05-24-04 N Central Kansas - minutes too late
Long drive and minutes too late. Some captured many tornadoes from this supercell. We left Minneapolis just a little to late to arrive in S Central NE for initiation at 2:30pm. We expected initiation a little futher East and a little later in the day. We caught up to the cell in Kansas to see the last tornado. It moved slowly SE, fell behind the boundary, became elevated and dried up quickly. We busted south to catch the new line of TOR warned cells going up. We found ourselves a long way from home at the end of the chase.
Photographs by Melanie Metz and Peggy Willenberg
Gorgeous tornadic supercell
A second meso to the North
Incredible striations and structure on the southern meso as the boundary raced East leaving the cell in a dry air mass
The dying storm
Now outflow dominant a shelf approached and we headed SE towards the new line of cells along the boundary.
Initiation to our South near sundown
Gorgeous updrafts illuminated by lightning