September 13th was my first storm chase in about two months, and I decided to chase on a day off work as the meteorological setup looked pretty good for photogenic supercell storms near the Kansas-Nebraska border. My original target was from Holdrege, NE to Phillipsburg, KS, but storms started to form well to my east and south by 2:30 to 3:00pm. After having a brief lunch in Holdrege, I decided to go after the first development to my south that were down in the Stockton area. There were other better looking storms well off to my east a little over 100 miles away, but I decided not to go after these in hopes that the closer storms to my south would eventually organize and interact with the 70 dewpoints that were found from Concordia to Salina. These storms never really developed, and after becoming frustrated impatient, I headed east toward a small supercell storm north of Beloit. It took me a good hour to get into position, and by the time I got there, the storm was on a downtrend, but still revealing a nice hail shaft as the storm continued southeast into southern Cloud County, south of Concordia.
As this storm was dying, another marginally severe storm formed to the west of Concordia, and I made my way to Highway 9 for the intercept. The southern portion of the storm was of most photographic interest to me, so after driving through Concordia, I bolted south on Hwy 81 and took some images of the new updraft that formed on the south flank. This was probably the best storm updraft structure I saw on this chase. It didn’t last long, though, and the storm approached Hwy 81 in a weakening state. I decided not to pursue it any further and headed west on Hwy 24 to photograph the backside of the decaying, very small rotating updraft. One rogue “bolt from the blue” came out of this weakening storm from storm summit which would have made for probably the best image of the year if I had been fortunate enough to capture it. It was a fantastic lightning flash with the storm structure and the landscape.
I then decided to head home and maybe grab some dinner and catch a glimpse of the Chiefs game in Great Bend, but on the way, more marginally severe storms developed to my distant west-northwest as I left Beloit heading to the south. After driving south of Lincoln, KS awhile approaching I-70, I decided to do a little night photography of these distant storms. Lightning eventually became very proficient as the storms approached I-70. A long, tiered shelf cloud emerged as I was shooting to the east of Wilson Lake with some sporadic distant CG’s. My last shooting location was along I-70 at the Smoky Hills Windfarm where I managed to get a few images of the approaching shelf cloud with some lightning illuminated storm structure along with the wind turbines. All in all, a marginal chase for me, but it was good to get out and shoot again… it had been awhile. I usually do not like to go more than a couple months without shooting something weather related or landscape/wildlife related.
