05.11.05 Kansas Bust

Storm reports encountered on the chase:

Chase Account

Kenny Tapp, Ben Baranowski, Aaron Kennedy and other graduate students from the OU School of Meteorology departed Norman at 10am to head to our initial target/wifi stop of Salina, KS.  We arrived up in Salina around 3pm.  Unable to find a hotel with free wifi access, we relied on Aaron's internet cell phone for an update on the current conditions.  Storms were already firing up near the surface low in northwest KS and all along the warm front to the north in southern Nebraska. Many of these storms were already tornadic, but we held strong to our original plan of heading further northwest into an area of increased low-level moisture, CAPE and helicity.

We would've been better off just exploring the historic storm chasing locale of Mulvane, KS when we passed it heading north on I-35 instead of our bust day in northern Kansas

We got up to the small town of Beloit, KS and found a Super 8 hotel with free wifi and began to check data. The first half hour we were there was quiet as the fair weather cumulus field in our vicinity held nothing exciting. I spent most of the time nowcasting for Kate's mom and sister that were driving back to Omaha through a tornado warned cell near Kearney. You know its not a good omen when your uneducated friends are accidentally getting closer to tornadoes than you are. After that disaster was averted, an interesting outflow boundary from storms to our northeast became evident. It was propagating southwestward into Jewell Co., KS where we could see some cumulus towers going up to our north.

Cumulus towers going up to our northeast (looking from the Super 8 in Beloit, KS)

The interesting boundary in place and a Mesoscale Discussion from the Storm Prediction Center, hatching our current location as a likely spot for tornado development in the next 3 hours was enough to motivate us to leave the Super 8 and head further north to the cumulus field. We took HW 14 north until we were just south of Jewell, KS and began waiting for our storm's to initiate around 5pm. The next two hours were spent watching cumulus towers begin to look impressive, but eventually lose out to the strong cap in place. 

 

It was quite frustrating after driving 5+ hours only to see cumulus clouds struggle against the cap...the dreaded bust day!

Around 7:30 pm we realized that there was no hope for any storms in our area so we cut our losses and headed back to Salina to eat dinner at Chili's. We were on the road from there around 9:00 pm and got back to Norman near 1:30 am. Thankfully the company of Ben and Chris in Kenny's Blazer made the day seem much shorter than it actually was. Be on the look out for our innovative twist on storm chase tours that could make its debut in 2006...instead of cramping people in passenger vans, we will market a chase tour where the customers relax and sip beverages in a rotating hot tub mounted onto a trailer. Beautiful supermodels and research scientists will join them in the hot tub to explain various features of the storms! Haha, maybe you can tell it was a long chase day, but atleast I did well on my GIS final at 8am the following morning to finish out my first year of graduate school at OU.

 

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