May 5, 2008 Garden City, KS Supercell

This was Day 5 for Tour 1, with 11 guests and my drivers Jennifer Dunn and Bob (“I just opened a new tab”) Conzemius.  We left the Soft Pillow Inn, did lunch and laundry, and drifted southwest of Garden City a little and waited for storm development.  My forecast turned out to be pretty good, as storms developed near Lakin, in the county west of Garden City (GCK).  The Lakin cell exhibited fine structure as it crept eastward towards GCK.  We stayed just ahead of it on U.S. 50.  The cell was somewhat high-based, and was not a good tornado candidate, however.  A new cell developed nearby to its northeast, and had a much lower base.  It was just to our north, north of Charleston.  A wall cloud developed and lightning increased on this cell, but low-level rotation was weak.  Eventually, numerous cells developed in a linear fashion and the party was over.  Four-inch hailstones were observed  with the primary supercell on the south side of Garden City, shortly after we exited the town.  It was a relatively very easy and rewarding chase, and only a total of 213 miles for the day after arriving at the Days Inn in Dodge City.