An interesting day weather-wise. We woke up in Goodland, Kansas and had a nice sit-down lunch before the action kicked off in the afternoon. Luckily due to the previous day's drive were were in roughly the right spot for convection and storms to kick off in the afternoon. We drifted around Colby, Kansas during the mid-afternoon with temps making it into the mid-90sF before storms started to develop just to our NW. Once the covection got going we drove towards it from the south and saw numerous mid-level funnels from the developing cumulus - cool to get a picture of.
After reaching the storm which was already pretty well developed we were able to stay along side it or just ahead of it, despite it pushing outflow winds in the range of 60mph. It was apparent that this was going to congeal into a huge mess/MCS through the evening and turn into a rain eating monster. But not before we got to see a ragged wall cloud develop on one of the multi-cell storms before it merged with everything else that was developing.
There was a huge amount of dust being kicked up from this storm - and as we struggled to stay out ahead of it, the dust being kicked up by the storm and our car (which we were traveling down a dirt road) brought the visibility occasionally down to virtually 0. It was funny because we were probably travelling 50-60mph down these dirt roads, but at times the outflow was catching up to us, signalling it was moving at rough the same pace.
After punching a little ways out ahead of it, we saw the Netweather chase team go by and had a brief chat with them. Their chase was carrying them north for the next few days of chasing, while ours was taking us back down south to get Pete closer to the airport for his flight on Saturday.
After heading back south we were englufed by the rain, gusty winds, frequent lightning and small (penny-sized) hail for about 2 hours as we drove towards Wichita, Kansas. We did finally break ahead of it in time to get checked in at our hotel and head out for a late night Appleby's meal before calling it a night.
Here are some pics:
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| Convection developing near Colby, Kansas |
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| Convection developing near Colby, Kansas |
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| Mid-level funnels just north of Colby, Kansas |
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| Pete examining the atmospheric potential |
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| Big thunderstorms going up well to our south |
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| Dust being picked up on the 50-60mph outflow of the storms |
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| Dust being picked up on the 50-60mph outflow of the storms |
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| Measuring gusts speed (45mph) at head height! |
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