June 9, 2005 - Stockton, KS 

Tornado - Long Lived Supercell
 
Chase Account by: Brian Thalken
 


(Click on pictures to view larger size.) 

Jim Kaiser and I left Lincoln around 1pm targeting the Nebraska/Kansas border along Hwy 283.  Thanks to Jonathan Garner for giving us updates, we were able to get to north central Kansas and catch up to this massive supercell spinning along Hwy 24.  The cell had been tornado warned from 3pm until we were finally able to intercept around 5:20pm.  Six miles south of Stockton, we went west for one mile.  As soon as we stopped, a tornado became visible in front of the rain curtain.  This evolved into an elephant trunk.  We were able to capture about 7 minutes of video until the tornado roped out.  From our perspective, this tornado moved very little.  While the tornado was on the ground, a second tornado developed to the north of the first.  Unlike the first, this tornado tracked to the northeast towards Stockton.  Thinking that we wouldn't be able to make it to Hwy 24 in Stockton before the second tornado, we moved east and then north.  By the time we got in front of the storm, the cell was gusting out.  While positioning ourselves east, we observed two gustnadoes side by side.  We then let the storm chase us back to Lincoln.

NWS Radar Loops from Goodland, KS and Hastings, NE.