Saturday, June 14, 2008

Chase Log 06/12/08






Apologies to my writer's group. You know that you are my kindred, but as Gary said "The storm is my mistress".
















I walked out on the porch looking to the north towards Newton and saw the beautiful cumulus cloud cannibalizing everything in site. In other words, it was exploding.




After watching the storm, we decided to chase towards Newton vs. Matfield Green which already had a tornado on the ground ( and continued to do so for several hours that night).



























Driving out of Park City, we began to see SCUD's (Scary Looking Clouds) developing to the NE and tried to intercept in Whitewater.





















The storm we were under appeared as if it was going to do something, until a large storm developed over Wichita and they began fighting. They both lost out quickly and turned into downpours.

We gave up on the storms and headed back into Wichita through the rain. I made it home in time to watch KAKE warn about the tornado forming near Derby. We went back out and ran South. The sky was very black as the sun set with almost an apocalyptical beauty.


The further we made it into the storm the scarier the sun looked.

We made it into Derby about the time it got dark. I had a pretty good feeling about where we were at due to the amount of KFDI, KAKE, KWCH chasers we found.

The storm kicked up speed and headed out east at a good clip. Being in the dark, with the streets flooding all around us and electricity being questionable over town we decided to call it a night.

3 comments:

Gary said...

Nice pictures and narrative. We were chased out of Borders about 8:30 and drove home in that deluge. Our hallway is our shelter, so we took the pictures off the walls, closed the bedroom doors, surrounded ourselves with pillows and watched TV until it was over.

Brian Johnson said...

You guys were safe. The tornado was clear down south and headed out East.

B

Denise said...

We decided to wait it out in Borders (you know what a magnet my town is). The people kept talking about it down south heading East/NE and saying it was on a straight shot toward us. I interrupted and said E/NE meant it was heading more east than north and that the one they were talking about would in no way come close to us. The only concern was if something more developed over us. It got kinda fun sitting all around in the bathroom alcove. :-)

Great pics, by the way. We'll forgive you for standing us up.