Chase 5 May 20th North Central Kansas Outflow Beauty

Driving down the muddy road with nothing to look at in front of you but a nice big green tractor is by far the best way to start your day. Shep and I woke up with the intention of driving home the following day, knowing full aware we had severe weather setup once again for the area over our heads. After Shep got the call of being off work for the night, we both looked at each other and said so we’re chasing today too. Driving west we watched cu’s towering towards the Russell, KS area. We stopped for lunch in Russell and knew we were going to be at it again. The environment was favorable for possible supercells in central to north central Kansas today. The conditions looked much better in the south, but didn’t want to drive down there when cells were already converging to the north.
After lunch, Shep and I ran into the Weather Channel Tornado Hunters just on the outskirts of Russell. Pretty cool to watch meteorologists Mike Bettes and Dr. Forbes oogle over the convection to our west and east. We booked it out to get north as the convection was converging. The towering CU’s were quite phenomenonal to watch in Kansas as always. We watched and hoped one would go severe, but we chased some pretty intense lowering clouds as it was converging, but learned it was beginning to rain out. This in turn produced a marvelous feeder cloud feeding into an already developing cell to our south back towards Russell again. Choking looked to be the game today if this pattern kept up, as any storm that produced would outflow or be choked by super cooled rain air feeding the storm.
Looking southwest we watched the slow moving cell moving towards Lucas, KS. As it was maturely turning into a professional outflow dominant HP storm. We headed south on 232 driving around Wilson Lake watching the beast swallow and precipitate lots of rain. This would be the end of our chase, as the severe thunderstorm to the south near Great Bends, KS was just out of our reach. It was a gorgeous day of scenery and outflow convective storms in Kansas. Now it was time to descend homebound to Colorado.

Reports:
None

Total Miles: 186