May 25th Kansas Supercell and Tornado
Last Updated on Monday, 04 January 2010 18:27 Written by Roger Hill
May 25th was a day I wish I had been in Iowa. However, good shortwave energy, good shear, moisture and instability would keep me in Kansas. I caught two nicely structured supercells this day, one of which produced a landspout type tornado that persisted for about 5 minutes. The first supercell, south of Hays,, was tornado warned and actually produced a few very weak brief touchdowns. We had chased farther west on a tornado warned storm that ended up VERY high based, and thus missed the initial "dusty multivortex" tornado report. I fully believe the report based on what we saw. The second storm just east of the first had pretty structure and produced the landspout.
Click on a the image for a larger picture. Most of these are digital stills, however a few are video stills.
Our view (enhanced) of the storm and possible tornado. This was precisely at the time the tornado was reported. We were 25 miles away! |
Block rotating wall cloud. I thought this would produce a significant tornado. Rotation was wild! |
As we approached the storm. A crazy merry-go-round was evident with rapid rotation (Tornado warned). |
Very fast rotation on the left side of the lowering, looking east. |
Two brief funnels (left side and right side) |
Funnel that reportedly briefly touched down. We did not see it touch down. |
More stout funnel that was rotating around the parent mesocyclone. |
Supercell Number 2. Gaining structure and strength! |
Landspout type tornado. |
Storm was at its most intense here, still tornado warned. |
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