May 18th, 2018 Oakley, KS Supercell

Tornadoes: 0

Highest Wind Gust: ~50 mph

Largest Hail: ~0.5"

Isaac and I awoke in Garden City, finally getting some rest after our all-nighter the night before. It felt good to be waking up in the target area. Storms from the day prior in Colorado and Nebraska had left behind an outflow boundary across western Kansas draped SW-NE, serving as a focus for convective development and maybe enough helicity for a tornado. Convection was expected to be much more widespread, so pressure to target was less, but we still wanted to maximize our chances for a tornado if we could. Upper level flow was slightly better than the day before. We decided to target Scott City to Oakley, as the boundary would set up right in that area with moisture pooling into the 60s would be present. Moisture was still not great, but unlike yesterday, it was sufficient. SPC issued an enhanced risk, with 2% tornado probabilities over a broad region from extreme southeastern Wyoming into the east Texas Panhandle:

After battling road construction near Leoti, we arrived in Oakley where we met up with Sam Bertellotti and his friend who was tagging along. Oakley itself was socked in clouds, but clearing was evident only 10-20 miles south. As initiation neared, we headed south to find a back road to watch the skies for any first signs of development.

Towers kept going up, thinning, and coming right back down. This continued for probably two hours before we started getting nervous about a cap bust. We had some renewed hope, however, when we realized our jet impulse had not quite arrived yet, and convection was beginning to break out where it was nosing in to our southwest. This gave us more confidence the cap could be eroded. And only minutes later, a tower to our east, just south of Quinter, began to develop into a full-fledged storm:

When it began to exhibit supercell characteristics on radar, we decided to start heading towards it as we didn't want to be late to whatever show it would put on. Making a quick stop at a gas station in Oakley, we realized towers were rapidly firing only a few miles from where we just were. After topping off the tank, we headed back south, eventually catching the supercell in its development stages with cow photobomb:

We found a good spot to pull off on a back road, and took in the scenery.

The inflow band feeding into the supercell was impressive and stretched out far. It extended beyond my shot above, and I photographed this with a full frame DSLR and 14mm lens. Eventually the forward flank precipitation core started creeping in on us, so we had to move a few miles south to continue shooting. We found a huge elevated lookout with an abandoned building where several other chasers were already perched. The storm put on a gorgeous show while we all sat here:

Eventually, storms to the southeast started interfering with our storm's inflow, but missed the storm itself by only 6-8 miles or so. Its ingestion of more stable air led to a dramatic display as it started to gradually lose intensity. This is one of my favorite supercell shots of all time:

Part of the big cluster interfering with our storm was a left split with dramatic RFD carving and surprisingly decent motion. Most of the chasers' attention had turned around to the churning mesoanticyclone (one of my favorite words):

One of the cores of the interfering storms started encroaching on our position, so we bailed south once again as dusk began to fall. Structure was waning, but lightning was becoming increasingly visible with the dwindling light. The storm was apparently producing tennis ball sized hail at this time, and Sam's windshield had a big crack in it, so he was on a mission to finish it off. He whipped past us to try and intercept the hail in time:

We stayed at our location and timelapsed lightning:

Our storm finally completely died (and Sam didn't make the hail in time), and an intense line was raging northeastward through western Kansas. We decided to race it to Brewster. Just as we got there, we realized the air was cold, probably in the low 60s. The line was rapidly declining in intensity as it neared, and we could definitely tell the very stable atmosphere was why. We let it roll over us anyway, and got a nice nocturnal shelf shot:

As it rolled over, we had moderately strong winds on the order of 40-50 mph for brief periods, although it was nothing like what it was only half an hour or so earlier in a more unstable airmass. After this intercept, we started eastbound on I-70 for Salina, where we stayed the night for the next day's chase.

SPC Storm Reports:

There were tornadoes, a combination of landspouts and brief supercellular tornadoes, but we weren't lucky enough to catch one. We were initially somewhat upset about missing the one reported on the Quinter storm, but that turned out to be a false report.

GPS Location History: