June 7 2009 Northeast Kansas / Northwest Missouri

Mark Sefried and I decided to tag team this one and headed out the day before to bust in Iowa. We started the morning on the Iowa side of Nebraska City and headed south for northeast Kansas. We ended up settling on Horton, KS as our starting point for the day. We met up with Scott Weberpal and had lunch at a sweet bar n grill, which the name slips me now. Boomer's, or something fitting like that. After lunch, the three of us found a nice little park next to a lake and sat around for a couple hours waiting on signs of initiation. After a while a cu field began to organize to our west and above us, so we gassed up and got back to the main highway. Thunderstorms began rapidly forming to our north, so back up Highway 73 we went to intercept the northern supercell near Seneca, KS. Not sure I feel like going overly in depth on this one as it never really came close to producing. Yet again we were treated to a beautiful supercell that would fail to produce a tornado. Beautiful structure all the way up the tower, but never a really good wall cloud or anything that resembled imminent tornado production. A seperate supercell was ongoing, and crossing into Missouri to our southeast. It became clear that this was our only real shot, so since it was on the way home we blasted back that way. We avoided the massive hail by picking a highway that did -not- go right into the core. A little map searching can do wonders, rather than just following a caravan of chasers into the beast. Sometimes I wonder if it's all the chasers really doing the same thing, or if it's just the one guy in front with all the rest just going along and assuming he's got the right idea. Doug Mitchell and his group were smart enough to follow us down whatever highway it was that we took around the hail core. Not sure this second supercell is worth writing a ton about either at this point. It produced grape fruit sized hail, and had decent structure at times. But again, no tornado. $@(*&@)@*@&! The most excitement came after dark. We were unintentionally following the supercell back home around Highway 136 east across northern Missouri. It eventually lost it's tornado, conincidentally when the couplet on the storm really intensified. We were about 10 miles ahead of the storm and a couple miles south, so we took a nearby highway north a few miles and let it approach us. I was able to snap a few lightning shots of a wall cloud approaching our area. Once the rain began overtaking us we blasted south. That's when a tornado report popped up reporting a tornado crossing the highway about 1/2 mile from where we sat. Never heard if this was verified or not. Likely not, but it was about as close to exciting as the day came.

Mark, doing the data check at the park in Horton, Kansas.

Scott Weberpal, doing the same.

Our little park in Horton. A shame this was probably the best thing I saw all day.

What?! Towers are actually trying to break the cap? Let me see...

Storm near Seneca, Kansas.

Really pretty storm, but not the lack of any well-defined wall cloud. Of course, that's not the end all be all for tornado production, but it just doesn't scream tornado at all.

Northern storm withering away while we aim our sights for northwest Missouri.

Wall cloud on the storm now near Chillicothe, MO.

Time Lapse of the June 7th supercell near Seneca, Kansas