Target Area: Emporia, Kansas
Chase Area: Emporia, Kansas
Observations: thunderstorms
Distance: 790 miles
Time: 15.5 hours
Chase Team: Jeff Makowski and myself
SPC Convective Outlook: Slight Risk (Click to see SPC products, data, and storm reports)
Chase Setup: A shortwave trough was located over the Northern Plains. A surface low was positioned in northeast Kansas with a cold front trailing to the southwest and a warm front extending southeast through Missouri. Ahead of the cold front in southeast Kansas, temperatures were in the mid-80s with dewpoints in the mid-70s. Surface winds were from the south in the warm sector. CAPE values ranged from 2000 to 4000 J kg-1 though shear was fairly weak.
Blog Entries:
September Chasing (before)
On the Way to Kansas (before)
Chase Log: Not much to say about this day...we drove up I-335 towards Emporia, thinking we could play either along the warm front a bit further north and east, or along the cold front to the south. Some grunge storms stayed around northeast Kansas for much of the day, and we wound up waiting around for a while for clouds to start bubbling in our area.
By early evening, storms had started to form along the cold front, with the biggest cluster up in northeast Kansas. The storms quickly lined out though, so we didn't have much to play with aside from a semi-isolated storm in front of the line for a bit.