THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT ANY STORMS THAT FIRE DOWN THE DRYLINE WILL QUICKLY GO SEVERE. ANY DISCRETE STORMS WILL HAVE A GOOD CHANCE TO PRODUCE TORNADOES WITH SOME LONG LIVED TORNADOES POSSIBLE.

That’s pretty strong wording from NWS ICT. I haven’t had time to watch this event for the previous several days like I usually would have, but for areas south of US 54 and east of I-35, it’s going to be a very interesting afternoon.

My biggest surprise is the prediction that storms may begin firing in the Wichita vicinity or even northwest of us in the 1-3pm time frame. That illustrates the strength of this system, because that time frame is several hours before peak heating.

Matt emailed me late last night and he’s available after class, so we’re going to be out and about. Initial plan is to not discount the storms in the Wichita area, so we can get some streaming video on the air on KWCH. I see the day evolving with us running along US 160, as Matt suggested last night. I will hedge toward remaining west of K99 and north of US 412, just because we can be a better warning resource in that area than points further east.

However, if it looks like the Iola/Chanute area may be under the gun just as these storms get really strong, I may head that way. Having to be up for work tomorrow at 1:30am will weigh heavily into that decision. I’m headed back to bed now to rest up a bit.

Fortunately, the higher chance for high-end severe weather is much further northeast, so the roads won’t be littered with chasers. Of course, in that area of the state, there tend to be a lot of yahoo “chasers” on the back roads. You give some, you get some, I guess. Maybe the risk of hail instead of tornadoes will keep them somewhat at bay.

Not really expecting much in the way of tornadoes, but looking for enough chance of hailers around sunset that it’s worth taking a few hour drive. The trip is as much to work the bugs out of the new setup as anything.

This snap is from the Greene Vision Group parking lot on North Ridge Road, looking east at a storm growing in Butler county, just minutes after the watch issuance.

In spite of the growth of that storm, I felt it would be a while before there was any real action right around Wichita. So we went and had a late lunch/early dinner. After meeting the girls at Cristi’s school and getting the laptop and what I needed to get some data, we took off for western Sedgwick county. The northern part of the county was already under a severe thunderstorm warning.

We sat southeast of Goddard, at 31st S & 151st west, for quite a while.

This is the rain foot as the storm started to make a right turn.

(5:37pm) We watched this scud cloud be condensed from the edge of the rain foot until it was drawn back into the storm.

(5:40pm) Here it is as it was drawn into the cloud base

(5:54pm) We decided to move south. This was taken from 151st & Selma. There was sustained rotation in the clouds nearest us, but the cloud above was not showing the same rotation.

(5:57pm) With apologies to Ken Cox at the NWS — this is what I called in as a tornado, from 151st W & K-42. Why I didn’t think gustnado until someone else said it, I’m not sure. This is as the swirl was dying down. As we’d driven south, we’d crossed the gust front about half a mile N of where I shot this. The dust in the front was being blown then, apparently by some inflow, though it was being blown from SW to NE. If you enlarge the shot, you can see the outflow approaching, right behind the dust swirl. As this spun up, the swirl arced the full height of the gust front and looked briefly to me like it connected to the cloud.

We saw several more of these as we drove along with the gust front, and in each case it was right at the intersection of the gust front and southwest wind flow. each time, we were in southeast wind flow.

We pulled up in a church parking lot next to the fire station west of Haysville. As we got stopped, a sustained whirl showed up just to our west — literally on the north boundary of the fire station property. This one was different in character than the earlier ones. It was longer-lived, but not long enough for me to get a shot of it — partly because we were hit with heavy rain almost simultaneously. But there was just a different character to this one, too. Less than a minute later, the first tornado warning was issued for Sedgwick county. I don’t know if we were seeing the same thing, but I felt it at the time.

(6:30pm) This is taken from Meridian and about 87th South, looking back toward Haysville. There’s a hint in there that could be an obscured tornado, but I’m really not sure.

(6:30pm) This one is a little better, but I’m still not sure. And I wasn’t sure when I was seeing it live. We continued south to Clearwater Road and went east to Broadway, trying to get to the southeast of the circulation. As we got to the Clearwater Road & Broadway intersection, Roxan and I both saw the cone stick down from the cloud, appearing to be about over the Turnpike about 3 or 4 miles north of us. We saw it too quickly and were turning south, so neither of us is sure whether it was visually connected to the ground at that point.

(6:44pm) We paralleled the storm on 119th South as it was being reported passing through Derby. This is taken from the west edge of Mulvane.

(6:56pm) We went through Mulvane on 119th, and stopped at Butler Road to take this.

