High Plains Drifter

The One-Hour Pure Gentleman’s Chase — Dodge City, KS Supercell

I worked the day shift on June 9th, and I got off shift at 4:00pm.  I had planned all along to work overtime given severe weather development across our forecast area.  That being said, by 4:00pm, there was nothing on radar across all of our forecast area, so I agreed to be called back if I was needed back for help.  After a 20-minute nap, I got a call from Matt Crowther asking about a new storm developing southwest of DDC.  I didn’t know anything about it at the time (about 4:30pm by now), so a quick glance at radar had me intrigued.  It had a nice little shape to it and was moving in the general direction of DDC.  So, I decided to go after it, only a 15 mile drive to the southwest from my duplex to the updraft seen in the first image.  As this was moving northeast, I had to keep moving northeast too… back toward Dodge City.  I took north bypass through the north part of town all the way to the US-283 junction, about 2.5 miles northeast of the Dodge City airport.  It was at that time that one of my evening shift co-workers called me back in.  It was at this time that I photographed images #2 through#5 below of the awesome updraft structure and menacing near-ground activity (in images #4 and #5, you can see the KDDC WSR-88D radome in the distance!).  The tall precip shaft adjacent the updraft was beautiful!  After I shot these images, I drove to the office…. toward this supercell.  I didn’t make it to the WFO DDC driveway before the golfball size hail.  Heavy and hard golfball to 2″ diameter hail pelted me as I entered the WFO parking lot.  The last two images in this series below are from the WFO parking lot.  What an awesome 1-hour, 30-mile round trip gentleman’s chase!!