June 4, 2005 Storm Chase | Southeast KS Meager Supercells

June 4, 2005 Storm Chase | Southeast KS Meager Supercells
All photos © Copyright 2005 Matt Ziebell

This day turned out to be well below my expectations both for where I chased and elsewhere across the Central Plains. The upper low from yesterday had already exited north of KS into NE by dawn and with the approach of a strong upper jet maxima, today looked good anywhere from MCI southwest to OKC. I had driven up to SLN the night before anticipating a more northern target, but after digging through my data suite it appeared that SLN would be a decent initiation zone today along a sharpening dryline. The 12Z model runs generally favored EMP as a hotspot with an axis up through STJ. I grabbed lunch in town and shortly thereafter noticed an expanding field of shallow Cu covering the sky. This worried me a bit so I fired up the laptop for a check of more data. The Cu field wasn't as widespread south of town and better yet, higher EHIs were becoming focused further southeast. I didn't notice anything of great development on the visible satellite, so I shot south on I-135 and about 30 miles south of SLN heard reports of a SVR cell near SLN! I didn't bother to turn around and instead continued south and exited east at Park City. The Cu that were down here steadily attained better vertical depth before one of them to my north anviled out. In a matter of minutes, several other impressive TCu and MDT Cu cells were starting to fire overhead. I couldn't commit to the first cell since it might be overtaken by new development to its south, so I found a wi-fi spot and watched radar for a good 30 minutes. Finally, a cell ~20 miles to my east pulled together and remained far enough away from the expansive line of convection along I-135. I headed after it and while approaching El Dorado, it became SVR. However, after this it all went downhill fast, rolled around a bit, and then the bottom fell out! This cell's FFD may have disrupted its own inflow and within minutes it wasn't even worth looking at. More cells developed to the W and SW after this along the initial dryline, some exhibiting circular bases and weak rotation; but the lack of a stronger cap today allowed for these cells to quickly line out by early evening. A few supercells were embedded within this line and even some chasers managed to document a brief tornado near Severy, KS. Congrats to them since this day was a let down for most everyone else in SE KS. I still make the most of these days and enjoyed one heck of great MCS near Eureka, KS with several 50 kt+ gusts, frequent CGs and small hail (no photos, though plenty of vid). I then called it a night in El Dorado and settled for some Arby's....sigh, I must work on raising my eating standards! :)

Even though this was not a bust in my books, I still enjoy looking back for hindcasting purposes and learning what went wrong. A simple answer would be the lack of warmer H7 temps. This may have been due to the upper low that crossed through western KS the previous day ultimately modifying the temps in that layer and elsewhere. SPC was justified with their High Risk for today given the instability and kinematics in place, but when the convective mode doesn't cooperate it's not their fault. Take a look at the analysis and model data below.