My first chase west of the Mississippi in over a year left a lot to be desired. I left work a little early Friday evening, packed up the car, and Angie and I were on the road by 6pm. I'd been eyeing this system for several days and the slight risk in the SWODY2 was encouraging. Kevin Peters had a several hour head start on us, and he snagged us a hotel room in Atlantic, IA -- where we arrived at 2am. At 11, we left for our target area. Based on the 12Z obs and models, we decided to aim for northeastern KS just south of the NE border. We headed west on I-80 to Lincoln and then headed south through Beatrice, NE.
Beatrice provided a convenient lunch point (mmm, Runza) but we had to eat quickly as storms were already firing. Hurrying south, we saw several storms begin to develop to our south east. Instead of going for them, we opted to continue south where the environment was more favorable. This turned out to be a mistake. We pursued a suspicious lowering in northern Pottawatomie county, but it quickly lost appearance, so we headed west to Westmoreland to make a data stop. That failed, so we headed down to Manhattan, where a beast of a storm was about to pass over. We shot east on US 24 and then south through St. George and Wamego before getting back on 24. We stopped twice to film the gust front.
The gust front east of Manhattan. View is to the east. |
The gust front east of Manhattan, complete with raindrops. |
Angie and Kevin watch the gust front. |
Rain drops kept falling on my head. |
The gust front looks like a people-eater. Click for a larger image. |
View is to the southwest. Click for a larger image. |
We then went north toward Delia, and turned east before getting into the heavy rain. About 10 miles east of Delia, we heard a report of a tornado there, but we couldn't see anything. We sat for a while, never seeing anything except rain. Finally, we went to Holton for dinner and a rainbow. After that, we called it a day and just shot lightning on the way to a hotel room in Independence, MO.
The beautiful rainbow in Holton, KS. Click for a larger image. |
A vid cap of lightning south of Holton. |
So we busted the high risk day (but we were in good company, so I don't feel horribly bad about it, just bad). Sunday, on our return home, the homeland area was hit with storms that produced a lot of wind and hail reports. Ugh. I made my feelings known to the sky. We did get some nice pictures of sunset on the clouds, but was it really worth driving 1500+ miles to have the highlight of the chase come an hour from home?
Making my feelings known. |
Sunset off a tower. Click for a larger image. |
Click for a larger image. |
Click for a larger image. |
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