My annual jaunt with the College of DuPage began early Friday morning. We left COD at approximately 7:30 am with a forecast focus of the north-central Kansas area. The drivers did a terrific job of getting us to our target near Hays-Russell, KS just in time to watch convection mature. We hooked onto a supercell between Russell and Hays; it produced a considerable amount of dusty swirls, gustnadoes, and dust blobs along the RFD and under the wall cloud. Despite the favorable environment, this storm quickly lost any distinct low-level rotation west of Russell. We followed the storm east all the way to Lake Wilson hoping it would regenerate a low level mesocyclone, but it appeared to be just slightly elevated north of the warm front. We gassed up near theI-70/Lake Wilson exit and planned to slide west to latch onto one of the two supercells to the southwest. Unfortunately, the onramp at this exit was under construction, meaning we would have to go east an exit to go west on 70. Instead, we ventured south and wrapped around the interstate on back roads. This delayed our intercept of the supercell to the west, costing us a close look at a tornado near Walker, KS. We did see the unique rope, but only from afar. We kept with the storm well after sunset, continually looking for backlit features in the notch. We finally drove through the RFD and headed toward the north to Russell. About 5-6 miles south of Russell, we could see a distinct funnel and probable tornado backlit by lightning. We watched this rope and dissipate. We slowly crawled north as the slow moving mesocyclone moved off to the northeast. Unfortunately, we didn't have to wait to receive confirmation of the tornado as we came across a house that had been destroyed by the tornado. Search and rescue was ongoing with a quick response from the local authorities. We scooted by and drove onto Hays where we grabbed some dinner at Whiskey Creek and called it a night. Still and a couple time-lapse videos follow below.
Day 2 was not a complete bust, but I never even grabbed my camera out of the bag. We did see some high-based convection across north-central/northeast Nebraska, but the storms failed to partake in the extreme dew points across the Missouri River. We chowed down in Yankton and overnighted in Sioux City.
Stratus undulations along I-80 in Iowa.
Tire trouble! Thanks to Ryan and Leon for solving the issue quickly.
Supercell near Russell, KS
Supercell west of Lake Wilson. See time-lapse below for illustration of motion.
Lightning from decaying "first" supercell over Lake Wilson.
Not sure why the bolts this evening were more "neon tubular". Weird.
Grainy image of tornado near Russell, KS. Windshield wipers, bugs on glass, hand held long exposure, etc, usually don't make for great pics.
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