April 17, early morning severe thunderstorm warnings.

I was awakened around 12:30 am. by the weather radio alerting for a severe thunderstorm watch streatching from southwest through central Kansas. SPC had a slight risk circle for southwest/southcentral for possible hail/high winds Wed. evening/Thursday morning. Then at around 1 am. a thunderstorm warning was issued for Barton,Russell and western Ellsworth counties. I got up and loaded my laptop into the pickup and headed west on I-70, punching through a non-severe storm before turning off at the 156 jct. and headed for Ellsworth and the warned storm. I discovered that Wichita radar was down on my laptop radar program so I switched to Hastings Neb. radar and set up 2 miles east of Ellsworth and waited for the storm to move in. It did,pounding me with heavy rain and pea hail and not too much wind. It was obvious to me after watching the radar, that the worst part of the storm was south of Ellsworth down to almost Lyons. I made multiple reports to KSAL which the DJ talked about when he broke in with warning info updates. I also made reports to the NWS Wichita and KSN TV. I drove ahead to Brookville on highway 40 and set up again and let the storm pass over to see what it had in it---more of the same, heavy rain and a few plinks of pea hail. Reports of wind damage and large hail started coming in to my south along and south of the highway 4 corridor where the storm was bowing out the most. I drove to west of Salina on '40 and watched the heaviest part of the storm pass south of Salina then pivot east of Salina and clear the area. I made it home at 3:30 am. but at least I got to work around some severe storms.

Intercept of the April 24, night time super cell/tornado north of Beloit Ks.

The SPC had a moderate risk outlook for north central Kansas for today/tonight. I was thinking that a storm might form out west and track into central Kansas along I-70 but a significant supercell formed farther north around Goodland/Colby area and tracked east through Hill City-Stocton-Beloit-Concordia. I watched all this unfold on my laptop at home, thinking that I won't chase, but eating my heart out with all the continuous rotation this storm displayed. As I was laying in bed watching KSN breaking in on the Tonight Show on the TV with severe reports, it looked like the storm might be building to the south maybe brushing the northern part of Lincoln Co. That was it, I was going! Of course it was the storm's way of suckering me out. I drove north on highway 14 through Lincoln and up to Beloit as the storm never built south at all. I stopped on the hill one mile south of Beloit just as the south edge of the storm was about to hit the town. At this time the storm was not tornado warned but I could see a shelf cloud with two significant lowerings just west/northwest of the town. I remembered the NWS text on the storm earlier in the evening stating numerous circulations were located on the front of the storm. At this time I was startled to see a large powerflash somewhere on the north side of the town, then immediately another powerflash in the same area. The lights in town went out with this second flash and I'm wondering---tornado or straight line winds?!!! I called in a report of what I saw, powerflashes near a lowering of the cloud base. Spotting was tough, simillar to Hoisington Ks. supercell--very little lightning below the cloud base. I then drove through town to see if there was and where was the damage finding no damage in town. As I was about in the middle of town I saw another powerflash to my northeast, WHOW! I turned east on highway 9 and saw better structure to my northeast, a bowl lowering quickly changing to a ragged funnel then back to a smooth bowl. At this time the weather radio stated that a house was destroyed 3 miles north of Beloit on highway 14. I decided to backtrack and check this out for the radio/tv newsies because I was behind the storm and probably could not catch up with it. Just as I pulled up to highway 14, police were setting up a road block and I talked with the officer learning that a house had been unroofed, power lines were down but no injuries. Certainally this was where I saw the first two power flashes, and after talking with the officer, I cleared the the area, called in reports to the radio and TV stations and went home.

May 1, LP supercell Lincoln/Ottawa Counties.

I had been watching the severe warned storms in Oklahoma, southeast and northeast Kansas on my laptop Thursday evening as I worked around the farm. By just before sundown, the cold front was plowing through central Kansas and some thunderstorms were developing from Ellsworth through Lincoln and on north. I was putting out cattle mineral in the Lincoln Co. pasture when the Ellsworth Co. cell intensified just to my west. I watched it develop into a low precipitation supercell and as the south part of it moved over me I recieved pea hail for a moment. As the storm raced to the northeast, I snapped some pictures of a wispy hail shaft and then a inflow tail coming in from the south side. Soon a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for the storm as it moved into Ottawa County and a small hook echo apeared on my laptop. Jeremy and Meghan was 5 miles to my northeast and saw some mid rotation as the storm passed them. All in all this was a neat storm to see, I was suprised to see it form waaaay behind the dryline though. It's been 2 years since I've seen a LP supercell.

May 5, severe thunderstorm warning Russell through Rice counties.

Storm Prediction Center had a slight risk outlook for central/western Kansas this day. It rained all morning and part of the afternoon here at home. Around 5 pm. a storm formed north of Hays, (on the west side of the morning's remnant rain area) and was severe warned. Jeremy and I intercepted this storm east of Russell on I-70 encountering hail to quarters. We followed the core through Dorrance then south finding pea to quarter size hail pouring down so heavily that we left tracks through the hail on the ground. This was reported to the NWS Wichita, and KSN TV. At times the hail was so loud on the pickup that the NWS forecaster could not hear what I was saying!! To try to keep up with the storm, we drove to Wilson, then south to Hollyrood where we caught up with the back side of the storm. Three miles west of Hollyrood we encountered a blast of wind that shook the truck and then blew off my magnent strobe light from the top. This was reported to the NWS as we drove up to highway 156 where we saw emergency vehicles going south and then saw a semi that had been blown over on it's side. We drove to highway 4 then east and set up between Bushton and Geneseo, watching some downward decending air kick up plums of dust, (an RFD?) just to our west. We drove to Highway 4/14 junction then south back into the core having more of the same---pea to quarter size hail pounding down. At this time, (8:30) it was getting dark, so I pulled off the storm and went home. Today, (May 6) we're in a slight risk with a moderate risk just to our northwest, so maybe more of the same.

May 6, severe thunderstorm/tornado warning for Barton County.

Around 4 in the afternoon I noticed severe storms developing north of the Garden City area moving east northeast towards central Kansas. After watching the radar for a while I figured I had time to go to fire training at Bavaria before the storms moved into the western area of central Kansas. Unfortionetely the storms sped up because a half hour into training my chase partner called stating that Barton Co. had a tornado warning just issued. I headed home and picked up Jeremy while Jason (my chase pard) headed for the storm. We got on the storm SE of Ellsworth just as the tornado warning was dropped but a severe thunderstorm warning continued. We saw a spectacular high precipitation mothership supercell to our south but saw nothing severe in our area. Jason was about 18 miles south of us and he experienced higher winds and pea hail but the severe part of the storm was still south of his location---the severe reports came in south of Lyons. We initially thought the north end of the storm would require a warning for Ellsworth Co. but the storm just fell apart within minutes---an effective "kill" by our chase team!! After that we met up and checked out our pictures and went home.