Hello from a stormy Salina, Kansas!

We began the day in the Kansas City, KS area and continued on our journey west. We travelled west along the I-70 then south at Oakley toward Tribune. Here we got to meet up with friends and storm chase veterans Jason Persoff and Chris Kridler! We typically only get to see them when we're out storm chasing so it was great to get to chase with them today. Chris also had a new-to-storm-chasing friend with her, Alethea Kontis.

Storms were firing but were really having a tough time getting going and weren't lasting very long. We ended up meandering back north and east with storm development until we made it to the Quinter, KS area.

We set up just south of the interstate and watched the strangest storm try and take shape. It had some amazing inflow but visual looked very strange. We stayed with it, knowing that it had such strong inflow and was sitting in a favourable area. Eventually, close to sundown, we could see it start to really try. It developed a couple of wallclouds but then the business area started to become obscured with rain though, with lightning flashes, we could see it was still in there.

Storm reports via the NWS SPC for today (May 18).

Eventually, convection from the south took over and killed the storm. We had to endure a long drive to the hotel due to blinding rain but we made it here safely.

Tomorrow was looking like a northeast Kansas and southeast Nebraska day but it seems like southwest Oklahoma is also in play. We're currently looking over the models now and will decide on our location for tomorrow. 

NWS SPC outlook for tomorrow (May 19).NWS SPC tornado outlook for tomorrow (May 19).

We got in too late so I won't be posting any pictures of videos tonight.