Caleb Elliott, Phil Bates and I took the plane up one last time for a shot at an aerial chase. We targeted the triple point on I-70 in western KS and departed from Olathe in the early afternoon making for Salina just in case the warm front lit up. We had to divert to Hutchinson though because Salina was IFR due to the warm front convection. We waited in Hutchinson until initiation and took off as soon as we had the first radar return, expecting explosive storm development and a quick tornado as parameters were already primed on the warm front. We made great time to the storm and came in to see the meso and wall cloud developing. The storm cycled a few times but would not produce (at least from where we could see). There was some dramatic outflow blasting around underneath it, however. The storm's base retreated and it looked like it might be done, while more cells fired down to the south of it, but looked rather linear initially. We took the plane up to 8000 feet or so to see if the midlevel structure of the updraft tower was any better, but it was pretty hazy up there. We came down and then made for Tail End Charlie, newly tornado warned. We were greeted by breathtaking supercell structure, the base lit up orange by the setting sun. We had been in the air for almost three hours now, had not gotten our coveted tornado shot, and were running low on fuel. Tragically we had to make for the nearest airport to get gas. Tornado reports streamed in 15 minutes later from the two southern storms. We were heart broken. We fueled up and took off after dusk, the storms just 20 miles away. We attempted a brief night aerial chase as tornado reports were still coming in. We could see the wall cloud dimly illuminated by lightning, but no tornadoes, and visibility was actually quite poor due to the haze. We had nice clear air to the south of the storm, but it's still incredibly spooky to be chasing at night in an airplane. With reduced visibility we quickly called it off and started flying for home base in Olathe. We took the plane above the boundary layer then and flew past the Russel, KS supercell noting awesome midlevel structure lit up by lightning.
A fantastic aerial chase, with breathtaking views. It kills me we missed the tornadoes, but aerial chasing is actually a lot of hard work, and I'm most thankful for the views we did have, that we got as far as we did with this experiment, and that we are back on the ground safely after three days in the air with tornadic supercells. I believe our views of these tornadoes would not have been ideal, anyway. We have to hold back a few miles to avoid severe turbulence and life threatening hail, and with the tornadoes forming on the back edge, they'd at least be partially obscured by the storm's base or the foreground wall cloud at altitude. I still think we could have gotten a shot of one of them with a long lens if we could have just stayed in the air longer, however. Next time.
Our first view of the base:
A wall cloud drifting over the Kansas countryside:
I was hoping we had a big dusty tornado developing here, but it appears to just be plumes of dust kicked up by outflow and then being pulled back into the storm's updraft. This is a video capture from Phil's Red camera, shooting 5000 pixels horizontal resolution at 96 frames a second. That footage should be spectacular.
Repositioning on Tail-End-Charlie, with a small wall cloud, beaver tail, and beautiful sunbeams
What a beaut
Scud condensing under the base
A brief nocturnal aerial chase:
Flying home in the darkness, the cool boundary layer blankets the ground in haze. The lightning reflects off the top of it, making it appear solid, while illuminating the storm structure above it.
