Started the day with my usual obligations to cover potential severe weather here in the KAKEland viewing area, and fortunately the cap did its thing. I stationed in Minneapolis, KS for the newscasts, and watched as the Clay County storms got their act together. As I finished my live hits, I had watched the CU-field in my area and points west disintegrate into clear skies, so I knew I was free to roam beyond the borders. I jumped east on K-18 and caught the storm as it approached Junction City.
I trailed down to I-70, figuring my next south route was going to be K-177 coming out of Manhattan, so I tracked the viciously rotating wall cloud as it approached the interstate. I was certain it was going to drop a big tube on the highway, enough so where I pulled off on the shoulder somewhere just south of Ogden before the storm crossed the road as I did not want to get involved with something I was not ready to cash a check for.
The storm went into a cycle, and I got to K-177. And as lucky as 7s are for me, I knew I was probably in for a lovely evening. The structure of this storm was something else… a beautiful mothership with striations just filled the sky.
This storm had crazy motion on it, and was rotating as fast as a storm could that wasn’t producing tubes. When I stopped somewhere between I-70 and Alta Vista, the main area of concern was to the west of K-177. As that occluded, a new area of rotation quickly developed, and a beautiful wall cloud was again parading a carousel over open fields, this time east of K-177.
My stopping point required a little finesse to get back out of, and I got back on the road and drove a bit south. As I looked for a safe place to pull off the road, the initial tornado came down. I missed the point at it’s most condensed, but managed to get a camera on it for a couple shots. Sadly, it didn’t hang on long, which was made even worse by having decent lighting to work with.
Darkness started to fall, and I got back south around the front end of the storm, positioning somewhere north of K-4 just east of Alta Vista. I think I was a couple miles north of the highway on some dirt road. Again, a TEXTBOOK wall cloud, spinning to beat the band, was just teasing at another tornado.
That is where I saw the second tornado. As dark as it was, the lightning was the best visual aid, and while the video (and my terrible attempt at photos) turned out pretty crappy, I managed a couple of still that tell the tale.
After that tornado lifted, the lightning kinda took the show, so I better setup my still camera and snagged a couple decent lightning shots. The lightning took a bit of a reprieve, so I packed the camera away. But it gave me a couple decent shots…
I did take a break to throw together a little video for my news station as we lacked any storms in our area, and who is going to turn down tornado video to put on TeeVee. I was getting my video downloaded and edited in the same place I had just seen the tornado. Well, remember the lightning? Yeah, I certainly did, because one of those bolts hit a tree/pole/fence post within feet of my car. All my windows were up and I was safely tucked away in the car, but felt the burning on the left side of my body from the proximity of the strike. I was not electrocuted or shocked, but felt the heat as intensely as I have felt from a lightning strike. Was VERY happy I had packed the gear away and got back in the car moments earlier, cause who knows how that would’ve turned out otherwise.
But my night was not over… although it mostly was. I back-tracked into Emporia in hopes that the trail-running supercell was going to dump some hail in town. The core scooted off a couple miles to the east leaving me in a few light rain showers as the storm moved by. I had no intention to pursue that storm further up the highway as I didn’t want have to go much further out of my way. I turned down I-35 and began to make my way home.
Well, the final round was just beginning, and not long after I went under the toll plaza, those storms that were moving south were dropping CGs at a rate you’d think the world was ending. The show was incredible. Of course, I was stuck on the turnpike with no place to pull over, but I knew, coming up, the Bazaar Cattle Crossing, which has a spectacular view of the Flint Hills in both directions, including south where this insane show was taking place on the backside of these storms. I was getting ready to write my Pulitzer prize acceptance speech thinking I was about to unload the sickest collection of lightning strikes known to man…
Well, Ma-Nature apparently had put out enough, because not one second after I pulled off the highway onto the ramp, those CGs she was so loosely giving away just vanished.. it was like a switch. I didn’t even get up the ramp before I would see the last stroke from that blitz. I got parked, set up, and the first frame I took had an amazing strike in it, and I thought okay, she was reloading…
…
…
Nope… she put out a few more bolts (I counted) in the 20 minutes I was there. One of those I missed between frames. The others were meh compared to the show she gave me on my ride down. Thus, I took a consolation prize of the shots I did muster and crumpled up my speech and fed it to a nearby cattle.
So that officially ended my night… I made the hour-plus drive back home, settling into bed victoriously after a very lovely August day. While Colorado has treated me to a few decent August chases in the past, this ranks as my best August chase (outside Colorado). I have only chased twice this August, but have seen tornadoes on both days (I caught a brief glimpse of the rain-wrapped POS near Bethune on Tuesday – no imagery). That said, I am 2 for 2 on tornadoes on those chases.
Can’t say there was any real question where the hotspot was going be, and for me, it was just a matter of hanging in viewing area long enough to cut my leash and go. I felt pretty confident early we were going to have capping concerns further west, but even if we got a storm back our way, I’d like to think it would’ve performed admirably.
Regardless, this day worked out wonderfully for me, and I will take great pleasure in the steak I will eat in celebration to which may or may not have originated from the earlier mentioned cattle crossing area. How bazaar would that be?
