Chase Day Three

First, I wanna wish a healthy and speedy recovery to Lynn from Ireland, who had a minor heart attack last night and was unable to join us chasing today, and will probably be out for the remainder of the tour.

So today was a fun chase day, albeit one that was disappointing given the potential that it had going in. We decided to play the dryline in central Kansas, and we were not to be disappointed. A tornado watch with very high probabilities was issued at around two in the afternoon for our area, and at around four our storm went up. After maybe a half hour of driving we were underneath the meso, where we found rapid rotation and PERHAPS a large wedge tornado wrapped in rain. Rain curtains were circulating around the meso, indicating possible tornadic circulation on the ground. We'll never know. We tried to stay ahead of the storm and in doing so were forced to travel over a dam with water about 100 feet below. Never in the six years that I have chased, including the chase of Hurricane Ike have I been so frightened. We were on top of the dam with inflow wind whipping us and a rapidly rotating mesocyclone directly above us, finally arriving on the other side after what seemed like an eternity. With a tornado imminent, we quickly turned around back across the dam and successfully made it to the other side. About three minutes after reaching the other side of the dam, the storm dropped what a myself and a few other tour guests saw as a very brief tornado. Although we won't know if it did in fact touch the ground, the funnel looked very close and was exactly where we had been not five minutes before. The storm continued to move and so did we, as we chased it further north and east. At one point, the rapidly rotating mesocyclone almost dropped a massive wedge tornado, and it may have in fact touched down, as an amateur report would indicate. We do think there was some debris on the ground, but again, we can't be sure.

At this point, the storm began to move into cold, stable air and we decided to blow it off and catch a storm coming north out of Great Bend, KS, in hopes that it would hit the warm front and interact with the boundary and go crazy. Unfortunately for us, as we approached it, it gave up the ghost and was dead within 15 minutes.

We thought we were done at this point, and stopped at a gas station on the way back to our hotel in Salina, KS. Not the case however, as a new storm was now rapidly rotating about 20 miles from our location. Unfortunately for us, as we got to it, it was little more than an elevated hail machine, albeit one with 120 knot gate to gate shear, which is more than tornadic. It wasn't to be however, and we blew it off and continued on to Salina.

All in all a fun but slightly disappointing day. The setup had incredible potential, but there was entirely too much forcing, which lead to a huge congealed mess of storms. Hopefully the next few days will give us a tornado, but that certainly remains to be seen. I do think that we saw at least one tornado today near the dam, and perhaps another a bit later, but that may be up for some discussion. Tomorrow looks pretty decent, here's to hoping...