6/12/2008 - East Central Kansas HPs

On Thursday, we targeted the Wichita area, where a stalled front, high cape, and some quality deep layer sheer were collocated. After quickly showing my brother my old stomping grounds at the University of Nebraska campus in Lincoln, we took off for York and then south on U.S. 81. Four hours later we found ourselves south of the quasi-stationary front with 90+ temps and ~70 dewpoints. We meandered from Park City up Newton, KS, where we hung out for a while. While we were watching the storms slowly develop to our immediate northeast, a car caught on fire at the Burger King across the road from us. That provided about a minute of excitement. Storms finally unzipped the cap from Florence back to Newton. We finally latched onto a developing supercell just east of Newton and followed it toward Burns, where we saw a brief cone tornado about 5-10 miles to our northeast. We tried to get a better view of the tornado – as it was obscured by trees and the rolling landscape -- but we quickly lost our view as it became wrapped in rain (this tornado was approximately 6:25 pm central; 10 ne of Burns).

A CG bolt between Burns and Cassoday, KS.

We watched the storm’s outflow for a while just south of Burns; a bit later, another kink formed to our immediate west. This kink went onto produce another robust wall cloud just north of Burns. In fact, I thought for sure it was going to drop a tornado … but, alas, it didn’t. We scooted east along an unnamed road toward Cassoday, KS, where we watched yet another kink form along the line to our west and wrap up tight. This “wrap” produced a lot of low-level rotation surrounded by CG lightning. This was truly an amazing sight as the meso crossed the Kansas Turnpike just north of our location. We watched as the storm progressed to the east, eventually breaking off from the chase in order to get back to Colby, KS … a rather long drive necessitated by Ken’s plane flight out of Denver on Friday.

Pics of the storm as it crosses the Kansas Turnpike near Cassoday.

Looking west.

Another west view.

Looking north toward "kink" with trailing hail core.

View west.

Chasers blast south out of the core.

Lightning illuminated hail core.

CG and hail core as the storm moves to the northeast.

Thursday's chase closes the chapter on this year’s chase season for me; albeit, I’ll take advantage of any local chases in the Iowa and Illinois areas that crop up this summer.