What a fun ass day this was. I drove to OKC Thursday night and stayed overnight, still not sold on our KS target. Even though I wasn't sold on that target, I was way more sold on it than north TX. Things looked to be washed out down south, so we stuck with the original plan. Russell, KS was my original target. We arrived in Russell about an 30 minutes before the storm near Hays went up. All I can think was bingo, the HRRR nailed it again. We sat until the storm went SVR warned. By that time we flew west towards the storm. As we approached, we noted a very nice rain free base. We stopped just shy of Hays and went north on a paved backroad. About 10 minutes later, the storm went tornado warned, and we were suddenly greeted with the sounds of tornado sirens, birds chirping, and a wall cloud (see video).
We then got onto the dirt grids and caught up with the new circulation north of Victoria/west of Paradise. We pulled off north when my peripheral vision caught something. I'll be damned, a tornado behind us! I got the camera out and snapped several pics.
In the video, we were still watching the wall cloud where this tornado had developed. It was rotating but not by much. Then, suddenly, another spinup right next to us. Like, literally 50 yards away! At first I wanted to leave (so did everyone else), but then I noticed the tornado was stationary and weak. So we stuck around for a few more seconds before deciding to bail east. The "Ghost Train" had clasted our back window and I thought it was about to get big. But we traveled east and south, and lost sight of everything in the rain. So, we drove to Russell and back north again on the dirt roads. The storm teased us with some rotation and suspicious wall clouds, but no more tornadoes. We stopped west of Lincoln, KS to get some of the awesome structure!
After getting back to I-70, I noticed clear skies to the southwest. Figured, hell, the stucture should be nice asthis thing gusts out. Nailed it again. Went to Brookville, KS to watch the AMAZING shelf cloud roll in. Celebrated with steak in Salina, and some beers in Wichita. All in all, really fun chase!
VIDEO:
More pics of this chase can be seen
HERE!