Tour 3 - Day 6 (South Central KS) - ENHANCED Risk

[MikeUpjohn]

Day 6 saw us start in Colby, KS with a large ENH Risk across much of South Central KS and into North Central OK. Forecast wording was for severe storms, possible tornado risk, before growing upscale, and a possible derecho as the storms shot off to the SE into Oklahoma.

We drove from Colby, KS down to Dodge City, KS for some lunch and waited around the area for storms to fire somewhere around and South of Dodge City, KS and move off to the East South East according to HRRR.

Our first stop looked very flat for convection but clearing and towers to the South ultimately broke the cap and kicked things off just before dusk. Hung around for a final time near the big train in Kinsley, KS and then headed South towards the OK border.

The storm that we ended up on fired off NW of Medicine Lodge and started moving South East. Straight away, the lightning was positive and you could head tornadic thunder (a sort of explosive deep booming thunder rather than the crackling rumbling), and the lightning was all smooth channel (pics below).

We tracked with the storm keeping an eye on it's wall cloud at the back all the way down towards Waynoka, OK, where the structure of the developing squall line was stunning, with a mix of shelf cloud and stacked plate supercells.

As we watched lightning was jumping out from the top of the storm over and behind our heads, one hitting a wind turbine in the wind field behind us.

Followed the storms to Enid, OK, where we got ahead of the line of now severe warned storms with hail and strong winds, and had dinner (at 1.30am :D).

Got checked in at the hotel, and let the same line of storms which was now outflow dominant, roll over the hotel about 2.30am, before finally heading to sleep.

Enjoy the pictures and videos below!

 

[MikeUpjohn]

A couple of videos from the storm rolling through Enid, OK about 2am.