Saturday, May 21, 2011

May 20: Family of Kansas supercells

I can't begin to describe in any details what we saw today, but awesome doesn't even come close.  Here are a few of the pertinent events:
(1) For the third day in a row the student forecasters put us in a severe watch area several hours BEFORE the SPC issued the watch.
(2) We stayed on the tail-end of a line of supercells developing along a very thin corridor in south-central Kansas.
(3) I got almost knocked off my feet by my first true Rear Flank Downdraft.
(4) We saw more rotating wall clouds than I can remember.
(5) We drove through - and had to stop several times for - a hail shaft in which we witnessed dime-sized hail...and that was the small stuff.
(6) We wove our way through a chaser convergence of interesting proportions.
(7) We witnessed an astoundingly beautiful sunset.

Here are a few of the many pictures I took today:
 The second (or third or fourth) wall cloud of the day.
 The original wall cloud from the storm that generated the RFD; it was too close (1/2 mile away) to fit into the frame.
The sunset, of which photographs do not do justice.

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