We’d gone South on Butler Road to K-15 and were coming back to Wichita, as I wasn’t prepared for an out-of-county chase. As we passed Geuda Springs Road, we encountered the second storm. We had to stop on the side of K-15 due to field debris being blown across the road. As nearly as I can remember, we’d have been about where the marker is. The corn shucks in the air and the long grass in the ditch showed three distinct areas of circulation — wind’s I’d estimate at 60-70 mph — crossing us while we were stopped there. None was larger than about 25 feet in diameter, but each was a distinct column of circulation than moved through the air, which was otherwise full of corn shucks blowing NE to SW.

(7:22pm) This round bale and another were blown from the field at the west edge of the map above, at Oxford Rd and K-15. If you look carefully, you can see where this one crossed the vegetation at the edge of the field. The two bales were almost 90 degrees apart in their orientation from the field…the other bale was in the K-15 ditch. This one was also 90 degrees to the direction of the straight-line wind flow we’d experienced 3/4 mile away.

(7:25pm) This tree was down on the edge of the farmstead at 1256 K-15 Highway. The base of the tree is to the NE, and it’s laying to the SW. The trunk was about 2 feet in diameter. It’s about 3/4 mile NW of the hay roll.

(7:31pm) This utility pole was down just to the southeast of 1332 K-15 Highway, on the east side of the road.

(7:31pm) This tree was down right across the road from it, blown the same direction. The base is a little less than 2 feet in diameter.

We got home to find the power out, and it stayed off until 11:30pm. Haven’t done a walkaround of the house yet or gone to see the damage to our north.

It took a few miles to decide to at least try and get closer to confirm or deny my initial impression. These are a few shots taken when we got stopped, at the corner where K-42 meets the Cairo-Isabel Road (100th East in Pratt county).

Looking NW about 3 miles.

This has a somewhat wall cloud appearance to it. But a careful look shows it’s an optical illusion…this cloud is not attached to the could behind it. It’s a tail cloud, the moisture being pulled into the storm. The rain is to the left out of the photo.

Looking West Toward Sawyer

This view is about 45 degrees counter-clockwise from the one above. I’m looking due West. Now the rain shaft is to my right. You can also see the moisture being pulled into the southernmost part of the storm.

Looking due South

The grain elevator on the left is Isabel. We left just a couple of minutes after this photo. As we drove north, we experienced peak winds of about 45 miles an hour, maybe 50.

An interesting phenomenon — as the rain was blown across the road it was being pushed fast enough that it appeared to be clearing the east ditch and going directly into the adjacent corn field. I’ve never seen that before, so far as I remember. Unfortunately, there was too much water being blown across the windshield at the moment to take a photo, and I wasn’t about to stop in essentially zero visibility.

Not bad results for a chase decision made only 40 minutes earlier, and with no other data than my eyes and the radar on the cell phone. The camera in my HTC Incredible — wow…I can’t believe these are cell phone photos.

That was a close call. I’m not sure yet what severe parameter didn’t quite make it, but based on the radar-indicated path of the rotation in the storm that tracked across Wichita, the fact that the tornado reported north of Viola lifted before reaching town is something we should all be thankful for. The track is very near what I would have considered a worst-case scenario for Wichita.

We were a bit behind it (north edge of Suppesville) when that tornado was reported; to us it looked like a rain-wrapped funnel. But I don’t doubt at all the two reports from 7-8 miles N of Viola. I won’t be surprised to find that the actual distance was closer to 5 miles; it is quite hard to correctly estimate distance in those situations. I would have pegged it about 2 miles NE of us, but I think I was probably estimating too close.

In and amongst everything else tomorrow, I am going to have to find time to re-configure the power distribution in the van. We lost the PC that handles GPS and streaming right in the heat of things, and after it came up were having problems with the wireless access point I use to get into it from the laptop. Aging wiring in the van, a bit too much power pull on the inverters, and a pair of aging inverters are the likely culprit. I’m hoping that replacing the inverters and running a dedicated power wire for the cell booster will fix the problem.

Game on again for Wednesday – I’m sitting out tomorrow, due to too many family commitments and the conditional nature of the risk.

One of the models had a nearly perfect handle on this first batch of storms in its run around midday. THey are p laying out almost exactly as the model showed, scooting to the northeast and out of our area with apparently low-end severe weather. Based on that model (with some reinforcement from another one updated more frequently) I’m looking for the weather maker storms to fire a little southeast of Wichita….it’s going to be a close call as to whether it misses town, I think… In that batch of storms, any severe mode is possible. I think any tornadoes that happen will be fairly brief, as the storms should line out pretty quickly.

The dry line and cold front (they are pretty close together, if the front hasn’t already passed the dry line) are continuing to move through the metro now, but they’ve slowed a bit, I think. The last batch of storms fired right on them. I think the next batch will be out ahead just a bit.