Day 12: The Last Chase

Hello everyone,

This has been our last day of chasing storms and it has been quite the day. We finally met up with our very special guest, Professor Barrett! He was our teacher and mentor alongside LCDR Burich when we took the Tornadoes and Severe Convective Storms class last year. He first did SWIFT with the first group of Midshipmen in 2010. We had a very nice lunch at the Black Bison Pub with him and caught up. Once we finished that we began the chase.

Agony could describe the situation we found ourselves in. Storms were popping up to our south, east, and north. We had a plethora of favorable conditions right where we were at but no storms. Then there was the boundary peeling back causing some initiation to our west. If the boundary met with our favorable conditions we thought we could have had something big. We were at a crossroads with the options, all of which were a significant distance away. We headed east and stopped regularly to convene and waited to see if anything else changed. Prof Barrett kept in contact regularly with us with his rental car. Right as we were about to decide on a storm and drive the distance, a cumulus cloud turned right behind our backs near Scott City. "Scotty" was the storm's name. 

It was heartwarming to watch his first bolts of lightning. As we watched "Scotty" grow from a cumulus cloud we noticed something. He was starting to split into a right and left mover. Eventually he split with the left mover and somehow the left mover became cyclonic (which is really abnormal!). 

We dubbed the left mover "Skylar." Next thing you know "Skylar" started splitting and and other storm "Patricia" popped out.

These three storms moved northward and did not seem to be very stream wise. This is bad for tornadogenesis. Teenagers, they do exactly what you don't want them to do. We hung out with them but there didn't seem to be much hope as they sputtered all over. We started moving north when Scotty started gaining traction. We checked the HRRR model again and saw that it predicted that it would row into a monster of a storm by dawn. We turned right onto I-70 to chase Scotty one last time. He just needed time and self-discovery to get life together. 

Eventually Scotty got a severe warning but we got discouraged again because he exhibited potential anti-cyclonic behavior and cold surface temperatures. We started to move north to meet up with the tumultuous storms in Nebraska. Then right as we did that the radar indicated Scotty had strong cyclonic vorticity and developed something of a wall cloud. Apparently he liked to mess with us. Even with all the tornado indicators, all we got out of Scotty was rain, wind, and hail. Although the cumulus cloud we watched grow up wasn't what we expected, it was still a strong storm in its own right.

As we started our trek back to the academy we found ourselves in a sea of storms. We had to adjust our course to avoid them and their hail riddled cores. Surprisingly, there are hills in Kansas and we couldn't see the far away ground most times. Lightning was the only thing allowing us to see the storms in the distance besides radar. We saw some scud clouds along with some tendrils moving as the lightning flashes continued. Maybe it was our imaginations, but maybe -just maybe- it could have been a tornado.

We have some serious road ahead of us. Although we don't have any more chases to go on, we hope you stay tuned for our closing thoughts.