Day Three of Close Encounters had good potential in Texas and Kansas. We chose to chase the triple point near Hays. The first tornado warned storm formed right near Hays and failed to produce. A second storm formed just northeast and became the storm off the day. We witnessed a couple brief tornadoes (although one we couldn’t get a visual on actually was fairly significant!) and watched the superb structure of this supercell as it traversed the warm front of hours!
We got to chase close to home on April 11th, with storms developing in southeast Colorado off the Raton Mesa. As they moved east into southwest Kansas, deeper moisture and increasing instability resulted in an intense supercell forming which produced baseball sized hail and had incredible inflow winds. It came close to producing a tornado as well before diminishing after dark.
An amazing supercell with a landspout tornado was witnessed this day. We started the day in Denver and didn’t have far to go as storms exploded along a dryline/outflow boundary intersection in northwest Kansas. Good shear, moisture and instability allowed a rare mid July supercell to develop. We were on this storm from the time it was a towering cumulus cloud. The structure was fantastic. It also became quite electrified as it right turned due south towards Goodland, Kansas. By dark it was sparking away and still going. This storm also produced baseball sized hail along its path!
June 27th had decent potential with a dryline extending along the Kansas/Colorado border, with moisture pooling east of it. Moisture however never did get very deep and the result was large temperature and dewpoint spreads resulting in high cloud bases. However with steep lapse rates in place and developing storms along the boundary, a decent supercell formed with a weak landspout in its initial stages. We got what we figured we would with this set up and everyone was excited with the results!
What can be said of this day! Caryn ran a private tour and this was one of the final days, and an amazing event it was! A warm front lay across southern Nebraska, while a dryline extended south from the surface low. By late afternoon several storms formed north of the warm front in the cold air where there was not a capping inversion in place. Finally the triple point storm formed, and rapidly became severe. It didn’t take long for the supercell to nearly anchor and become violently tornadic. It produced several tornadoes, including a huge wedge near the town of Sutton, Nebraska. It also produced numerous tornadoes Caryn and the tour were able to witness, of about every shape and size imaginable! Roger was in Oklahoma City with a new tour arriving this day and managed to run north into Kansas and capture a couple very pretty supercells, one of which likely produced a brief tornado.
June 27th was an interesting day. Although dewpoints were in the low to mid 70s, temperatures were around 105F! Tons of instability was present, and storms exploded once the cap was breached northwest of Salina. Extremely high winds occurred, as well as hail to golfball sized, but storms congealed into a bowing line as they raced south towards Wichita. Nonetheless, one particular supercell gave us a pretty nice show and had decent structure as well as great lightning.
May 28th had that “look” to it. All the ingredients were there for a few strong supercells and tornadoes. One issue had to be solved, and that was the cap. It took a lot of convergence on the triple point just north of Salina, but finally it broke late afternoon. A cluster of storms formed, and the Bennington tornadic supercell emerged and crushed everything around it. A violent EF4 tornado formed and was nearly anchored for almost an hour before dissipating. We were positioned about 3-4 miles east of the tornado, and assumed it would move east towards us, but instead stayed anchored nearly its entire lifecycle. Nonetheless we were treated with a vicious tornado that fortunately missed Bennington and other towns. I shutter to think what could have happened had it hit Salina or the small towns just north of there.
May 19th held high hopes for a significant severe weather outbreak. We felt south central Kansas would be the place to start. After positioning ourselves near the Kansas/Oklahoma border, several supercells formed, of few which produced tornadoes. Unfortunately for us, the storm of the day developed near Shawnee, Oklahoma and produced a large EF4 tornado. The photos below were taken all not far from South Haven, Kansas. We witnessed 3 tornadoes this day. This first two photos are of the initial supercell and developing tornado, and the bottom two photos were of the last supercell and pretty elephant trunk tornado.
May 18th took Caryn and I to south central Kansas. We staged in Greensburg with the dryline immediately to our west. Hot temps and fairly low dewpoints had me initially concerned that storms would be high based and outflow dominant quickly. However, good shear and strong flow aloft I hoped would push storms quickly into better moisture and allow the bases to come down. We targeted storms coming out of the Oklahoma panhandle and soon found out those would not develop into much more than a line of high based hailers. Another storm, just northwest of Greensburg, started spinning from its initiation and we decided to blast back north to catch it as it ingested mid 60s dews. Fortunately we caught the tail end of the Rozell tornado and the entire life of the Sanford tornado. The first photo is of the Rozell EF4 tornado and the rest are from the Sanford tornado.
May 8th featured a set up that was out of phase. Better moisture and instability was in Oklahoma, however better shear was in Kansas. We tried to find the best overlap of both, which looked like the Kansas/Oklahoma border area. A nice supercell formed late afternoon near Protection and tracked along a boundary until the cap strength increased, thus killing the storm.
