Stephen Levine
EF4
Report, Kansas 5/30/08
We drove up from the Garland/Rockwall Texas area to southeast KS, reaching the area before storms developed. During a walk break in the country just N. of the KS/OK border around dinner time, I noted the first TCU's going up over the horizon through the haze.
Not long after that, radar showed the first echoes in the Chanute area. As we blasted north, it was quite exciting to see both the echoes and sky explode, the latter of which developed "orphan anvils" as new towers bubbled up below.
The Chanute area storms developed into a line, and we were teased/intrigued by an isolated and rapidly building TCU several miles SE of the line that we drove under.
Intuition told me to keep approaching the line further north while keeping my eye on the rapidly building TCU to it's south. This proved correct strategy as the TCU never attained necessary height.
Once we reached the line, we noted CB's in all states of development, but nothing severe whatsoever. In fact at this point, we heard utterly no thunder and saw no lightning.
As we waited and watched for about 20 minutes aside the line that straddled KS 39, one of the cells decided to turn itself on and begin to explode. This became our storm. We followed it east as it swiftly began to develop a wall cloud.
For the next 20 minutes or so we played hop scotch with the wall cloud, driving up to nearly beneath it, watching it move on a couple miles then driving practically under it again. (I will be posting pictures on my blog site www.joyfulstormhunting.com)
The cloud showed rather swift and blatant rotation, and developed bumpy lowerings. The storm itself finally intensified with thickening prec curtains, a NWS "severe storm warning", and occasional lightning.
Our last up close intercept with the rotating wall cloud was quite thrilling as it truly seemed like it was trying to drop something, and straddled a now very dense prec. shield.
We considered core punching off to the east to keep up with and get ahead of the wall cloud, but with the warnings for large hail and the ever-intensifying rain and darkening precip up ahead, we opted to bail out and head south down KS 7.
Fortunately, near Farlington, the road jogged back to the east and presented us with a spectacular view of the wall cloud really close to the ground.
It never apparently developed a tornado, though it was quite scenic and rotating rather rapidly.
Meantime, another storm to our west exploded as well, and approached our area, including powerful C-G's and a RFB. We decided to let this storm approach us and wait to see what developed.
This storm also developed a wall cloud as well as spectacular layers of exploding cauliflower as it pressed just to our east. The wall cloud rotated quite fast, and as it passed to our east, our winds took a hard shift to the north, gusting at least 40 MPH. As it moved onward, the winds died off and shifted to a more gentle westerly direction.
This storm had awesome and classic supercell structure, with a building line of dense cauliflower towers arcing in to the storm from the SW, the whole structure black and pearly white in the fading twilight. Spectacular lightning constantly jumped through the cloud mass, and occasionally leaped into sky above.
A spectacular C-C lighting show also greeted us as we settled for the night in Pittsburg, KS, as another storm cell passed across our southern sky.
We drove up from the Garland/Rockwall Texas area to southeast KS, reaching the area before storms developed. During a walk break in the country just N. of the KS/OK border around dinner time, I noted the first TCU's going up over the horizon through the haze.
Not long after that, radar showed the first echoes in the Chanute area. As we blasted north, it was quite exciting to see both the echoes and sky explode, the latter of which developed "orphan anvils" as new towers bubbled up below.
The Chanute area storms developed into a line, and we were teased/intrigued by an isolated and rapidly building TCU several miles SE of the line that we drove under.
Intuition told me to keep approaching the line further north while keeping my eye on the rapidly building TCU to it's south. This proved correct strategy as the TCU never attained necessary height.
Once we reached the line, we noted CB's in all states of development, but nothing severe whatsoever. In fact at this point, we heard utterly no thunder and saw no lightning.
As we waited and watched for about 20 minutes aside the line that straddled KS 39, one of the cells decided to turn itself on and begin to explode. This became our storm. We followed it east as it swiftly began to develop a wall cloud.
For the next 20 minutes or so we played hop scotch with the wall cloud, driving up to nearly beneath it, watching it move on a couple miles then driving practically under it again. (I will be posting pictures on my blog site www.joyfulstormhunting.com)
The cloud showed rather swift and blatant rotation, and developed bumpy lowerings. The storm itself finally intensified with thickening prec curtains, a NWS "severe storm warning", and occasional lightning.
Our last up close intercept with the rotating wall cloud was quite thrilling as it truly seemed like it was trying to drop something, and straddled a now very dense prec. shield.
We considered core punching off to the east to keep up with and get ahead of the wall cloud, but with the warnings for large hail and the ever-intensifying rain and darkening precip up ahead, we opted to bail out and head south down KS 7.
Fortunately, near Farlington, the road jogged back to the east and presented us with a spectacular view of the wall cloud really close to the ground.
It never apparently developed a tornado, though it was quite scenic and rotating rather rapidly.
Meantime, another storm to our west exploded as well, and approached our area, including powerful C-G's and a RFB. We decided to let this storm approach us and wait to see what developed.
This storm also developed a wall cloud as well as spectacular layers of exploding cauliflower as it pressed just to our east. The wall cloud rotated quite fast, and as it passed to our east, our winds took a hard shift to the north, gusting at least 40 MPH. As it moved onward, the winds died off and shifted to a more gentle westerly direction.
This storm had awesome and classic supercell structure, with a building line of dense cauliflower towers arcing in to the storm from the SW, the whole structure black and pearly white in the fading twilight. Spectacular lightning constantly jumped through the cloud mass, and occasionally leaped into sky above.
A spectacular C-C lighting show also greeted us as we settled for the night in Pittsburg, KS, as another storm cell passed across our southern sky.
