Active Year

Something of interest I found on Stan Finger's Blog over on the Wichita Eagle homepage. NOAA put this out showing the number of tornadoes this year vs Average. This had been an active year in Western Kansas. I remember a couple of times having tornadoes stretch from Liberal to Phillipsberg with 12 counties under warning at the same time. The following pic was a report of an outbreak. Wonder what the rest of the "Second Season" will be like?

Water, Water, Everywhere . . .

Wichita's had about 10 inches of rain in the last 48 hours. Don't worry, I'm as dry as a bone.

Love the Line

Heard in Pixar's "Cars"

"I'm happier than a tornader in a trailer park."

Darwinism attempt

Fake or real, or funny as hell???

July Shelf Cloud

Not too much going on in Wichita as the summer weather pattern sets in and the weather becomes tedious and boring.

There isn't much to chase when you have temps over 100 and high humidity except air conditioning.

This week brought a couple interesting days. Tuesday we had 75mph wind and enough hail to make it look like it snowed hit about 4 miles away from the house. I-135 had four rigs blown off the road, and at one point the sheriff almost brought in snow removal to get rid of the hail.

Friday had some torrential downpours and enough high wind to make the rain go sideways for a little bit.

A couple of hours after the storm a nice shelf cloud came over the city. I ran to "the highest point in Sedgwick CO." and shot this.


The upper level of the shelf cloud lowered and looked like a slow avalanche. Unfortunately, the downpour hit and obscured the shelf cloud.

Needless to say, we are landlocked with boring weather.

Something may pick up a little closer to Fall.

But occasionally you wake up, look outside and see a nice cloud like this the next morning after a storm.

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.

Salina storm that turned tornadic and killed 2 people

These pictures are not mine, but I have a friend (Nichole Conard) that has the ability to get into the thick of it and call me for radar information. She has a website and I'll give a plug :

http://www.redrockphotography.com/

She called around 9:30 running like hell down I-35 from I-70. This is the point that baseball size hail hit the airport.

They made it out okay and sent pictures.

Unfortunately, this is the storm that went on into Chapman, Soldier, Manhattan, and had a body count associated with it.

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN WICHITA HAS ISSUED A* SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR...SALINE COUNTY IN CENTRAL KANSAS.* UNTIL 1015 PM CDT.* AT 914 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE METEOROLOGISTS WERE TRACKING SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS CAPABLE OF PRODUCING DESTRUCTIVE HAIL UP TO BASEBALL SIZE...AND DAMAGING WINDS UP TO 60 MPH. THESE STORMS WERE LOCATED ALONG A LINE EXTENDING FROM GLENDALE TO 14MILES SOUTHWEST OF BROOKVILLE...AND MOVING EAST AT 54 MPH.