So I’ll tell you a bit more about yesterday’s chase.
We headed down to Colby as planned, arriving at about 2pm. Skies still looked clear so we went fro some lunch (Taco Johns, reasonable).
Big mistake
We emerged 30 minutes later to see big plumes going up to our East. We immediately jumped onto the interstate and burned east. There were two storms forming in the vacinity, a big monster to the south and this one straight ahead.
The smaller cell fires
The northern storm was nearer, so we passed south of it on the I70 and moved to intercept. The storm was sporting a pretty large wallcloud and a fair bit of motion. It got severe warned but didn’t look like producing a tornado.
The northern cell drops a wallcloud
At one point it looked like a new updraft base was going to form and we were treated to some amazing dancing skies as the rotation tried to organise.
Dancing skies
a new rotation core tries, and ultimately fails to from
rapid motion
Eventually it became clear that the larger storm to the south was begining to sap its energy, so we decided to get east of the monster and down to the updraft. We made it just after a funnel had lifted off the ground, frustratingly. The rest of the chase was spent trying to outrun the rear flank downdraft and get a sight of the updraft. As i mentioned yesterday, we caght a glimpse of a small funnel , but unfortunately not much more. Still a hugely satisfying chase.
5:49pm
6:41pm
This was us just after missing a touchdown near Brownell. This storm went on to drop another tornado just outside Hays shortly after. You can clearly see the telltale inflow notch around the centre of rotation, and how close we got.
small funnel
small funnel
small funnel
funnel dissipates
mean looking