 | About This Shoot | Date: 20 June 2011 | Location: Northwest Kansas to Southeast Nebraska from Hill City, KS to Beatrice, NE | Shoot Type: Storm Chase | Rating: | Synopsis:
Jay Antle and I had one of the storm chases of our lives, intercepting an incredible, cyclic tornadic supercell early in the afternoon near Hill City, KS. The main long-lived tornado (rated EF-3) was photographed from fairly close range, within a mile, and became a wedge as it was crossing Highway 283 just to our south. Other tornadoes were photographed farther north from a greater distance as the storm was moving quickly north toward the Nebraska border. After this, we decided to blast east along the Nebraska-Kansas border to intercept early evening storms near Beatrice, NE, but these were not tornadic, nor very photogenic. |
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Preliminary Storm Reports from 20 June 2011
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1630 UTC SPC Products from 20 June 2011
Categorical Convective Outlook
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Probabilistic Tornado Outlook
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Probabilistic Hail Outlook
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Probabilistic Wind Outlook
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Evening Meteorological Charts from 20 June 2011
250mb Chart
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500mb Chart
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700mb Chart
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850mb Chart
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Surface Chart
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Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:23:49 -0500
Chase Account of Significant Tornadic supercell from near Hill City north to near Norton, KS (part 1)
Summary & Images (part 1) | Below is a map I have constructed of the route Jay and I took as we
followed and documented the significant, long-lived tornado from
northern Graham County into Norton County, Kansas. Also on this first
post is an image of one of the many dusty debris whirls we saw beneath
a significant rotating area very near our location as we drive north
and east along dusty county roads northwest of Hill City from 1:40pm
to 1:50pm CDT.
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#1 | 
#2 |
(click on thumbnails for pop-up of larger images) |
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:54:10 -0500
Chase Account of Significant Tornadic supercell from near Hill City north to near Norton, KS (part 2)
Summary & Images (part 2) | The sequence of images below are during a 1 minute and 40 second
period of time as the tornado strengthens rapidly and changes
character significantly as it approaches Highway 283 north of Hill
City. White specks in a couple of the images are distant giant hail
stones falling in front of the tornado(es). The lower left image
reveals one of the satellite tornadoes adjacent the large tornado.
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(click on thumbnail for pop-up of larger image) |
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 12:58:32 -0500
Chase Account of Significant Tornadic supercell from near Hill City north to near Norton, KS (part 3)
Summary & Images (part 3) | After driving north a couple miles on Highway 283, we stopped again to
photograph the now well-established wedge tornado after it had crossed
the highway behind us. This is looking south-southeast. Right about
the time of the third image in this sequence (2:03:30) is when we
turned east on Highway 9.
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(click on thumbnail for pop-up of larger image) |
Tue, 21 Jun 2011 13:04:30 -0500
Chase Account of Significant Tornadic supercell from near Hill City north to near Norton, KS (part 4)
Summary & Images (part 4) | Below are the sequence of images of the large tornado approaching
Highway 9 as we race east to get east of it's path. At 2:06pm, we
were in the tornadoes path at around Edmond, KS and maybe a mile or so
east. We safely made it far enough east before the tornado(es) made
it to the highway and the last image of this sequence of images at
2:12pm shows the incredible rain and hail-wrapped beast to the
west-northwest by only a few miles.
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(click on thumbnail for pop-up of larger image) |
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