June 9th… Wow… okay, this was the most frustrating chase I think Jay and I have ever had in which we did see a tornado… a fairly decent one, too. We, along with Matt Crowther and Jim Leonard, intercepted the Trego County tornadic supercell as it approached I-70 between Wakeeney and Ellis. The tornado developed southwest of our location on the Interstate (our location was just east of interchange 140, the Riga Interchange). From our vantage point, the tornado was a slender cone at times, with "okay" contrast. Jim, on the other hand, drove west further and got incredible video of the tornado approaching the interstate with multiple suction spots.
Our group missed out completely on the Hill City to Stockton significant tornadic supercell that produced a myriad of tornadoes. This was more or less a mis-forecast target on our part, even though we had supercells developing in our target area around McCook. We were distracted by these less-than-significant storms, which delayed our arrival to the real show farther south and southeast. Ahh well, such is chasing… at least we saw a great tornadic supercell, though! The tornado that we saw that crossed the interstate was not too far at all from the Ogallah, KS event back on April 10th that I was on. My 2nd Trego County, KS tornado day of 2005!
After the chase, we all stayed in Dodge City… and departed the next morning for June 10th chase in the TX Panhandle. I left my compact flash card reader at home in Dodge, so I’m sorry I don’t have any photos uploaded at this time of the Trego County storm. I got some great images of the very menacing wall cloud bearing down on west-bound traffic on I-70.
Mike