Chris and I left the St. Louis area just before noon with a tentative target of the KC Metro area after a stop in Columbia. Shortly after we got on the road, we encountered a photogenic shelf cloud from the morning MCS. The photo was taken on Interstate 64 near the Olive/Clarkson exit. Thankfully, we missed most of the convection as we drove west on 64 and then 70.
We stopped in Columbia a little before 2pm and spent about 90 minutes in town. We had an awesome lunch at Flat Branch Brewery and Restaurant. Since moving from Columbia in 2008, I have been back through town only twice. Flat Branch is the kind of place that makes me miss living in Columbia. If you ever go there, try the Green Chile Chicken Fingers appetizer. They are the best chicken fingers I have ever tried and they go well with any of their microbrews. After lunch, we stopped to see our buddy and occasional chase partner Mike Baker. We were going to attempt to wait til 4pm to leave Columbia so he could chase with us, but the storms did not allow us to wait that long. A tornado watch had been issued for eastern KS and western MO and storms were starting to fire just west of Kansas City.
We made good time heading west on 70 and were just east of the KC metro area by 4:30. After a thorough look at radar trends, we decided to exit the interstate at Odessa and take state roads into Cass County, south of KC. Little did we know that this was our best decision of the day. Shortly thereafter, the highway we would have travelled in KC was enveloped in a flash flood from the slow moving storms.
We positioned ourselves perfectly to intercept the best looking cell on radar. It was the only supercellular structure evident, and by the time it crossed into Cass County it had begun to develop a hook echo. We were positioned 10 miles ESE of the storm when it was first tornado warned (the only tornado warning in the state all day!). We decided against travelling further west to intercept because of a lack of eastern road options. This decision caused us to miss the only brief tornado of the day, but we had no way of knowing that it would only produce a tornado in Harrisonville. We intercepted the storm just north of Garden City, MO. By the time the storm reached us, the tornado had lifted, but it still had a weakly organized, rotating wall cloud which produced a couple very brief funnels. The storm was moving slowly enough that we were able to track it east for a while. Shortly after our initial intercept, the storm became very outflow dominant on its southern flank. An outflow boundary, marked by a shelf cloud extended from the updraft base in an arc to the southwest. The storm continued to have a wall cloud and a very healthy updraft which rapidly sucked scud clouds up into the storm. After a short period of time, we gave up on the storm as the outflow cut off any good inflow into the storm.
Once we bailed off our storm, we decided to head back to St. Louis. Given the very marginal nature of the tornado threat, we considered this chase a success. We were on the only storm that produced a tornado, or was even tornado warned, in the entire state of Missouri all day. Only one other tornado was reported with the storms and it was in eastern KS, farther away than we were willing to go.
I have HD video of the wall cloud which I may post on youtube if I am feeling motivated. Chris has a few still pictures of the action. I may post a few stills of the wall cloud later if demand dictates.
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