Local Chase on April 9, 2011

Long day of waiting for some storms to pop along the dryline, there was a slight risk of tornadoes from the SPC.  Dew Points were from 55 to 64, but as the temperatures rose to lower 90's this just wasn't enough td to get things going.  The HRRR had been showing a couple storms breaking out in Kiowa and Comanche counties (KS) in the late afternoon.

Six o'clock magic..... at about 6:00 p.m. a couple storms popped from Coldwater to Mullinville and began to move east, these were high based and in the beginning it was obvious this would be a "no nado" day.  Low and behold this was the first storms I had been able to chase since Blackwell OK supercell on February 27th.  So I went to Greensburg and parked west of town at the 54/183 junction, radar was showing a nice looking storm, but in reality it was high based and only very little rain.  As it crossed Kiowa county southwest to northeast, it picked up some on the radar scans and dropped tons of small pea sized hail near Trousdale.  I followed it to Macksville KS where the hail and wind ripped the buds from the elm trees, covered the east side of town with pea hail and gave them a great rain shower with some street and gutter flooding.

All in all, for a Kansas storm in April, it was a total junker.  Some chasers I know posted that it was a beautiful storm with great structure,I guess for me and the storms I have been, it was a total junker.  My storm chase partner Robert Hettchen chased the storm on up to Seward KS and was there when it finally acted like a true Kansas storm and dropped some golfball hail, great job Robert, he's quickly becoming a great never give up chaser.

~ weather notes from this storm, CU started popping around 3pm, but cap kept towers down, CAPE was 3500/4000 jules,  it wasn't until the dryline receded back to DDC on the southern end to create a bow or bulge in the dl did the storms fire, and when they did fire they were slow building and slow movers  td in ddc was 93/28 and in pratt 89/63, winds really picked up about 5.30 and where was storm southerly winds when storms popped.

~ equipment and streaming notes,  surprising had 1 to 2 bars of coverage with no amp from haviland to Belpre, lost signal at Mackville for a short time.