KSStorm Blog

A quick update on today before I head to bed:

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.

Other than while we were parked at 53rd and Oliver, I don’t think we left the city limits of Wichita yesterday. If so, it wasn’t for long. But we made the entire circle of 4-lane roads, and drove I-135 twice. Matt is out on Tuesdays for class, so my driver was my awesome wife, Roxan.

After finishing work and model analysis, I decided we’d probably be looking just SE of Wichita for storms to fire, somewhere in the 4pm timeframe. So we headed to lunch – as it turned out, right on the dry line – at Olive Garden on Maize Road. The precursors to what would be the first storm of the day were already thickening overhead. After we finished lunch, I set up the little bit in the van that has to be done each day, and just as I was getting streaming going, the first warning was issued.

We had to pick up Cristi at about 3:45, so following the storms into Butler county wasn’t in the offing. However, we did sit for a time at 53rd and Oliver and stream video of the storms to our northeast. After picking up Cristi on the south side, we sat in a parking lot and waited while watching the tops of the clouds roll. The towers were still getting laid over by winds aloft, though. We eventually went to I-235 and 25th Street, and sat up on the Big Ditch end of the bridge there for half an hour or so.

Failing to note the time, we decided to take a short break at the Ridge Road/21st QT. Unbeknownst to me, KWCH had wanted to use the video from I-235 and 25th at the top of the 5pm show. We were able to get lined up on an SLC formation over north Wichita, but I don’t think that video ended up being usable. We did the QT run with the camera focused on that feature, which seemed to be trying to get organized. As we got back in the van, there was no rain, but we suddenly went to pea-size hail, which lasted for about 5 minutes.

We decided to go around 235 to south Wichita, finding in the process that the dry line was still right up against 235. The closet-to-severe conditions we experienced were while we were driving around 235. The whole trip, wind was 40mph+ from our right – so from the NW, W or S depending on where we were. The south winds (inflow) were the worst, kicking up dust at I-235 and West and making the van nearly impossible to control. I’d estimate about 50mph out of the due S at that point. Did not see any branches falling from trees yet, though.

The rest of the evening was watching things gear down, really. We shot video and I did a phone interview at 6pm, looking north from Harry and I-135. I toyed with breaking off for the storms developing to the south…and if I had, we’d have been on them when the outflow from the northern storms hit, causing the warning for eastern Butler county/Greenwood county. But such decisions are all part of the game.

105 miles, five hours, never left Wichita. Gee, it’s like I was back at KFDI

Matt and I headed out about 2:30, with an initial target of Hutchinson. We arrived about 3:15 and commenced what turned into a long wait on nothing, sitting in the McDonald’s/Kwik Shop parking lot at US 50 and K-96. Strongly reminiscent of the last bust (a year and a half ago), we streamed video of the McDonald’s employee parking lot for about 2.5 hours…watching a good waste of so many things develop.

We knew going in things would be a challenge, but I think it was on both our minds that the biggest challenge was just where rising air would pierce the cap. The air really never got to rising, so that never became an issue.

We did decide at one point to make the drive to Pratt, but I think we were both realized by then our hopes were dwindling. it was really, I think, a “follow the other chasers” moment more than anything that caused us to really think anything was going to go up. Upon arrival in Pratt, we parked in the McDonald’s parking lot. Do you sense a theme for the season developing here?

Twenty minutes later, we called it a bust and settled in for the 80-minute drive home. Gotta have these days every once in a while right?