May 21, 2016: Kansas Chase

Nick and I left after work Friday night to position ourselves for Saturday's Setup. Saturday we targeted the town of Sharon Springs, KS to see what the models and parameters woudl have around the lunch hour.

We got gas and ate a quick lunch at the 40/27 Gas Staion while looking at model data. We saw that we needed to head south, so we headed towards Tribune, KS. We went East of town a bit and sat. We watched the CU field form. As things started to get going we headed East towards Leoti, KS and a bit north of town. 

The cu field we watched exploded into a massive supercell.

CU field starting to form that afternoon.

Nick watching the skies for possible development.

We watched this cell near Selkirk. This cell would explode and become the dominat super cell storm that produces multiple tornadoes.

We followed this cell to the East to Leoti. Then then went north of town.

Here the majestic supercell showed it's true beauty.

Start of the storm - rain foots.

Wall clouds starting to define on the cell.

Pure luck capturing this smiling lightning arc across the supercell forming in front of our eyes.

The supercell is starting to tightly assemble into a barberpole spaceship type of look. Taking in inflow from the right.

The supercell then formed a wall cloud and then soon the tornado appeared.

Tornado!

The rain started to shroud the tornado and it quickly lifted afterwards.
We continued to stay with the storm. Here are some more pictures from after the tornado.

Lightning in the sky after the tornado.

The mothership and inflow band into the storm.

Mammatus treated us right at sunset.

Mammatus treated us right at sunset.

It was a spectacular day! A day that we will not forget for a while.