After
watching the models for over a week, the decision was
finalized to take a trip out to the plains for a one day
chase. I was joined by my son Ryan Thies and our
friend Tyler Schlitt as we headed out to Overland Park,
Kansas to meet up with Brian Stertz. We never really
had a set target other than the weather model suggested we
would head southwest of Topeka, Kansas. The target was
definitely a moveable target as the weather models made for
some very complicated decisions. So our moveable
targets picked were Carbondale, Burlington, and Yates
Center, Kansas as we kept sliding south as we watched storms
develop. A storm on the tail end of a semi-line of
storm cells kept drawing our attention and moving us
south. We kept our eye on a couple of the cells to the
north of our target cell as they raced by us as we crept
south. With the fast storm
speeds, we were constantly looking into the future to pick
out our routes in order to not fall behind these quick
moving storms. All of the cells we were watching
seemed to have a minor pulse every now and then
becoming severe warned for hail and wind, but none of them
ever got to the point of looking tornadic.
As the southern cell approached us, we
worked our way northeast up to Garnett, Kansas and
followed this cell up to Overland Park, Kansas where we let
the cell go. We then saw a small dryline supercell picking
up steam near Edgerton, Kansas. We lined up the track and
waited for this cell just to the west of the Kansas City
metro area, at the Kansas Highway 10 and the Ridgeview exit
area. It was a small barrel updraft with plenty of rotation.
It seemed to have a lower base than earlier supercells, but
the strong inflow was absent, a cold outflow soon
overwhelmed the updraft.
We followed the storm and its pronounced wall cloud through
downtown Kansas City all the way to North Kansas City, but a
weakening trend gave us the signal to end the chase.
Certainly not an ideal setup.
Early development and no supercell spacing doomed this chase
day. When parameters were favorable...the cap was a negative. When the cap went away
and surface based convection organized, the inflow and
stronger instability was gone.
Storm Prediction Center
Storm Reports
45.0
Hours
- 926
Miles
|
Click
on the link below to see video of some of
these storms.
|
April 13, 2018 
