Storm Chase Day 1 - May 28th 2013

We left Strathroy, Ontario early in the morning on Tuesday May 28th with a long drive ahead of us. Our hopeful destination was Kansas City, Kansas which is about a 1400km drive or about 15hours.

Heavy rain greeted us just past the border in Port Huron, MI as we headed south towards Detroit. Temperatures were cool to start the journey at only 13 degrees. Once we passed Detroit and were on the southern side of the warm front... skies began to clear and temperatures shot up to the upper 20's along with rather strong winds.

As we continued south through Ohio, some convection greeted us around Lima. Nothing materialized out of it, but did lead to some nice pictures.

Our route took us to around Southern Ohio before turning west and going through Central Indiana and Illinois. The plan was to stick to a more southern route so as not to go through Chicago during rush hour .

 

We had quite a bit of trouble trying to get our WIFI Jet Pack up and running. Having data is essential when you are storm chasing as you need to be watching the radar. After about 8hours we finally figured out the data issue and we were up and running.

Of course once we got data up and running and logged into the radar application we realized there was a big tornado outbreak in Kansas.... if only we were six hours ahead of schedule we would have been witness to some large wedge tornadoes.
Here is what went through Bennington, Kansas on Tuesday May 28th

....but thems the breaks of storm chasing. Can't be everywhere at the same time.
The tornado was rated a EF4. Even though it had done EF3 damage, Doppler on Wheels measured EF-4 winds. Although looks like a monster... it did not do a great deal of damage (such as the Moore, OK twister only a week before), hence the lower rating.

Check out this video on YouTube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4ZAp9UhVNI&feature=player_embedded

Here is a radar capture of the tornado signature near Bennington, Kansas

Finally after about 16hours of driving we settled into Kansas City, Missouri at the EconoLodge... not the greatest hotel, but nonetheless sleep was needed in a big way
Apparently a severe thunderstorm went through the Kansas City area earlier that evening and gave some flash flooding to some regions of the city.

And this ends Day 1 of our storm chasing adventure.