JUNE 15, 2017 KANSAS SUPERCELL & CORE PUNCH
Chased as a guide with Silver Lining Tours (http://www.silverliningtours.com/) on this trip. Got on a developing storm from the first updraft and followed it throughout its maturation cycle from near Hays, Kansas southeast to near Newton. The storm was tornado warned much of the time and exhibited terrific structure initially, producing baseball size hail in Hays, and morphed into a dangerous squall line producing damaging winds near 70 mph later in its life cycle. The video shows a few time lapse segments from this storm, followed by our core punch through the squall line at the end of the chase.
Focused gustnado on the leading edge of the outflow and shelf cloud. This was called in as a tornado by other chasers but appeared to be a gustnado over a tornado from our vantage point. Gustnadoes are much weaker and produced differently than tornadoes, but can still kick up a lot of dirt! This photo is out of sequence with the others below.
Supercell in early stages south of Hays, Kansas. Lowering and brief funnel cloud in this image formed on the left side of the core.
Zoomed out view of the previous image, showing the brief funnel left of the core and supercell taking on very good structure.
Awesome structure with intense core/microburst occurring, and storm starting to go outflow dominant in central Kansas.
Right side of the core as supercell is going outflow dominant. We are positioned southeast of the storm with storm motion being to the southeast towards us.
Group of Silver Lining Tours guests enjoying the view of an intense supercell storm near Hoisington, Kansas.
Still some inflow occurring on the northeast side of the intense rain & hail core over the open prairie of central Kansas.
Just another shot of the previous gustnado image a few moments later.
Gustnado washing out here but can still see the debris plume on the leading edge of the outflow winds on the left side where the gustnado was focused.
Severe thunderstorm moving towards us. Stopped to get a shot of the storm as a backdrop to the limestone fence posts. As you can imagine, there were not a lot of trees on the prairies of Kansas so, when these fences were built, they used limestone rock for posts since this was more readily available. Cool to see these scattered about the countryside.
Mammatus clouds ahead of the storm to the east of Great Bend, Kansas.
Looking northwest at the approaching storm over a Kansas wheat field.
STORM PREDICTION CENTER OUTLOOKS
Mesoscale Discussion issued by the Storm Prediction Center at 12:49 PM CDT, outlying the risk area for an upcoming Severe Thunderstorm Watch.
Severe Thunderstorm Watch issued for central and eastern Kansas at 1:25 PM CDT. This is the area highlighted for expected wind gusts of 60-80 mph. You can see our storm just getting going southwest of Hays, Kansas.
Another Mesoscale Discussion issued at 3:29 PM CDT, highlighting the environment our storm was moving into and the possibility of 60-80 mph winds as the storm started to bow out into an intense line.
Another Mesoscale Discussion is issued at 5:58 PM CDT as the threat of damaging winds continues with the storms forming a bowing line.
A new Severe Thunderstorm Watch issued at 7:05 PM CDT ahead of the bowing line forming a severe MCS (mesoscale convective system).
