Two Stormbruiser pages were made for today — the chase account, and this one, which contains the colorful storm images captured near sunset.
The atmosphere above Pratt and Kingman counties in Kansas provided a jaw-dropping display of color and cloud structure at sunset today. The afternoon and evening chase around Pratt County and western Reno County was mildly entertaining, as a handful of marginally severe storms exhibited some brief low-level rotation and lowerings. We placed ourselves in front of a tail-end supercell along the Pratt/Kingman county line towards the end of the chase. This cell was not tornadic, but we were impressed by the wicked cloud base and structure in and around the RFD cut into the rear of the updraft base. Near Cunningham, KS, we permitted the storm base to drift overhead and a little east of us. Some nuisance rain fell on us along U.S. 54, so I scooted south on a paved road from Cunningham towards St. Leo. There was nothing but bright, blue sunny skies behind the storm, and I knew that a great storm photography opportunity was developing as the sun neared the horizon.
As we drove south through western Kingman County, the light and color in the sky were becoming more insane by the minute, and it was time to stop — anywhere! We edged westward on a dirt road to a slightly elevated and flat field of wheat, and quickly exited the van. A small grain bin back to the east was nice to have for image composition!
We spent perhaps ten minutes at this location, and then I decided to relocate, though I can’t recall exactly why! I think we were getting rained on again! We went another mile or two south towards St. Leo, and spotted a large, pretty, isolated, and sunlit house up on a hill on the east side of the road. Chad steered the van 2/3 of the way up the driveway, and we stopped to take more images. We were a little tentative — what would the house residents think if they saw eight people gathered around a white van in their driveway, all of them taking pictures of their house?! Lucky for us, no one was around and no one came out to see what we were up to. The storm base behind the structure was a fiery orange/red…I think I’ll call it “St. Leo’s Fire.” We stayed out as the sunset light faded, and caught some lightning in the storm as it continued to our northeast.
My old Queen albums proudly proclaimed that “no synthesizers were used” in the production of the music therein. Here “no adjustments were made in Photoshop to artificially boost the saturation of the colors!” I have made these appear as close to reality as possible. Contrast was increased a little in some cases to help “liven up” the image, but this is really how the sky appeared on this evening!
Bill Hark says
Beautiful images. Mine are not nearly as good but still nice. That was an amazing chase day; more memorable than many tornado days.