As per my last post, we were in Fredonia in south eastern Kansas waiting for the cap to break. We had driven from Wichita to El Dorado and then to Fredionia moving along with the faster than anticipated dryline during the early afternoon. We finally decided that Fredonia was about where we wanted to be given that the dryline was expected to stall and then slowly retreat in the early evening hours. In conjunction with the approaching upper level energy (cooling) and the convergence along the dryline, we figured that this area was the most likely to break the cap. Within 20 minutes of that post to the forum from Fredonia, off she went. About 40mi to our SW (pretty perfect given that storms were going to move NE initially) two storms blew up and went from nothing to 40,000ft and 45dbz reflectivities in 20 minutes - indicative of the instability. We waited in Fredonia a little while to get an idea of which storm was going to be better and then we dropped south and west to intercept. We only moved about 10mi S and 5mi west and we had a nice view of the base of the northern of the two cells which had a brief wall cloud which occluded but it looked a bit messy. Both cells were severe warned at this stage (no tornado warnings yet). Quite a few other chasers were in this area thou most were pretty sensible. The storms were not racing along and the road network (albeit gravel) was quite good in this area, which is not quite flat but its *relatively* treeless. (Quite a few chasers don't like chasing east of I-35 due to the trees/hills but its not too bad in NE Oklahoma and SE Kansas (compared to SE'ern OK).
Anyway - back to the storms. We played with this storm for a little while jogging slightly northwwards as it came closer to us (moving NE) and it took on some nice structure near Buxton with a nice vault region and some nice inflow bands but it never really looked like producing. After about 45mins or so on this storm we dropped back to the S about 10mi (to near where we had been earlier) and started watching the next cell in the line (note the term "line"). It was looking somewhat linear at this stage but the base area to our SW was quite nice with a ragged wall cloud although the outflow from the cell we had left was now pushing out a but of a gust front which didn't help the situation. We could see another cell building on the southern end of this line (about 15mi further SW) but we waited here and watched as this cell made a last ditch effort to produce as the wall cloud exhibited some nice rotation and upward scud motion and a few funnels (nothing substantial). It was quite photogenic but it was quickly evident that it wasn't going to get the job done so we dropped S again to get onto the last cell in the line.
It was looking VERY nice with barber-pole like striations up the side of the updraft which was absolutely explosive. We were about 8mi NE of this beast and it was coming right for us...sort of...it went ENE so was going to cut us off soonish but we will managed some great photos of the structure until the hail started...hehe. It was only small 1-2cm with the odd 3cm stone in there. We thought this would be the main show (we had about 1hr of daylight left) and it put out an ok wall cloud but the surge of outflow from the other storms we had been on seemed to have too much of an impact on it and it became linear (again...FRUSTRATING!). It was still quite photogenic as the sun poked through the rain curtains and lit up the base area. Eventually we moved east to get a better view of the whole line and we ended up only a few miles from Fredonia where we had been earlier in the day. We were watching this line of storms which extended from the NE across to the SW with the tail end of the line of storms about 20mi to our SW. It was somewhat photogenic here with some nice mammatus and more nice light on sunset.
The sat image that James posted sure was nice but that flanking line was the downfall of our cell/s in that it just kept building too quickly back along that line so that one particular updraft did not sustain itself as a new one built downstream of the previous one.
The lightning rate was not quite what we were hoping for though. We eventually got a little bored and a nice core came down just west of Fredonia so we decided to go and sample some more hail (it had reports of golf balls). Unfortunately this passed just N of town so we sat in the same carpark we had been in 5 hours before and pondered what to do - we couldn't get net access for some reason and inconveniently, the wx worx data dropped out (computer issues at our end). We now had cold gusty outflow winds from the NE but the convergence along the line of storms wasn't too far off to our S with the line still stretching off to the near SW. We finally got one of the cells to pass over us with some quarter sized hail (2.5cm) but this soon stopped. Suddenly, the winds rapidly went easterly and then STRONG southerly winds. Within seconds, the sirens in Fredonia went off...oops...hehe. The local sherriff came racing around with his siren on (not sure what he was trying to achieve here) and we all just grabbed out video cameras and were videoing. We didn't see anything but then the Doppler on Wheels (DOW) and a bunch of chasers took off east (following the storm). Our data popped back up and we realised that the tail end of the line had just passed over us and had a 90mph shear marker on it as it went over us...oops...hehe.
We packed out things and gave chase too - why not. Sure it was dark but this storm was going to parallel our east road just to the N so it was safe. We spent the next hour and a half or so watching various nice wall clouds just off to our N. We didn't see any tornadoes but there were a few reports of funnel clouds and we saw some suspicious lowerings from it. We eventually gave up on this cell at Moran about 60mi (100km) from Frediona as it became outflow dominant again.
We headed west to Iola to get a room and some food before our planned lightning attack on the front which was now pushing in from western Kansas at a fast rate. We had sucess in getting a hotel but little sucess in getting food so it was donuts, GIANT milky ways, chips, museli bars and juice/milk for dinner (the joys of chasing late into the night). So after a great dinner we headed west to intercept the front and set up forlightning. A slight miscalculation of the speed it was moving saw us have enough time for one 15 second exposure photo and BANG. A wall of wind, rain and hail BLASTED is back into the car (which is a Toyota Highlander 4WD - see pics). We sat here for about 5 mins as rainfall rates pushed into the 200+mm/h range and wind gusts easily of 100km/h and some smallish (2cm) hail. The line had pushed out a great bow right onto us (which went on to smash Kansas City 150km to our ENE). We got ahead of the line again just near Iola on our way back to the east but the outflow had pushed well ahead of the line by this stage so it was substantially weaker so we cruised back to Iola and called it a night at around 2:30am (although within 15mins of our arrival another strong cell had developed to our SW and moved over us giving some more torrential rain and some big BOOMs of thunder).
It was a day of rollercoaster emotions with excitement in the morning with the upgrade to moderate risk, then the concern that the cap wouldn't break, then the realisation late afternoon that it was going to break and that it was going to be a good evening, and then the dissapointment in that we didn't bag a tube but overall it was a pretty good result for our first day of storm action. Everything seemed to go really smoothly from our perspective - we were never rushed, the camera gear all seemed pretty organised, the navigating and wx worx (radar data, etc) systems all worked well.
Pics to follow (either tonight or tomorrow).
Macca & Crew
