Rainbows and Lightning

Not every chase i go on ends with a tornado, but it's still not a fail. There is always so much to see and film if you take the time to look. Here are a few photos I took recently on "Failed" chases. The first two are from a tornado warned cell that traveled SE from the NW corner on MO over Chilicothe, MO. I missed the tornado but was able to work on my lightening photo skills. The next three photos I took south of the Kansas City metro around La Cygne, Kansas. It was a heavy rain/small hail cell with no risk of very severe weather. I rainbow formed next to a rain shaft and made for some very interesting photos. Enjoy.

Garden City Tornados

I headed to Garden City out of KC around 11:30 on 4-29-09 to track some cells i expected to pop up in the area. I encountered some flooding in Emporia, took a few pics and kept going. Got to Garden City in the area of the cell i wanted around 6pm. I saw some great structure and stayed on a wall coud i found. A gustnado dropped then a small tornado some time after that. I was hit by 1" hail but golfball and larger was less than one mile away. The ground was covered to appear like it had snowed. I followed the storm and got pics of a couple rain wrapped tornados and some damage. I came across a dairy farm where metal was blown into cows as the tornado passed over. Many cows badly hurt, but there was a gas meter hissing so i had to get out of the area. US-83 was shut down in both directions due to powerlines that ran across the road due to the tornado. I stayed in a dark area and took advantage of the light show to get some lightening pictures. At 11:30 i was ready to go to bed but the road was still closed, i went off road which was crazy as the roads were soaked due to the heavy rains over the last few days. Bed around 12:00.