Storm Chase Day 9: Western Kansas

After a couple of awesome down days, we hit the road from Alamosa, Colorado to head for storm potential in eastern Colorado and western Kansas. We were trying to close our the trip strong with three consecutive chase days upcoming. Our target was Burlington, Kansas and we were trying to race there to begin the waiting game for convection to begin that day. The environment was not very good, to be honest.

Truly sampled a pre-tornadic environment today. Sounding was launched about 1 hour before the Oakley tornado & about 1/2 mile away #RiVorS pic.twitter.com/Sdk3XMB82j

— Manda Chasteen (@theweathermanda) May 26, 2017

There was westerly flow in the mid-levels of the atmosphere, which switched to southeasterly flow almost immediately in the lower levels of the atmosphere. That sounds good, but there was really no veering to that point. It was abrupt, and the vertical profile of the atmosphere wasn’t very favorable for supercells.

That sets up the environmental context for what storms would move into that afternoon and evening. We sat in a park and played Pig with a football for about 30 minutes as storms developed to our west. We knew that these storms would likely become big hail producers because of the cold mid levels in the atmosphere, but a couple had become tornado warned and it was difficult to lay off those storms.

We finally embarked to commit to the southern most storm, and we watched this storm gradually develop and organize. For quite a long time, it was a bit of a disappointment and was terribly organized.

 

However, as we went eastward, the storm gradually began to gain organization. It had taken on the structure of a mothership supercell, with strong mid-level rotation apparent.

But even while this was ongoing, the storm became outflow dominant. This is a big no-no for supercells, as it cuts off the low level inflow into the parent mesocyclone, and prevents tornadogenesis often times. This outflow was strong. At some points, the downdraft was estimated to have a strength of 80mph+, and the outflow raced ahead of the storm. During the lifespan of this storm, that outflow intersected another outflow boundary, and this was wrapped into the storm and created what was a monster supercell.

This was rotating like a top in an ambient environment that didn’t even support it. The storm had basically created its own environment, and supported its own rotation. We were on this storm for much of its lifecycle, and it was a dangerous chase at times. Roads were dirt, and winds were howling in the 60-70 mph range for much of our chase. This created another issue: dust. There was a ton of dust being blown into the area and around the van. It was quite ridiculous that this was even the situation we were in considering how terrible the environment was.

We chased it well into central Kansas, and then let it pass by us to our east. The storm was just ridiculous, though. That storm goes to show that supercells are completely different beasts that can create their own dynamics and play by their own rules. This storm no doubt did that, forming in what was a pretty terrible environment for supercells. We watched some awesome lightning after this, and then ate at a small diner in Kansas to close out the day.