May 19, 2013 Viola, KS tornado

We awoke in Wichita, KS, on May 19th to a moderate risk and a 15 percent hatched tornado-risk area!  And, we were on the western edge of the risk area, so there was really no reason to wander elsewhere.  We enjoyed a lunch in Wichita, and then drifted east a little.  Initiation would probably be a little west of I-35, but by staying east, more options would stay open.  I think that we stopped near or along Highway 77, and we watched the skies and the satellite pictures during the early afternoon.  By 2:30 p.m. or so —- earlier than I preferred —- storms were developing to our west, around Harper County.  It was an easy catch, but usually early convection portends a difficult and long chase day.

We came up to the strongest cell, which was becoming supercellular in western Sedgwick County.  After a couple of stops, we found ourselves only a mile or so northeast of a rapidly developing rotating wall cloud.  A tornadic spin-up commenced and chased us east a little, to the Viola area.  This spin-up was more “dust and debris whirl” than classic Kansas tornado with beautiful condensation funnel, though.  The whirl dissipated rather quickly, apparently, but shortly thereafter the same parent lowering was showing increased rotation and a nice funnel cloud.  It was close, and about to tornado.  I had our group scoot east a mile or so in order to give us a bit of a buffer and to allow us to get a nice view of the show outside of the vans.  We stopped northeast of Viola a mile or so (I think!) along a stretch of north-south road with little-to-no clutter between us and the storm.  And, right on cue, a tornado touched down a couple of miles to our west!  It roped out fairly quickly.

The storm seemed to be ramping upward in intensity as it approached Wichita.  Was a big urban tornadic disaster about to commence?  We hopped on the road east to Haysville, with the big storm on our heels.  It was going HP, though — UGH.  The action area was to our northwest a few miles, but it was rain-wrapped.  We could not see what was going on in there.  The storm moved over the Wichita Airport, and another tornado was reported, with damage.  Throngs of folks were on the roads, most of them going south in order to get out of the path of the cell.  It was getting dangerous, as it was taking a minute or two to get through some 4-way stops.

So, I decided to forget about trying to stay close to the Wichita storm.  As it turns out, Wichita dodged a big bullet — the storm dropped some large hail on the city, but the tornado action ceased near the airport.  The remainder of our chase was a rather lame wild-goose chase with no satisfying intercepts.  We saw a cell or two along the KS/OK border in the vicinity of I-35 (we were as far south as Blackwell).  These raced northeastward, and dragged us all of the way to the poor-road network area around Elk City (west of Independence).  Though the storm of interest showed some promise tornadically as it tore through the region, we had little luck staying close to it.  The big tornado of the day was down south, near Shawnee, OK.  We were in Independence, KS, for the night.

The images below are of the “Viola/Wichita” supercell and tornado.  The final image shows the big HP blob as it approaches Wichita.