Storm Chasing - The Great Bend Storm

15 June 2017

This morning The Weather Channel said we were in the perfect spot to track storms in eastern Kansas.

We met up in the lobby at 10:15 and went to Bill’s room for a briefing. He showed us the charts and the target for today was pretty obvious with a large storm forecasted to erupt in central Kansas in a matter of hours.

So, with limited time, we headed out, travelling west straight to Great Bend where we could already see the towering clouds in the distance. Bill gave us a chance to pick up something to eat on the way and we turned north towards a system developing in the distance.

There were several other storm chasing vans pulled off to the side of the road, and we stopped a short distance away to watch the storm. A few minutes after we arrived, the other chasers took off.

Bill explained what was happening with the system and we spent a few minutes taking pics and watching the lightning in the distance. Then they decided to head east to get ahead of the storm. We made another quick stop but got back in the vans when the dust came at us.

I got a quick video of the swirling clouds before the dust arrived. (16x speed)

Here, Bill turned us over to another tour leader named Chris Gullikson until Monday. Bill had to go back to California for the weekend and would return on Monday.

We said hello to Chris and headed east again.

Then, a few minutes down the road, we happened to look behind us to see a tornado.

Well, you want to see six people tumble out of a van in a hurry.

At first, they said it was just a dustnado, but later learned that someone had confirmed it as a tornado.

To those that had seen other tornadoes, it wasn’t much, but for me, it was a highlight. And it made for a pretty pic.

We kept driving east trying to outrun the storm but it was going at a good clip itself. If I heard right, they didn’t expect to be able to get ahead of it, so we turned south to look at another one that was heading towards Wichita. The edge of the storm we were leaving was very well defined.

We stopped for a few minutes to watch the storm behind us. The outflow winds were very strong and we later learned that the Wichita airport measured wind up to 85 mph. That’s category one hurricane winds.

We headed down to Wichita with lightning continuing the whole way. It was long lasting white lightning and one tourmate noted it was the kind of lightning she didn’t like to be out in the open with. We didn’t stop and ran into the winds and heavy rain as we entered Wichita. We had about ninety minutes to sunset but the sky was black as night.

The weather was too rough to continue chasing, so just before eight, we pulled into the same Best Western Hotel we had stayed at the night before. As we waited in the van, hail started to fall.

Checking back into the same hotel was a great way to end a day that included lots of lightning, a baby tornado, hurricane force winds, dust and biblical rainfall.

I spent the night getting caught up on everything and our meeting was scheduled for 9:30 the next morning.