I decided my friend and I would head down towards Wichita. We left town about 1030, and by 2-230 storms were already firing and tornado watches were being issued. The first storms formed down in Oklahoma, and were expected to move into Kansas. Watching things on radar though, it seemed like it would be quite a while before those storms made it into Kansas. There was one storm though that had split left and was heading due north into Kansas. About the time we got to Kingman, more storms were filling in rapidly west of Wichita. The storm from Oklahoma had moved up towards Pratt, and was warned for baseball sized hail!
Around this time, I was looking at the parameters for tornadoes and there was quite an area in southcentral Kansas that didn't have very good shear for some reason. So we decided to try and head west to Pratt and then come in from behind on the storm moving north. There were also tornado warned storms that were moving east along the warm front in western Kansas. This would be our new target area.
As we headed west towards Pratt, the winds picked up dramatically from the south. It was very warm here and not as humid so the cloud bases were pretty high, in fact too high for tornadoes. But i knew as the storm moved north they would lower. With the strong winds, there was a ton of blowing dust and even some gustnadoes forming out in the fields. The winds continued to increase til they were probably averaging around 40 mph. As we passed a grove of trees small branches were breaking off and leaves and other debris were flying across the highway. A semi heading towards was actually pushed into our lane briefly as it came out past a break of trees. Luckily, he was able to correct himself!
We made it to Pratt and headed north and were probably about 15 miles or so behind the storm. It was moving around 45 mph so it took a while to catch up. We were finally within about 5-7 miles of the storm when traffic started slowing down and we could see flashing lights. Then we noticed some tree damage with some pieces blown across the highway. Also there was a large center pivot out in a field that had been blown over. It looked like a possible tornado had just come through here! A fireman, came up to our car and said the road would be closed for a while and directed us to take a county road to go around to the north. The road was dirt though and since the storm had moved through was really muddy. We made an attempt at driving on it and made it about a mile or so, but it was very sketchy at best and I didn't want to get stuck and ruin the rest of the chase so we turned around.
It was also at this point though that we lost our internet connection. Things were going downhill for us rapidly! Driving "blind" so to speak we went back south to the next main east/west highway and turned east. We found internet coverage again a couple of miles down the road and soon discovered there were more tornado warned storms to our north and west. We made our way back to Great Bend which was the original town we were heading towards before the highway was blocked, and then continued on northwest. We could see the intense storm that reportedly had a confirmed tornado with it minutes before. The storm was dark and mean looking, and once we were close enough we stopped to take video and pics.
The storm however had started to become outflow dominant and had turned to the east in it's movement. Also storms had rapidly started filling in to the south of the this storm. We found ourselves getting overtaken by the storms. We headed back southeast towards Great Bend, but the storms overtook us with very heavy rain and winds to near 50 mph. Eventually, we made it ahead of the line east of Great Bend. The storms had formed into a continuous line now as the dryline filled in, pretty much killing any chances of tornadoes. For the last hour or so of daylight we would get ahead of the line, stop and take some pics as it approached and then do it again one more time before letting the line overtake us with nickel sized hail and gusty winds. We then made the long drive home arriving around 130 in the morning.
To me the day was a high risk bust. There were tornadoes and a few strong ones in Oklahoma, but for all the wordings and warnings of an outbreak, this definitely did not meet up to it's hype. On the way home we did hear of 2 fatalities in Kansas due to a falling tree going through a van. It turns out this was the reason why the highway was closed in the direction we were going. The tornado couldn't have passed through there more than 5-7 minutes before us. We were left wondering both whether that could have been our car, or what kind of a view of a tornado we possibly missed. I don't feel like we would have been hit, because I doubt we would have been in the middle of the storm. Normally, I don't have a problem going into a storm with large hail however, this storm was warned for baseball to softball sized hail which is a size I won't mess with! So we would have probably stayed behind the storm if we had caught up with it earlier. Who knows, we might have seen a tornado then?
The last 3 trips to Kansas, I've traveled over 2400 miles, spent over 45 hours in the car, and didn't see a stupid tornado. Here's hoping June will give me better luck, but as it looks like right now most of the first week of June will be hot and dry over most of the central U.S.
day 2 outlook- huge area with a very high risk
day 1 outlook 1130 am
day 1 1130 am tornado outlook. note the 45% prob. this is rare to see!!
day 1 1130 am hail probs. note the 60% prob. again, very rare to see this high!
day 1 outlook 3 pm
day 1 outlook 3 pm tornado probs
some of the forecast hodographs in Kansas. Shear looked amazing as reflected by the long curving images
this hodograph actually had the shear going off the chart!
radar grab of the storms about 5 pm. we are the white circle with the dot in the middle north of pratt.
first pic of tornado warned storm as we approached
getting a bit closer
again
one of my favorite pics. we were now parked and almost directly underneath it!
again
view of the weaker line and shelf cloud
again
another image of the line of storms
last shot of the night
damage survey to the 2 main tornadoes in our area. the first survey is for the tornado that caused the 2 fatalities on the highway in front of us. The tornado was an EF-2 with winds estimated at 120 mph:
storm survey
Total miles driven: 864 miles
largest hail: nickel
strongest winds: 50-55 mph
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