Day 12: Not Not in Kansas Anymore

What do you do after a day like Monday, May 21?  A day meant to be filled with tornadoes of unimaginable proportion, instead consisting of hours of chaser gridlock, minor hail, and a funnel with about as much proof behind it as a ghost on the Travel Channel.  Well, one option would certainly be to turn tail and head home- there's no shame there.  Or, you can take the lemons that life gives you (in this case, cold core storm formation) and you can make proverbial lemonade (follow said cold cores up into Kansas).  That's right, the SWIFT team decided to head back to Kansas!

As you can see, there was a 5% tornado risk and the atmospheric parameters suggested there was a good chance we'd get to see a tornado! At the very least, we'd hopefully see a severe storm.  So the SWIFT team packed up and headed out of Norman towards the flat plains of Kansas.  We watched the storm develop from nothing to the supercell seen on the radar below; we watched her try and try and try to form a tornado.  She would organize into the classic structure and then fall apart, only to reorganize again.  It was a suspenseful couple of hours, especially because the storms from the day before caused a lot of flooding that closed a lot of roads.  We were mid-chase many times when out of nowhere we were blocked  by a closed road.  Ultimately, the storm did not form a tornado, though even if it had we could not reach it due to the flooded road system. 

However, the day was not a bust despite the low hanging wall clouds that never did anything! We got to see some great cloud structure, the beautiful state of Kansas, and more importantly had the best chicken fried steak this side of the country.  LCDR Burrich and the 2018 SWIFT team found this homestyle country restaurant the year before and he maintained the entire trip that it was the best chicken fried steak he had ever had, so of course we went again this year. I must say, it lived up to the hype!  After our satisfying dinner, we headed east to the far side of Kansas City to sleep for the night.