|
This is a shot looking east towards where I should have gone earlier. I'm somewhere near Perryton TX here. Hell had I left now and went for it I'd have caught it in time. Oh well. I wanted to go into nw OK while in the OK panhandle earlier, but knew I'd have no data if I did so. The dryline was well west yet and I feared missing something out west later, so I tried to ignore some of the early, very mushy convection in nw OK. I had to drive west, then south to Perryton to get cell data again. Once I did I could see a return east of Amarillo. I didn't wait around and dropped south to Canadian where I again got data, which showed it had vanished. There was a new return back sw of Perryton, so back north I went. This was around the time of the image above, but again the image above is looking east to nw OK. The mushy convection was now doing much better over there. I hate flying east after things, and figured I'd just never catch it anyway. It however formed and moved very slowly, and I know I could have caught it(as other chasers that caught it were near me around this time....and they obviously made it).
|
|
Here is my little crapper cell to the west going due north....in a hurry(about 45mph). It was elevated and wasn't grabbing the boundary layer quite like the stuff in nw OK was. It's never a good sign to see precip se of the updraft as the updraft races due north. I knew it was hopeless but drifted north with it anyway. I didn't see much else to do. A storm up near Goodland KS was trying to do this too, but it soon grabbed ahold of the better moisture pushing back west and it turned right, HARD. I'd say this ended up being the storm of the day, way up there in nw KS. It's either that or another big monstern way down in central TX. Then the 3rd best storm was the one to my east in nw OK, which was soon going to be producing tornadoes. Such is chasing. A couple hours ago I was about 1 county west of the convection in nw OK, making the decision to stay west for the sake of having data, figuring they looked like crap then, and there was still hope to the west.
|
|
Mammatus above me from my crapper cell to the west.
|
|
Well after drifting north and basically jacking around on my crapper storm for too long, I finally try to catch the stuff that was in nw OK moving ne. I thought maybe I could catch it by dark and see if it's still going strong. So I had to race from Liberal to Dodge City, where I then dropped se to Bucklin KS. Bucklin is the town in all of the remaining shots. It was still tornado warned. I could not see the storm until I was this close, as I was north of the warmfront it was lifting on. You can see the blur from the low level clouds.
|
|
Low level clouds sort of clearing out. I should have done a lot more longer exposures like this one. I kind of got stuck on trying to freeze the image/tower with higher ISO settings as it went on. The scene was excellent for the longer shots, since it was twilight, but mostly because the moon was out, shining straight down on the thing.
|
|
The lighting was pretty cool. It's always interesting to me to see short bolts, leaping out and up into the sky. I was hoping for a bolt from the blue to the ground, but it just wasn't happening.
|
|
|
|
From time to time there were extremely bright flashes. I never saw any bolts when they'd happen, just a blinding flash. This shot shows the storm as it was without the blur from the longer exposure.
|
|
|
|
|
|
I just love those things! I believe this was one discharge, with a bunch leaping out. Too bad it couldn't reach out to the ground.
|
|
This one shows the supercell structure a little better. You can see how the updraft was pretty solid and round, though leaning way over.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
