High Plains Drifter

…The Great Bend LP Supercell…

My target from Dodge City was pretty much anywhere along a line from roughly Pratt to Larned to Hays. First I was favoring the northern end of this line, then I began to favor the southern end of this line right as I was about to leave Dodge City at about 3pm… but in the end, I ultimately decided to just play the middle — Larned. I arrived in Larned to find some towering cumulus growth from my west-southwest to north-northwest. I just decided to hang out here on the outskirts of town to watch things evolve. I called my friend Robin Lorenson who was going to be out chasing as well… she started out in Salina. Her target was Great Bend, so we were not far from each other. We just decided that since we were so close we should just chase together. We met up on Hwy 19 about 7 miles east of Larned. At the time I was most interested in the small cell trying to develop just to our northwest. We also watched with interest the aggressive cumulus congestus development to our southeast which would become the Kingman supercell. We sat at this spot for some time watching our small shower struggle against some drier air. The best pooling of upper 60s to near 70 dewpoints was farther north. A storm rapidly took nice shape on radar and we could pick out the base in the distant north. This would become our target storm so we headed north for the intercept. We took Hwy 56 northeast to Pawnee Rock then north on county roads from that point on. We stopped a couple times north of Pawnee Rock once we got a good view of the structure of this storm. It was a beautiful LP supercell! Our second stopping point along this county road was a beautiful view from atop a hill. The storm had a nice flared base, a small wall cloud, broiling convection atop this, and a wonderful backsheared anvil.

From this point on, Robin and I chased separately as she headed north to photograph from closer in while I continued my structure chasing from the south. I followed it south and east through the Great Bend Airport area south to the Stafford County line until the storm ultimately died a rapid death around sunset. What a great way to conclude my 3-day chase weekend!!

Sunday, July 19th was another very successful day of high plains storm photography.  It wasn’t a day with a long-lived isolated supercell, but that wasn’t needed Sunday.  I came away with at least a couple of images that will certainly make a nice addition to my 2009 storm portfolio — including one special lightning shot that will be titled “Right Between the Ears” (image number 2 below) — a unique image of a tall, single, branched lightning flash in the distance amidst a narrow hail core composed perfectly between the two small isolated mounds that make up “Rabbit Ear Mountain” to the north of Clayton, NM.  I actually  managed to get two brilliant cloud-to-ground daytime flashes with Rabbit Ear Mountain in the frame.

After this, storms became more organized with better structure, and I drove northwest about 10 miles or so on Hwy 64 and watched some real interesting storm structure develop.  I then headed south of Clayton on Hwy 402 — a highway I had now become familiar with these past couple days — as a well-rounded circular structured storm updraft developed just to my west.  I needed to get east ahead of this, and I did so taking Hwy 102 which turned into Ranch 808 as it crossed into Texas west of Dalhart.  I photographed some really close cloud-to-ground flashes, both of which were a bit over-exposed unfortunately, before I ended the chase.  Images from this chase are below.