Looking W, funnel and possible tornado southeast of Bushton, Kansas
24 April 2007 tornadic supercell in central Kansas - Jon and Shawna Davies
Shawna and I (along with hundreds of other storm chasers!) targeted central Kansas this day, with a large SPC moderate risk from Kansas southward. What probably turned out to be the most interesting setup on 4/24/07 (apart from a killer tornado in far southern Texas) was an unusual 500 mb cold core low pattern that produced many tornadoes in eastern Colorado SW of Goodland (Al Pietrycha was the only chaser I know of on that prolific event). But that area was out of reach for Shawna and me, so we headed for the Salina area. The day did not evolve as expected, with a late morning/early afternoon squall line over eastern Kansas and Oklahoma messing up the environment over a large area.
Sitting just off of I-70 west of Salina at mid afternoon, I was almost ready to punt the day, questioning whether there was enough CAPE and shear left behind the squall line to generate any interesting storms. But Shawna convinced me to stay focused, and soon storms began to form in a north-south line just to our west. The new storms appeared fairly ragged and outflow dominant near Sylvan Grove, so we decided to head south on Hwy K-14 toward the Hutchinson area, staying in front of the broken line and hoping to find a south end "tail-end Charley" storm.
North of Lyons, Kansas we noticed a rain-free base to our west, and stopped to watch. To our surprise, a funnel formed (1st photo below) and a torndo warning was issued. It only lasted a couple minutes, and we could not tell if there was any circulation on the ground.
Looking W, funnel and possible tornado southeast of Bushton, Kansas
We then continued southward to find the south end cell west of Hutchinson, hoping this might be a supercell. Northeast of Sterling, we came into view of our target, a beautiful supercell updraft, and stopped northwest of Nickerson to watch its approach. It produced several brief tornadoes, seen in the photos below, including 2 images by my brother-in-law Kyle Gerstner (an excellent photographer), who was farther south and closer than we were.
Looking SW, supercell updraft south of Sterling, Kansas
Same location, one of several tornadoes forms south of Sterling, Kansas and the Arkansas
River
Looking W from southeast of Sterling, my brother-in-law Kyle captures another funnel and
possible tornado from the same storm
Still looking SW from our location and zooming in, this is clearly a tornado
Looking NW from southeast of Sterling, Kyle captures the same tornado at closer range
Still looking SW from our location, we have this cool view of the tornado
and full structure
Still looking SW, another tornado (dust whirl) tries to form as the storm gets closer
But soon the storm becomes outflow-dominant, ending the tornado potential
The storm began to blow out cool outflow after 7 pm CDT, and the tornadoes ceased. So, after getting stuck in a massive messy line of chaser cars north of Nickerson, we decided to end the chase and head for home, pleased that we saw a pretty storm, and that none of the tornadoes produced much damage.
Jon Davies