OK/KS Chase

March 23rd

I never was real excited about leaving Nebraska, I was fairly confident in there being some tornadoes along the “arc” (occlusion), though I’ve never been a fan of low topped supercells, for numerous reasons. First of all, they are not normally visually as attractive as “typical” supercells, more often than not the tornadoes they produce are short lived and really weak, they also can be a major headache to chase, given not only unfavorable direction, but often speeds of 50+ mph. Monday looked to be no different, any storms that were going to form in Nebraska looked as though they would match every one of my dislikes, so despite the risk close to home I set out for the OK/KS border region. Here I thought the chance of more classic structure, stronger tornadoes, and an all around more pleasant chase was likely. Moderate instability by March standards (CAPE’s around 1200j/kg) were forecast to co-exist under an extremely sheared atmosphere, with strong veered mid-level winds (500mb 70-80kt+) and strong backed Low Levels (850mb 50-60kt). I initially thought convection would hold off until later in the day, as the second wave of energy ejected, but the cap proved to be slightly to weak and elevated convection formed shortly after noon along the Dry Line. I spent of good time just waiting in the early afternoon near Wellington (right on the KS/OK border). I was hoping the elevated convection to the W and SW would strengthen and move my direction. Indeed as the afternoon wore on stuff did intensify, and I dropped south to position myself for an intercept.

Below you can see the "storms" in thier early stage along the Dry Line in OK.

As they moved North East towards me, they began to intensify, at this point I started dropping South to position.

Here the storm was undergoing intensification, nice rain free base present.

Upon arriving to the first storm, it was rapidly undergoing intensification; initially I noted a real nice wall cloud that quickly dissipated. After that occurred I went right up under the updraft to have a closer look at things, I encountered large hail isolated Golf Balls, before I flew back East to get out the hail (figured there were some bigger ones back in there and didn’t feel like loosing a windshield, later I talked with Jeff P who said he encountered some stones much larger than golf balls in the same area). I found the edge of where the hail was ejecting and setup about 1 mile East of the updraft base. Just as I did so, rapid condensation occurred just off the ground, it was rotating from the start. It rapidly attached itself to the updraft base and became a well-established wall cloud. The whole process occurred in a matter of moments, and reminded me exactly of the Tulia TX tornadogeniss formation (minus the insane RFD) I thought for sure a tornado was imminent at that point, however wrapping rain curtains quickly intruded on the process and the storm lost it’s “thunder” I followed the storm to the NE back into KS, but left it just East of I-35 as it looked extremely unhealthy.

Below is the wall cloud forming, this was rotating as it lifted and eventually atached itself to the base, about this time I figured a tornado was about to occurr, so I raced closer to get a good view.

For awhile after the previous photo I just shot video, though here are a couple photos as the wall cloud began to weaken.

This storm started having a tough time maintaining a solid updraft so I dropped back South to await further development, I intercepted several more storms, here are just a few random photos for now.