May 18, 2019 Kansas Chase

by John Farley


After my chase of the McCook storm the previous day, I had overnighted in Lexington, NE. I had another chase day available today, though I would need to end up somewhere farther south and/or west to be able to get home the following day. The previous day's storms had largely scoured out Nebraska and Kansas, although the outflow boundaries had pushed much farther southeast than the true synoptic front. Looking at morning model runs, although the main action would be way down in eastern and southern OK and parts of TX, there were indications of some atmospheric recovery in south-central KS, where instability was progged to return by late afternoon, and some directional wind shear would persist. Having seen this, I was pleased and felt reinforced when, on the 1630Z outlook, SPC upgraded an area of southwest/south-central KS and northwest OK, roughly centered on Greensburg, KS, to an enhanced risk. I decided to head south toward this area, with an initial target of Greensburg or perhaps somewhere slightly to the south or east of there. There was not a high probability of tornadoes today, but I thought there would be some strong storms and more likely than not some supercells. So with somewhat modest expectations, I headed south toward Greensburg.

As I headed south, I could gradually see a line of weak, and probably elevated, showers and thundestorms to my east and south. As I got down into central KS in the early afternoon, I could see asperitas clouds along the back side of this convection. This convection had developed in the early morning hours and persisted through much of the day into the early afternoon. Here is a picture of the aspiritas clouds:

By the time I got that picture, these storms were elevated and were weakening as they moved away to my east. Later, though, more surface-based storms developed in my main target area, first south of Greensburg and later in scattered areas east and southeast of there. A couple of the storms became quite active electrically, but overall there were too many storms for any one to become dominant, and the storms seemed to have a hard time sustaining themselves. This late afternoon storm west of Pratt, one of the stronger ones of the day, tried to take on LP supercell characteristics:

However, as noted above the storms in this area seemed to have a hard time sustaining themselves, as they would pulse up, weaken, and often be replaced by other nearby storms. There were a couple reports of severe hail later in the evening after I gave up on these storms and headed west, though. I think these may have been associated with the same storm as in the picture above, but considerably later and farther northeast.

To my west was a large MCS that had been going for much of the afternoon, although it had initiated well to the west of the area forecast to have the best parameters for supercells. This cluster of storms had gotten a number of severe thunderstorm warnings, and still had a couple such warnings just to the south of Dodge City. I headed west, in part to intercept these storms and in part to get a start toward home so I would have a shorter drive the next day.

Once I got closer to these storms, I was able to witness ths shelf cloud and dust plume from outflow wind SE of Dodge City.

By now (getting toward evening) the storms were elevated, not sure if they started that way. This storm was still severe-warned, and from the first time I was close enough for a view until around the time the line of storms overtook me about 15 miles SE of Dodge City, the outflow wind was kicking large plumes of dust up into the air. And despite the elevated nature of the storms, the shelf cloud was pretty impressive as the picture above shows. Chasers farther down the line in northwest OK also photographed impressive shelf clouds. Earlier in the afternoon and a little farther west in KS, there were reports of 2-inch hail and 65 mph winds with these storms.

As these storms neared me, I also had a nice view in the late-afternoon sun of the storms off to my east that I had been chasing earlier, the same ones associated with the second picture above. I was able to get this picture looking east, as the elevated storms to my west (behind me as I took this picture) were about to ovetake my location:

At the top of the picture, you can also see the anvil of the storms that were about to overtake me. After this, I drove into Dodge City in rain and wind, with occasional CG lighting visible. Within the large MCS, a cell intensified just to the northeast of the city and produced quite a bit of lightning. I called it a chase in Dodge City and after a bit of driving around in the cold wind and rain, found a place to stay for the night.

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