Mike McMahon
Target:
Dodge City, KS
Distance:
˜554 miles
Duration:
˜13.5 hours
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Partners: Mike McMahon Target: Dodge City, KS Distance: ˜554 miles Duration: ˜13.5 hours |
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Mike and I left MWC around 9:30 CDT for our target of Dodge city, KS. I was also excited to use a new camera I bought earlier in the week. We arrived in Dodge City early afternoon, and checked out some data at the public library...after checking out the wild west district of town. At that time, data suggested to us that our best chances for supercells would be north and east of us. It also appeared that storms in our original target area would not fire until after dark. We were wrong on both accounts.
We headed north through WaKeeney and turned east at Hill City. Towers began to go up to our east, but they had a hard time breaking the cap. Storms finally broke the cap late in the day, and we chased a cell near Smith Center, KS. The cell developed a lowering and at one point was tor warned, however it was quickly undercut by outflow. We had to core punch north to Hastings, NE to find a room for the night. When we arrived at our hotel, sirens went off for a tor warning just to our south. We watched the storm approach from a south facing window at the hotel.
We should have stayed put in SW Kansas. A cell went up in NW Oklahoma and produced
several photogenic tornadoes before sunset. Unfortunately after sunset, the cell went on to produce a violent F5
tornado that devasted Greensburg, KS.
 Towers begin to go up around 18:30 CDT near Alton, KS |
 The cap breaks about 30 minutes later. |
 Small scud and rotation below a tor warned storm near Smith Center, KS. |
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Storm becomes outflow dominant and begins to form a shelf cloud near Smith Center, KS. |