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Well, not a whole lot to report really from this chase. My original target was west-central KS somewhere south of Goodland. I left Dodge City around 11:30am and drove towards Garden City where I rested a little bit at the US-83/US-50 truck stop just north of town (I just came off midnight shifts, so I was kind of tired). After snoozing in the parking lot for about 45 minutes, it came to about 1:30 or so, and I headed up towards Scott City where I grabbed some lunch. I noted at this time that there was some convective development to my south, but it looked rather elevated to me, and there was quite a bit of mid level moisture involved, so I didn’t put a whole lot of stock into this and figured it wouldn’t amount to much. After I got finished with lunch, a storm had exploded south of me between Garden City and Dodge City — go figure. This storm did indeed look supercellular briefly on radar, but I figured I was too far away and by the time I got back down there, it wouldn’t be as good on radar… I figured the best that storm would offer would be short-lived. So I continued on my plan as I expected more storms to develop farther northwest in my area. By mid-afternoon, I thought the best area at the nose of mid-60s dewpoints and southeast winds…at the nose of the good warming as well…was pushing up into Sharon Springs area, so I decided to head west from Scott City. Well, by this time, storms were indeed rapidly developing just south of Scott City, so I didn’t go very far west before turning back around.
The best storm of the day on this chase would be this storm that developed right near Scott City which moved north-northeast through Gove County. I core-punched this north of Scott City, receiving no better than pea to 1/2 inch diameter hail along US83 near Lake Scott State Park. Eventually, I got north of this precipitation area and finally in view of a nice updraft to my immediate northeast. Looking at radar, this storm appeared to have anti-cyclonic shear to it…and based on its movement due north, I certainly believe that to be the case. According to the forecast wind profile hodograph, cyclonic supercells were expected to more more east-northeast or almost due east. A long east to west axis of updrafts were noted extending from primary storm updraft to my northeast through north through northwest. I did observed a number of small, brief dusty-spinups as it appeared there was a nebulous convergence line in the area (there was a fine-line on radar). None of these spin-ups were what I would call "rapidly rotating" though. At roughly 4:05pm, I did observe a healthier looking dust-spinup to my northeast beneath the main updraft. There was also a bit of a kink, or a notch, in the updraft base to also support this dust spinup. It could be argued that this was a brief, weak tornadic spin-up, but the rotation at cloud base was never really all that strong. I never thought this would be anything significant, and in less than a minute or two, this circulation was gone. It was quite interesting, however, at the time, and did get some decent photos looking northeast from Hwy 83 near the Monument Rocks Landmark.
Eventually, this storm would weaken, and an outflow surge of southeast winds would blow out from this storm through the remainder of my target area over the next couple of hours through the Russell Springs and Oakley areas…then points west from there…effectively killing off any additional threat for supercell storms in this area, which I found dissapointing. I got up towards Oakley and drove around a little bit trying to figure out what my next move would be (it was still before 5pm!), but it didn’t take long to realize that the rest of the photogenic storm day was shot, and I headed back home. I got back to Dodge City just before 8pm or so. Below are a couple of photos:
