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5/5/2007

 
 
 
We left the QC area early in the morning on May 5th, with a target of central Kansas.  A massive EF5 tornado had just devastated Greensburg Kansas the night before, and this day was looking like a possible repeat scenario of the night before.  By late morning SPC had upgraded much of Kansas to a high risk for severe thunderstorms.  A high risk only gets issued a few times per year, so things were certainly looking interesting.  
 
By late afternoon a broken line of supercells were traversing central Kansas.  We departed Salina Kansas late in the afternoon and went after a tornado warned cell that was moving up from the southwest.  
 
Soon after leaving Salina we could see the powerful updraft of the supercell in the distance.
 
 
We caught up to the tornado warned supercell near Frederick Kansas.  As we approached we could see a nice beavertail feature extending northeast of the main updraft base.  
 
 
Soon we could see a small wall cloud passing to our west directing under the rain free base.  Rotation was evident, but very slow.
 
 
We watched the wall cloud for 5-10 minutes as the storm passed to the north of our location.  As it got further away the updraft structure was revealed.  A very nice corkscrew type updraft feature was visible.
 
 
Soon it became apparent that the above storm wasn't going to produce, and a new tornado warning went up to our west, so we left this location.
 
We headed west towards Bushton Kansas and intercepted a new supercell there.  Sunset was approaching, and we were quickly running out of time.  Soon a massive lowering developed to the northwest.  This thing was HUGE, and we thought for sure that not only a tornado was imminent, but a large one at that.  There were all kinds of tornado reports coming out of this area, but we never did witness any touchdowns ourselves.  
 
 
The sun had now set, but we waited until complete darkness since we were in great position.  A new supercell passed just to the west right after sunset, and this interesting funnel descended.  It's quite a ways away, but the setting sun in the distance provided some backlighting.  We can't confirm that this was a touchdown, but there were more tornado reports in the area around this time.  My gut feeling is it did touchdown, but there's not enough picture quality to confirm that it actually did.
 
 
This day was a pretty good chase day overall.  We were a little late to the show, which probably kept us from some tornado intercepts, but all in all it was still a fantastic chase day.  Can't beat chasing in Kansas!