A little better drought map this week. Some good rain has happened, but talk of the Death or Omega ridge finally setting up will cause a long hot summer.
Yesterday a cold front drove a squall line through Wichita that has some thunderstorm warnings and some tree damage but my area was largely spared.
Then about mid-June started to have moisture returning with occasional storms.
June 17th, had a rare possibility for a severe weather day:
Not too much happened until late night. A stationary storm blew up south of Newton, Kansas and just stayed in place as a rather large squall came in from the west.
https://www.weather.gov/ict/event_20230617
I was outside and videoed a large wall cloud just to the north of my house.
The video captures are below. The storm was tornado warned by radar, by the time I got into position the squall line was near and the area was filling in with clouds, making the supercell hard to see in the dark. There was no survey I could find in the records on what this was.
It's been a very slow spring in Wichita. I think the drought monitor shows why. Per KWCH (local CBS affiliate) this is the driest April in record and since only receiving 0.30 inch of precipitation, the driest since 1936 during the dust bowl.
We've had hit or miss showers with one of the last storms completely missing the Wichita area.
Last Wednesday we had a cold front coming through with a triple point but not strong humidity apparently it was enough to set off deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma, with others touching down in Kansas and Nebraska.
I was late to chase due to a get-together and watched storms develop west of Wichita. It passed Wichita and went severe to the north.
This picture made me ignore all of Jim Reed's rules about getting all poles and lines out of the way of the storm.
I jumped on the road and headed north. Reports of baseball-sized hail in Chase County.
Sun was going down and time was limited.
It was starting to get dark and the lightning was almost continuous. I recorded some video to capture.
I didn't realize I captured the tornado/funnel. When editing the video, I found it backlit by lightning.
I ended the night by pulling over and recording lightning.
Next week there is the hope of a slow-moving storm system and some much needed rain for the area.
