Driving home now. Probably be home in 30 minutes or so. We got on a storm up in north central Kansas today. It transitioned into a squall line that started bowing out with awesome structure along the lead edge.
Earlier in the day storms struggled. After a while one finally getted going after two cells merged. The new updraft base that formed got organized by Kirwin Lake. It wrapped up and had a big bowl shaped lowering. I thought it was on for a few minutes. It was a textbook lead up to a tornado, and then nothing. Other than that the only tornado potential we really saw was with quick spinup like tornadoes along the edge of the outflow. I actually think we saw one weak tornado that was on the ground for about a minute. The storm kept getting kinks in the line later in the day where the updraft/shelf cloud base would thicken up and try to produce a weak tornado. It came really close several times. It was very similiar to the style of spinup tornado that we got by Buffalo Oklahoma a week ago.
In addition to a low end tornado threat, there was some awesome structure along the lead edge of the storm. There was an awesome whales mouth, which is where the shelf cloud hangs down over you and looks like you are being swallowed by a whale for those of you who don’t know what that is. This was a really good one. The clouds looked like they were boiling underneath the inside edge of the shelf cloud. I got some great video of it. It was a really cool storm. Its nice to mix it up every now and then and get totally different kind of storm than what you’re used to. There are so many different styles of structure and storms you can get when you’re out there. Every storm is unique, but this one was especially unique. If you are chasing for tornadoes you don’t get to see a whole lot of storms like we had tonight. It was an outflow beast. It could have produced a tornado, but storms that are organized like the one we were on tonight aren’t efficient tornado producers. Its a totally different kind of storm.
Anyway, enough rambling. I’ll try to post some video when I get home.