one's head on a swivel cashed in for us. Another cloud base circulation formed, this one SSW of us along the storm's front flank. This was the same one that Al Pietrycha and Kevin Manross witnessed from E of town beneath a ragged funnel, except we still were W of Al at that point. I couldn't see any obvious debris at the surface, but there was rapid upward motion and moderate rotation -- very helical -- and some diffuse dust under or behind it. Like Al, I am loathe to call it tornadic...but it was very close both to being a tornado and to our position. The newer circulation was less than a mile away and moving at hyper-warp straight at us, so it was time to bail. I've told Elke before that, even though she has tiny size-5 feet, they seem able to turn to solid lead at a second's notice. She jumped in and slammed 'em to the floor while I reeled off a few shots from the passenger side (e.g., this, then this, both at 24 mm full-frame focal length).

Out of the way of the wrapping circulation, and unable to see it anymore, we headed farther E on K-18 to stay ahead of (and photograph) the trailing shelf cloud across verdant wheat fields, playing vehicular tag with Alnado and Kevin M for a little while. Another circulation -- associated with a previously discrete storm near Hesston that was being absorbed into the line -- was coming up, but appeared to be weakening.

Instead of playing with that, we decided to head E past Junction City to get in the prospective path of a well-hooked storm that bulged E from the line. A small bow echo passed by to our W, its gust front showing ragged teeth as it surged ENE. We found a good vantage just S of I-70's exit 313 for a little while, and had a "here comes another one" moment. The supercell racing our way from the murk again had good towers along its S-SE side, as well as a ton of distant CGs. Thanks to storm motions comparable to highway driving speeds, those CGs weren't so distant just a few moments later!

Unfortunately, the storm turned slightly rightward in response to the eastward push of that gust front with which it was interacting, and we had to move E where views were not so good. From that point E to exit 318, the CG barrage E of the gust front and NE of the old (weakening) meso was in my top five all time. Forked, staccato strikes blasted the rocky earth in close proximity, all quadrants. These were spectacular strikes -- truly a marvel to behold -- but deadly! Fearful of the car getting struck, we unplugged multiple electronics and hesitated to touch metal.

A new meso formed along that gust front to our N, while the trailing flank and gust front cast a hauntingly beautiful, dark pall over the backroads of the northern Flint Hills. From there, we headed into LWC for dinner, and got a great last-minute Priceline deal at the Holiday Inn.

Our original storm near Bennington, which became tornadic near Clay Center, went on toward Omaha as a strong, mesocyclonic bow echo. The trailing portion of the line moved through LWC harmlessly shortly after dinner, treating us to a decent if short-lived series of lightning flashes and a heavy rain squall. I had been up all day after a midnight shift, and slept a long time that night!

This was not a bust because we saw supercells and did about as well as we could under the circumstances. Maybe some folks got too spoiled with all the tornadoes they've seen this year. Well, we didn't see them, so there's no spoilage here. In fact, all in all, we were fairly pleased with the chase, considering screaming fast storm motions and some of the road and terrain limitations. We thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful, green-carpet scenery of the Flint Hills too, as always.