1.After playing around in some backyard severe storms near my southern Illinois home, I departed westbound for the moderate risk that was shaping up across southern Kansas the following day. I had overnighted in the east burbs of Kansas City, Missouri (Independence) and was down in Wichita by lunch!
The first stop was down in Wellington south of Wichita at the US-160/I-35 junction, where I met up with several friends at the Casey’s, all of whom were also waiting for the show, including Blake Naftel and Skip Talbot, who had run his battery dead in his van. Fortunately, I had jumper cables and gave him the boost he needed.
It was kind of a waiting game as the front was drifting north from the KS/OK border. Upper support was due to arrive late afternoon, so I was trying not to get too greedy too early and get too far west and out of position. Basically it was just waiting to let the storms gather themselves as they crossed into southern Kansas and wait for the show to come to me.
Most of us held just north of the border as the storms in Oklahoma were slowly organizing. It was a painful wait, knowing the storms were still struggling a bit, but figured the best was to come. From our northerly position, we could see into the hook of the storm as hail began to overtake our area. Meanwhile, a wall cloud had developed, and that was the focus of attention.
Shortly after repositioning back onto US-160, I came across Blake Naftel again, and we were outside our cars looking back at the approaching wall cloud. As we were walking back to my car, a VERY close lightning strike came down, with a flash-bang as the bolt hit literal yards from us.
Not long after this, getting a little further east on US-160, we were focused heavily on that wall cloud. Unfortunately, the terrain in this area is a bit hilly, so it wasn’t til I crested a hill and looked back did I notice the wall cloud now had a tornado with it. I pulled in to an area with several other chasers to document what would end up being the shortest wedge tornado in history.
As the storm continued to approach, I jumped east on US-160 toward Medicine Lodge. The rotation area had weakened considerably, despite still having a good appearance on radar. I was mixed as to whether or not to shoot into the core for some hail or try to stay ahead of the storm. Given it’s path into an area with rather unfavorable roads, I decided to sample the core. Once I hit Medicine Lodge, I shot north on US-281.
I only had to go a few miles north before I began to tangle with the hail. Most of the hail was around an inch or so in diameter with the bigger stones approaching golfball size.
I returned south after the hail ceased and got back to Medicine Lodge to fully edit the video from the day.
After deciding to call it a chase, I grabbed some dinner in Wichita before I hauled up to Kansas City where I bunked down for the night.
