May 26th Reports

[Stu]

My luck finally ran out today …

Departed from Salina Kansas with a target of Coldwater, KS. Stopped in 92f heat at the petrol station in Greensburg and chewed the crud with many chasers who had gathered there. Finally a cell went up and soon went severe just West of Coldwater and I intercepted it. Stayed with it for a while but soon left for the new cell that was moving towards Pratt – ended up on the wrong side of the cell but figured that I could core punch it as the large hail was north of the road – heading East through the core I got stuck behind the slowest moving lorry on the planet. Cell motion was 36mph, the damm lorry was doing just 45mph so I spent a long time in the core. A meso developed on the cell which dragged the hail around the cell and across the road – suffered a right royal battering but thnkfully did not brake any windows – dents on the hire car are not good. Finally made ground on the Pratt storm only to be cut off behind the meso as it crossed the road in front of me – wrapping rain curtains and wind shift from North to south meant I had to stop (and take more hail)– crossed a damage track across the road before finally getting to other side of the cell – only to see LSR reports on my GRL3 that two tornadoes had formed and that I had missed them by minutes as the view was hidden by rain.

Finally got to Wichita some dejected

[The Royal Moi]

Aww. How many days u all got left there?

[Paul Sherman]

Stu

We virtually had a carbon copy of the same chase as you We were a little in front of you this time and on the outer edge of the circulation, wind shifts are not nice and especially when you have a radar image of a big hook right where you are, we certainly felt the outer edge of the Multiple Vortices that brought down trees and downed power lines near Pratt, some Farm machinery were also scattered by the side of the road, here was our position!

- Andy loved every minute of It Strangely enough

[Paul]

Just so you know folks, this is what you missed out on last night!!