We started off the morning in Garden City, KS, full of hope. We went east for some yummy BBQ in Wichita. Then we dropped south, as satellite and RADAR indicated convergence near the Oklahoma border. We went hither and yon for a while, waiting for initiation, as the cumuli were becoming rather congested and MLCAPEs to our immediate southeast, the airmass source region, were approaching 5000 J/kg. Sweet.
Storms finally fired up and we were on the south one in a jiffy, and as soon as we got to the south of it, it showed us a beautiful structure, with striations and nice midlevel rotation. We followed it for a few hours, and a couple of times we witnessed clear slot occlusions; still no tornado.
The road options were getting a little sketchy, so we had to drop southeast by about 15 miles. And wouldn’t you know it, when we’re coming back north, that’s when the storm decides to tornado. We saw it and dropped a report on Spotter Network. We couldn’t find an appropriate place to pull over for pictures for a while, so we had to settle for van pictures.
Not bad, though, as the tornado was on the ground for an estimated 15 minutes. After the old circulation got gobbled up, the new circulation tried hard but could never regain its strength again. So we went to grab food and unload water, and set out north for some lightning pictures. Some pictures acquired were amazing. After about a half hour of that, we left for the hotel in Springfield, MO.
Pictures will on their way tomorrow.
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