June 20, 2010 NW Kansas Bow segment and brief tornado
Most of the day I thought we'd be chasing in Nebraska, until an outflow boundary was crashing south toward hastings and the warm front was still in Northern Kansas I knew the only play would be NW/NC Kansas with a possible Derecho later in the evening, thought we'd have an hour or two window for storms to stay discrete. I was wrong. Chris and I intercepted a storm West of Stockton, Kansas and for about a minute it looked like it might try to get it's act together, but instead it gusted out pretty quickly.
Decided to stay ahead of it and hope for it to turn into a big line and possibly a derecho. Caught some dirt getting kicked up here under the leading edge of a developing bow echo.
A huge plume of dust went up to our south, we were going to try to get in it, but it dissipated before we had a south road. Here's a screen capture from video...
Now it started to get some better structure and finally went tornado warned! really wrapped up and we blasted north in front of it and got a nice view of the notch. It was rotating like mad in there. Moments later we would see a tornado in a very unusual spot.
Now we're watching the wrapped up area and Chris yells Funnel! and points south to the leading edge of the bow! sure enough! a nice white funnel drops and briefly kicks up dust! first tornado in over a month! failed to get the video camera off the notch and to the funnel in a timely manner, though did get a little bit of footage of it.
Just moments after the funnel lifted here is some structure...
We try to get ahead of it again, but are low on gas. We missed what ever gas may have been in belleville after the bow overtook us with blinding rain and sustained 60-70mph winds. Got gas in Hebron but the day was over as we were too far behind. Fun day considering how crappy it was at the beginning when storms gusted out instantly.
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