Reeling a bit after my big (lazy) miss on April 30, I had taken a down day in Wichita on the 31st, with intent to get back out at it for the setup today out west. I departed westbound for Dodge City, Kansas, and that’s where I held up for a good chunk of the early afternoon with the usual fuel and food stops before holding up at the Love’s there in town. I did a couple early live hits for AccuWeather detailing the day ahead with capping concerns keeping in check what was otherwise a pretty potent setup in the area.
The first cells went up to the northwest, so from Dodge, I cut over to Cimarron, then north on K-23 toward Kalvesta. I wanted to stay east of the dryline, which was situated roughly along US-83, so I was well east of the initial developing cells. The cap was keeping things in check through this point in the afternoon.
After watching and waiting… and waiting some more, it looked as if one of those updrafts finally broke through, and a supercell started to slowly gather itself north of Shields.
The storm had a more northerly component to it, and myself along with most other chasers in the area were waiting to see if this thing would root into the boundary layer and make that right turn. Several attempts at a wall cloud were made, but nothing on the low levels of the storm could fully get organized.
About an hour went by as this thing under-went multiple attempts and fails at organizing anything of consequence under the storm. A few times, there were moments watching this storm where I thought we were ‘that close’ to something significant happening. It was moving slow, but still with a more northerly component, so it was a slow job up KS-23 south of Gove City.
A few miles north of K-4, I found a nice pull out with a view looking west at the storm. I shared this view with several good friends of mine, including Bryce Kintigh whom I am always happy to run into on the road.
This storm became HIGHLY electric as we were sitting there, and HIGHLY may be an understatement. The lightning this storm was putting out was intense, and often very close.
While I was not anywhere quick enough to land one on the good camera (a time when a lightning trigger MAY have helped), my dash camera did a good job snagging several good bolts as it was running constantly.
As this storm was slowly, and I mean SLOWLY closing in on us, so was the lightning. I had gone out a couple times to try my luck, but to no avail. I’m not even kidding, on my last attempt, I had been in the car, maybe 45 seconds, when a bolt hit behind the car by FEET, close enough where through my open window, I could feel the heat from the strike. Scared the ever loving shit out of me. Unfortunately no camera caught the actual strike (as it was directly behind the three of us), but my camera definitely caught my reaction.
It was a moment of hilarity, I won’t lie. About half a dozen of us between our three vehicles each likely dispelled various levels of urine into our various leg coverings. After we all got our wits back, we all laughed and said various four-letter words reacting to the moment.
The core of the storm was pushing to our north, again, very slowly. I figured since the window of opportunity to see anything tornadic from this storm was going to close, an eastward push was warranted. Unfortunately, there was about a 10-mile haul to get back south to K-4 and east, so I opted to do so, pushing about an east of the southbound junction and doing a final live hit from that spot. Surely enough after the hit, a tornado-warning went out for our storm. I was also hearing reports of softball size hail?
Well, given the rotation area was STILL west of K-23, I decided to backtrack the way I came and see if there were indeed, softballs up in that core. Now, I am the first to tell you, I love hail, and I don’t typically mind getting into some bigger hail. But generally my desire to be in a core starts to shrink as the hailsize exceeds about baseballs. Anything bigger than 3″ no longer just smashes a windshield, it comes through. And softballs might as well be shot out of a cannon at point-blank range into your face.
So I continued north, pushing closer to the core as the main part of it had crossed the highway. However, there was still hail falling, and immediately, one of the first stones I saw was a missile, exploding in the road in front of me and I could HEAR the impact. Another stone fell onto the ground along the side of the road, and I saw it bounce. Yup, softballs confirmed.
I immediately pulled over and began the process of turning around. I had stopped at a ‘dirt driveway’ sort of thing, which allowed me to fully turn around without having to do a three pointer in the middle of the two lane highway. Meanwhile, yes, there were MONSTER stones coming down, but they were VERY infrequent. Enough so where I thought, “ya know, I could probably sit here, even grab a couple stones”, without actually getting annihilated. I knew the worst of the core was north, and most of it had already crossed east of the highway, so being on the southern fringes of the core that was already mostly moved on, I felt pretty good. So I grabbed a hoodie out of the back of my car and threw it over my head (as if that would save me from a softball) and ran outside to grab a couple of the stones.
I grabbed a couple of the more impressive stones within a couple feet of the car. For the most part, the hail had completely ceased, but I would occasionally hear one hammer down somewhere nearby. But the frequency was definitely getting closer to zero. Still, it only took one, and I was not about to hover out there too long. I timed myself at about 15-seconds, running out, grabbing a couple stones, then back in to document their size.
As I was prepping to get back south to K-4 and pursue the tornado-warned storm east, I glanced out the window and saw the mother of all the stones. No hoodie this time (as only lighter precip and MUCH smaller hail was falling now), I ran outside, grabbed the stone, and hauled it back into the car. I have some good hail selfies in the past, but this one may take the cake.
Well that was super cool! I was pretty delighted with that (and yes, I kept all the stones in the car). But the storm was still stormin’, so back south I went (again) to K-4 and back east. The storm was still putting along, although it a little more speed to it, enough where it took a bit to get back on it. Darkness was falling, so it was one of those instances where since the storm, now an easterly mover, was basically following the highway, I’d stick with it til it was time to turn off back to Wichita.
As I neared Utica, I started hearing reports of a rotating wall cloud. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see, even in the darkening skies, the beginning of what looked to be ground circulation. I whipped into a pull out along with a few other vehicles and documented what looked to be a landspout to my immediate north.
The spout churned away for a few minutes before it dissipated. At first, it looked more like a glorified dust-devil, it wasn’t til it got near the end of its life where you could see the tube extending up from the ground. As the spout ended, I continued my way east, staying ahead of the storm and its core, which was now threatening my highway. Still a slow mover, and now almost completely nighttime, I gave the storm til Ransom, Kansas to do it again, to which it did not. And unfortunately, while the storm was flashing nearly constantly, there was nothing I thought as photo-worthy from the vantage point I had, and I didn’t want to dedicate a whole ton of effort seeing as I had a room and some of my gear back in Wichita, so I had leashed myself a bit, and getting too far out of the way just didn’t sound appealing given the chance that even doing that would allow me a solid chance at lightning photos.
Thus I decided to call it a chase, dropping south out of the storm’s path on US-283, then over to Great Bend where I fueled up, grabbed some Casey’s pizza for dinner, and pointed myself back to Wichita, where I returned to my hotel about 10 minutes before midnight. As I was unloading the car, I remembered I still had hailstones. My 4-incher was not quite to its former glory.
Certainly the hail won the day, and certainly completed my trifecta of a perfect chase… Tornado, Hail, and Lightning, all three I documented to some extent. I wish I was able to get some actual lightning photos both during the insanity during the evening plus later that night, but I still got some great imagery. The tornado, certainly nothing special, pads the stats and adds to what was definitely a very easy-going, pretty awesome chase that definitely lessened the sting of April 30 a bit.
