May 26 Chase

The long string of severe weather days concluded on another successful note. After witnessing seven tornadoes the past couple of days, we added a couple more today in south-central Kansas to bring our three day total to 9! Today's setup appeared promising with a triple point setting up in southwest Kansas along with strong instability (MLCAPE >3,000 J kg-1) and locally enhanced low-level shear along an westward propagating outflow boundary. The atmospheric setup almost went to waste as most storms could not remain discrete. However, one supercell managed to remain somewhat discrete as it crossed the outflow boundary and produced a couple of brief tornadoes just to the southeast of Pratt. We thought another tornado formed just south of Pratt, but LDCT chasers confirmed it was a funnel cloud at that point. After the supercell moved away from the boundary, the low-level rotation quickly ceased and the storm weakened. Due to the brief nature of the tornadoes and not being able to properly work my camera, I did not capture any good images. I'll have to borrow some students' images and post them at a later time. In the meantime, enjoy the image below snapped by Mike Brown.


Tomorrow and Wednesday will almost assuredly be spent catching up on presentations and observing the geology around the area. The active pattern looks to return to the Northern Plains by the end of the week.