What looked like a storm of historic proportions in the models at mid-week turned into a bitter-cold version of what I’d call a “normal” winter storm. Still, the occasional near-whiteout conditions made for interesting video, and I was able to provide ground truth to NWS Wichita from Wellington (early and late in the storm) and at Chaparral High School as the heaviest snow band came in. Also had video on the KSCW morning news show, so all-in-all a good inaugural chase for the Tahoe.
Chase Summary
Miles Driven: 199
Chase Times: 5:25am to 2:49pm — 9 hrs, 24 min
Route Map:
Video Highlights
North of Viola on K-42 while I was stopped trying to get Twitch stream working. Taken about 9am.
Parked behind Dillon’s in Wellington as I was out to measure snowfall. I was north and east of that fence, far enough away to take out most of the impact of drifting. Average of 6 measurements in a few square feet area was 5.5″.
The intersection just east of where I’m stopped at the beginning of this clip is where I’d measured 1.75″ of snow back about 6:15am. This is closer to 1pm, and there was a solid 5-6 inches on the ground. The video runs to as I was crossing the Turnpike bridge.
Ground Truth Reports
Here’s the photo attached to the Twitter report I made with the snow measurement earlier:
.@NWSWichita 1 mile west of KTA/U160 near wellington. I read that as not quite 1.75″ pic.twitter.com/CRdtFYdqfd
— Chaser Scott Roberts (@KSStormInfo) February 14, 2021
Times listed in the screen shots are UTC. So first report, from Chapparal, was at 10:44am, the second one was from 12:26pm.
All in all, even with fighting with the Twitch stream, being alone, and not having the truck anywhere close to fully setup for chasing it was a good inaugural chase. We’ll see what Wednesday brings, I may do it again for the morning hours.