Tornado #1!!!

Yesterday was what storm chasing is all about. The day started off in Shamrock, TX and after a few glances at data, it was apparent that we were going to have to head north towards West Central Kansas. Our target was Dodge City, KS, and we made it there in plenty of time to grab some food and check over data. The moisture axis was a little to the east of DDC, but better convergence do to the dryline was occurring just to the west of DDC. From Dodge City we headed North on Highway 23 and followed a towering cumulus field just off to our West. It was apparent that the cap was strong, and we were hoping for a storm to pop the cap and tap into the energy available. Sure enough, the storm we were following eventually turned into an HP supercell with great mid-level striations due to good upper level rotation. We stuck with this cell on the southern end of the boundary while it went through a few cycles of occluding and reforming. We realized that we were a little too far to the West of the storm, so we hopped on I-70 and traveled East towards Wa Keeney, KS. At Wa Keeney, we went north to keep up with the developing storm, and then the fun started. As we were getting great pictures just to the Southeast of the HP supercell, the mesocyclone wrapped up nicely with an obvious RFD clear spot punching in on the western side of the storm. Watching the rotation of the meso and the wall cloud was miraculous. A funnel cloud quickly spun up and we were treated to a brief tornado touchdown just west of highway 283 in Graham county KS. The funnel was visible for almost 10 min when the funnel roped out in a beautiful fashion. We then saw another HP type cell starting to form to our South and West and we realized we were going to have problems. We stayed to watch the mesocyclone occlude and then knew we had to head South on 283 to get out of the precipitation forming to our Southwest. Heading south, we were pounded with nickel to penny size hail that covered the road and reminded me of January! Our maneuver south paid off as we found out that the nickel to penny size hail we encountered turned into tennis ball size hail in Northern Graham County! We then decided to head east on I-70 to get ahead of the HP cells that were quickly evolving into intense linear convection and racing eastward. Booking east put us near Hays, KS where we were able to quickly book a room and head back out to catch some lightning pictures. While taking lightning shots, a tornado warning was issued for Ellis County which is where Hays is located… Heading back into town, people were going crazy thinking that Hays was going to be destroyed! We had a great view of the storm with the frequent lighting and we were sure that there was not a tornado with the storm. Needless to say, the storm barreled through Hays and produced prolific lightning, hail, and wind. It was definitely a great end to a great day. Today we are on our way to Borger, TX in hopes of an even better day than yesterday…Today moisture and shear both look better than yesterday so we will see what happens… :) I will be posting many pictures tonight...