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This was the first day we did any chasing. There weren't a lot of raging supercells, but we did catch a really nice storm in Colorado, so it was good practice since the next day was expected to be pretty active. We did a total of 697 miles from Wichita, KS to North Platte, NE (with a jaunt to CO thrown in there). We also drove through Greensburg, KS which was an extremely sad and humbling experience. As a meteorologist, I never expected to see F5 damage. I think it was very important for us to see it, and as a result I've gained a much deeper respect for the power of nature. We hit the road around 9:30am CDT and headed west. We got to Greensburg at about 11:30am CDT. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. (These pictures are from Griffin)     Even a month later it looked like the tornado just hit. The road into town had only opened that day, I believe. It's a huge lesson to never doubt nature's power. And it's made me want, even more, to fulfill the oath I made at the NWS to protect lives and property. I'm doing what I'm doing in hopes that in the future there won't be another Greensburg or Moore, but if there is, no lives will have to be lost. I lost track of the time because I wasn't paying attention to time zones, so I think we got to the Colorado border at around 3pm MDT. We went into chase mode around 3:30pm MDT when supercells started to pop. About 15 minutes later we got pulled over by a Colorado state trooper, but he just let us go with a warning. We intercepted near Akron, CO around 6pm MDT. Great shot of the storm inflow Closer shot of the sunlight coming through the storm Looking straight up above my head Nice shot of some storm structure The radar signature of the storm we were looking at The same storm put down a nice amount of hail, so went behind it to take a look. The biggest stone I could find was nickel sized (that's my hand, wewt). We saw another nice supercell about an hour later, I don't know where we were though. It was a long day of chasing that ended around 11:30pm CDT at the Rodeway Inn in North Platte, NE. |
