June 22, 2003 Storm Chase

Note: While the Aurora supercell produced a record-setting hailstone (7"), an equally impressive supercell to its south attained the largest and strongest mesocyclone (5.4 mi diameter / 132mph) ever recorded!

	Ahhh, TCu erupt near my target. Things are looking good...or so I thought.		Later on the cap budged slightly and allowed this meager Cb to develop. Well this would collapse with time and three other Cbs tried to organize as well. In the end it wasn't a pretty sight as four orphan anvils were counted! The other WI chasers stopped by and watched this sad show as well. David Hoadley also stopped by later on...a pleasant surprise!
	Chris Gullickson had commented on some activity to our SE which didn't look much better at the time. We then separated and I decided to get some quick data on where the subsidence inversion was not as strong. This was the view about 30 minutes later to the ESE showing some TCu well north of the historic Aurora supercell. More TCu blew up upon entering Grand Island.		Somehow we all met up again under this supercell near Aurora. Here's what I believe was a brief low-level meso to the north of HWY 34. RFD curtains were wrapping around this feature.
	Successive low-level mesos developed and occluded one after the other.		RFD and meso (brightness and contrast adjusted)
	Looks good, but this was not rotating.		A stronger RFD core was in place here which we hoped would focus the rotation a bit more.
	Looks good, but again this was not rotating.		Weak inflow to the wall cloud at battle with an expanding wet RFD.
	All quadrants really did have something to watch.		Final view of the disorganizing updraft. I never did see the large/record hailstones (heavy rainfall likely melted it all by this point) but did manage to get some quarter size stones to the east just after this.

Back to Chase Logs