John Farley
Supporter
Will try again after typing half of this then losing it
Caught two very intense supercells today in Carroll Co., MO. The first was a classic supercell, which went TOR warned a few minutes after I got on it 4 or 5 miles south of Carrollton. It produced estimated 80 mph winds and golfball hail in Carroll Co., and larger hail one county east. I saw 3 big dust clouds, probably associated with RFD downbursts, as the storm passed just to my north. One of these, which was under a small lowering, crossed the road about a mile to my north, bringing traffic to a stop. This was just before 6 p.m. I need to review video, but am pretty sure it was all outflow-related. Also very frequent CG in the core just before these dust clouds blew up.
Here is a picture of the first dust cloud. Probably a gustnado or two in there, but I was a little too far away to tell for sure:
The second storm, which was HP, again produced estimated 80 mph winds but this time the hail was up to baseball sized. It was a truly mean-looking storm, with a big, dark, low wall cloud with an inflow tail to the NE. Behind the wall cloud were very pronounced vertical shafts of rain and hail - this was around 6:40, just before the baseball hail report came in. Here is a picture:
This was a surprisingly easy chase given that the storms were moving 50 mph, because they kept training over the same areas. Although it was about 45 minutes later, and I did move around some in between, I ended up watching the second supercell from almost exactly the same spot from which I watched the first one. I could have just stayed there! Both storms seemed to reach peak intensity as they moved near route 65 in Carroll Co.
I will eventually post a full report with photos and video, but since I am doing an art show tomorrow it will probably be a few days before I can get to it. BTW, my new laptop (the one I whined about needing in my 5/6 chase log) served me well. My original target was along I-70 between Columbia and Kansas City, but a wifi check (worked great!) in COU told me I needed to head northwest toward Chillicothe - the storms were linear in the KC area and making no eastward progress, but were splitting apart into individual cells up the line toward Chillicothe. In the end, I didn't have to go quite that far, but that was definitely the right direction!![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
Caught two very intense supercells today in Carroll Co., MO. The first was a classic supercell, which went TOR warned a few minutes after I got on it 4 or 5 miles south of Carrollton. It produced estimated 80 mph winds and golfball hail in Carroll Co., and larger hail one county east. I saw 3 big dust clouds, probably associated with RFD downbursts, as the storm passed just to my north. One of these, which was under a small lowering, crossed the road about a mile to my north, bringing traffic to a stop. This was just before 6 p.m. I need to review video, but am pretty sure it was all outflow-related. Also very frequent CG in the core just before these dust clouds blew up.
Here is a picture of the first dust cloud. Probably a gustnado or two in there, but I was a little too far away to tell for sure:
![chase60707-storm1.jpg](/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.johnefarley.com%2Fchase60707-storm1.jpg&hash=008eb51c48ddace29c39aefc5731091b)
The second storm, which was HP, again produced estimated 80 mph winds but this time the hail was up to baseball sized. It was a truly mean-looking storm, with a big, dark, low wall cloud with an inflow tail to the NE. Behind the wall cloud were very pronounced vertical shafts of rain and hail - this was around 6:40, just before the baseball hail report came in. Here is a picture:
![chase60707-storm2.jpg](/proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.johnefarley.com%2Fchase60707-storm2.jpg&hash=f996d236e76b1c93c0fe4f8f23aaba1f)
This was a surprisingly easy chase given that the storms were moving 50 mph, because they kept training over the same areas. Although it was about 45 minutes later, and I did move around some in between, I ended up watching the second supercell from almost exactly the same spot from which I watched the first one. I could have just stayed there! Both storms seemed to reach peak intensity as they moved near route 65 in Carroll Co.
I will eventually post a full report with photos and video, but since I am doing an art show tomorrow it will probably be a few days before I can get to it. BTW, my new laptop (the one I whined about needing in my 5/6 chase log) served me well. My original target was along I-70 between Columbia and Kansas City, but a wifi check (worked great!) in COU told me I needed to head northwest toward Chillicothe - the storms were linear in the KC area and making no eastward progress, but were splitting apart into individual cells up the line toward Chillicothe. In the end, I didn't have to go quite that far, but that was definitely the right direction!
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