featuring Connor Mockett
Hello, everyone! Welcome back to another week of Life with Connor the Weatherman. I am back from my Chasecation down in Tornado Alley, and wow, what a time that was. I have so many stories to tell about this trip over the next many columns, so this story will be the first of many. I’d like to tell the story of our first couple of chases, that being May 18th and 19th. So, strap in for the ride and read along!
May 18th was a day Tom, Jordan, and I had zero expectations for. There was only a very, very marginal risk for severe thunderstorms in central Kansas. But, we’re down there to chase storms, so we ended up chasing even though the likelihood of seeing anything was very low. We had stayed in Oklahoma City the night before (the 17th), so the drive to get to our target area wasn’t long at all, only about 2.5 to 3 hours. That target was around Wichita, Kansas. We left OKC around 10:30am, made some stops at some local landmarks like Pop 66 (if you haven’t heard of that, search it up, it was crazy inside), and headed up to Kansas.
After getting a quick bite to eat, filled up with gas and headed west of the city to sit on a dirt road in an open field to watch some updrafts bubble. Finally one of the updrafts north of Wichita started to take over and began spitting out some lightning bolts. We then headed northeast towards the storm. We drove for about 50 minutes to get to the storm, but unfortunately, the storm had fallen apart before we even got there.
North of Wichita, another storm updraft became visible. Our radar indicated that it was at 50,000 feet into the sky which tells us the storm is healthy and continuing to develop. So we decided to go after that storm only about 10 minutes away. This storm was absolutely crawling. Honestly, it looked like it was probably stationary. We sat in the same spot on one dirt road for almost an hour just watching the storm try to develop. Eventually, we realized the storm was dying off. So not much happened that day.
We knew May 19th was going to be the first big chase day for our team, so we all got together with our laptops and iPads and forecasted our own target area for the morning. We decided on Hays and Russel, Kansas, along the I-70 corridor in Central Kansas.
The morning of May 19, after following many smaller tornadoes, we finally met up with a bigger tornado near Wilson, Kansas. This tornado was much wider than the first one, and its rotation looked stronger to the eye than the first tornado shortly before that we had followed. A big dusty tornado, but more visible than the ones before. This storm was so green, the most green I’ve ever seen in a storm. It was crazy.
That second tornado was on the ground for a few minutes. It got wrapped in rain eventually, obscuring any view of it from the vantage point that we had. At this point, the storm’s structure was so amazing, the shelf cloud was basically touching the ground, which we weather people like to call a ground scraper. A couple photos from May 19th will be in my 2025 Calendar, I’m sure.
Once the storm began to get inhaled by a line of other storms behind it, we called off our chase in Salina, Kansas, and went for a steak meal. Steak is an absolute staple in the storm chasing community. If you see a tornado, you have a steak for supper at a restaurant. No way around that one. And really, who can say no to a perfectly cooked steak at a steakhouse? From there we drove to Goodland, Kansas to our next hotel. After a 3 hour drive, and we ended up getting there at about 1:00am Mountain Time. Why so far and late you ask? Well, we had to chase Colorado the next day! That story will come in the next column though, because it’s also a long one.
I love to tell these stories about chases, it’s like reliving the moment in my brain. I’ll see you all in the next column when I talk about Colorado. Thanks for reading!
