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.
Seems like the last several years, I always start my first blog of the year saying it's been a slow year. It's been cooler, dry, ridges in the wrong place, but we've had some rain. A frontal boundary set up some action for Kansas and it being a Saturday, I was able to chase.
They upgraded the convective outlook from slight to enhanced and the stage was set for north-central Kansas. My daughter and I headed to Wilson, Kansas and hung out at Wilson Lake until the storms started to initiate.
We moved back to town and closer to I-70 to head toward any interesting popups. The storms initiated and we had a good candidate to the east of us. We headed toward Russel and pulled off in a couple of small towns to watch.
The storms were quickly showing mammatus clouds.
The storms went severe and we moved south out of Russel and followed. One storm split, then absorbed another storm and became strong.
We stayed between two of the severe storms watching a couple areas of interest.
Down near Otis, Kansas, we started to see wall clouds forming.
A clear slot opened near the wall cloud, but nothing developed.
We started seeing good hail shafts coming out of the storm, and soon the dryline had crossed over limiting a lot of the severe potential and cutting the fuel from the storms.
The clouds started to fall apart and the storms more to the east became larger and more powerful.
My daughter captured some great Meadowlarks and thunder, so I recorded this. Please turn on the sound otherwise, it's a fairly boring video.
We headed back east with the storms decently ahead of us. We stopped a couple times to capture some lightning and I may post those videos or captures later. We started the long trek home with an incredible lightning show to the north and east of our location. We made it home in time to see Saline County under a tornado warning, but only a funnel was spotted and at this time, there was no damage reported.
Hopefully we will see more storms this year, otherwise it's been fairly quiet.
Wichita was put into a moderate risk for the convective outlook. Talk was a huge hail system with high winds. Luckily we dodged tbe hail but took a pretty good hit from high winds.
Nothing like a softball game on aluminum bleachers and lightning in the area.
Storm to the north, which merged with the storm moving from the NE.
NWS radar
Thoughts from the dustbowl? Harvest is ongoing so lots of fields are dirt. Fairly eerie to watch this approach.
From fellow ruminator, Jeanne, from the Maize area which took the brunt of 80 mph wind.
From my brother's house in NE Wichita, looking west.
Damage out near Valley Center on 85th street. A few medium sized trees were taken down in Maize.
After all the bad weather in Oklahoma recently and the loss of some great storm chasers at the top of their game, it's nice to have a nice summer storm come through without huge amounts of wind or hail.
I went out to one of my typical locations a couple miles north of Kechi and attached the lightning detector to the camera. Lightning was a little close.
I believe this is positive stroke lightning that struck around 2 miles to the NW of my location. There were multiple flashes of the lightning although I think I caught 3 of the same bolt. This lightning can create close to 300,000 amps and 1,000,000,000 volts.
When Stormie the Weathergirl says "Daddy, It's dark that way, it's going to storm." I need to start listening. Several tornado warnings were out west of Wichita and the storm was heading this way. We made it to one of the more popular storm spotting locations at 25th and I-235 in Wichita when the lightning started announcing the coming storm.
Like most of the awesome lighting tonight, it all happened off lens.
Little bolt that could. "I think I can, I think I can . . . "
Interesting shot, had to tone it down a lot to get anything to show through, but white.
A large group of storms invaded Kansas and brought some much needed rain. They also brought damaging winds that caused damage in Burton and Hutchinson. They also flipped a semi on K-96. I watched the storms moving in from Great Bend which also caused a brief tornado warning in Ellis country around 9:00. As the storms neared Hutchinson I grabbed my gear and went out.
When I got a little bit out of the city, I kept looking to the northwest wondering what exactly I was looking at. There is always a few moment after leaving the house and looking at RADAR you're left with that feeling of the unknown.
Lightning illuminated the smooth sides of the rotating storm. The storm itself, when at it's most powerful looked like three plates staked upon each other.
Winds were very steady at 30mph. There was a slight gust that almost took the camera and tripod but luckily the remote sensor was connected and I used it like keeping a dog at bay.
lighting up the shelf as it almost passed overhead.
Sorry, shameless self promotion
The storm moved near and I went a little further north to look at some of the scary looking clouds (SCUD) hanging from the bottom. As I went to the clearing most of the clouds had died off and the storm lost its structure. Lightning struck overhead and just to the north. I decided it was time to go home.
