Well… Evan and I chose….. Poooorly (with respect to tornadic supercells).
I thought for sure the fog/stratus would really pinch off the Laramie Range opportunity…. but it did it’s thing exactly in the small sliver of instability that developed at the edge of the stratus/fog, within 10 or 20 miles of the interstate. Congrats to all those who were up there. My WFO DDC colleague Jonathan Finch (who is on the final stretch of his own chase trip with his wife) intercepted the Bill, WY supercell which was apparently a beautiful LP with a tornado visible 25 miles away. And then there was that Billings, MT event.. Ugh-Ugh-Ugh~!
Our target of Phillipsburg failed and failed miserable for discrete supercells. We recognized this was going to fail pretty early after initiation, so we bailed early. We headed west and caught sub-severe single cell stuff west of the main severely outflow dominant activity. We were rewarded with a couple interesting left-moving, small anticyclonically rotating cells close to sunset. The most picturesque one was northeast of Oakley at sunset with a nice overshooting top at times. The light was excellent at sunset. We then photographed lightning and moonlight illuminated storm structure from Levant, KS looking north.
Start: York, NE
End: Colby, KS
Day Four mileage: 556 mi
Trip mileage: 2009 mi
Images from Sunday, June 20th chase in Northwest Kansas:
