Day 7 - Eastern Kansas

SUN 31 MAY

We left our hotel in Kearney NE mid-morning to drive 4-5 hours southwards back into Kansas for today's target of Florence KS. Stopped at Salina KS to grab some lunch, and arrived within the risk area by mid-afternoon. Several boundaries (dryline, differential heating and residual outflow boundaries from early morning MCS activity) were draped across the area, and would potentially provide the focus for thunderstorm development later.

The airmass was fairly capped, despite being hot and humid with MLCAPE up to 5,000 J/kg. There were several attempts at initiation, but it wasn't really until 19:00L onwards that we finally saw sustained thunderstorms developing in the vicinity of the I-35 corridor between Wichita KS and Emporia KS. We kept ahead of these, driving through Eureka KS then up to just south of Madison KS. By sunset (20:30L) an impressive low-precipitation supercell had evolved near Matfield Green KS and was drifting slowly eastwards towards us, the structure lit up brilliantly by the setting sun. We sat in the same position for the best part of 3 hours watching this and subsequent supercells run ESE'wards just to our north as darkness descended. These were producing a ridiculous amount of CG lightning, it was hard to know at times which direction to focus our attention!

A tornado warning was issued at 21:44L but we couldn't see it ourselves, relying heavily on lightning to reveal any rotation. However, after getting back to our hotel in Salina KS at 02:00L (we had to drive 2 hours to get closer to our target for the next day) I discovered that I had captured the brief nocturnal tornado at 21:40L only revealed by two well-timed CG lightning strikes!

Brief nocturnal tornado from this right-split supercell thunderstorm near Madison KS, revealed by well-timed CG strikes

Closer look at the tornado and CG lightning