A night of Shelfies

Stats:

Miles: 298
Time: 7 hours, 20 minutes
Ground Truth reports:
10 to NWS Dodge City (9 on Twitter, 1 in NWS Chat)
7 to NWS Wichita (6 on Twitter, 1 horribly garbled report on NWS Chat)
Tornadoes: none observed (we observed and reported a gustnado that lasted about a minute, a few miles west of Penalosa).
Severe Hail: none observed
Severe Wind: none observed

A brief diversion to the end of the night

Play this video with the sound…what you hear is not wind but continuous rolling thunder. This was taken from the Loves in Cunningham looking toward the storm that had just left ground covering hail and street flooding in Pratt.

Map

Click or tap on any image for the full-size view

We started out headed for the storm in McPherson county, but by the time we crossed the outflow boundary east of Hutchinson, the storm was starting to speed up in its movement to the southeast.

East of Hutchinson, right after crossing the outflow boundary.

We determined the lone cell northwest of Great Bend would be the more interesting cell and made a move toward that. As we were repositioning, we were treated to partly cloudy skies and a chance to view the tower on the western storm from a distance:

(Left) southbound through eastern Rice county / (Right) westbound through northern Reno county

Later, near Macksville, we watched the southwestern flank of the storm that was dropping 2-inch hail in Larned.

This is to the south of where we had just sent NWS Dodge City a video of a suspicious lowering we were watching. At the time, they elected not to tornado warn the storm because it was remaining above the layer of cooler air at the surface. In hindsight that was the right decision, but it frustrated us at the time.

We had some great shelfies north of Pratt, along the Pratt/Stafford county line. This first set is a couple miles east of Highway 281 on the Pratt/Stafford County line.

Panorama from Pratt/Stafford County line 3 miles east of US 281

Panoramic video at the same location, panning southwest to northeast. Wind here was off the storm.

The best shelfies of the night

(Matt liked these best…at the time.) Taken from the Pratt/Stafford county line straight south of Stafford.

A few minutes later

East of Turon

Near Penalosa

Just above the (c), you can see a dust swirl. Because of the little bit of cloud that appeared above it, I thought it was a weak tornado, but it was not. It was really a gustnado, caused by the southeast inflow running into the advancing boundary. Here’s Matt’s shot seconds later as it crossed the road.

We ended the night watching the storm in Pratt, electing to not go into town because of the very large hail shown in the radar view.

Stats:

A brief diversion to the end of the night