May 12, 2004 Harper County, KS MISSup  

Yet another SPC slight risk chase day.  After having had so much success on slight risk days i wasnt even afraid to go well away from home for a slight.  However,  this slight seemed more than a slight to me.  It seemed that there was a very good potential for supercell thunderstorms in southern Kansas.   I left in the morning heading for my target area of Alva, OK.  I proceded west through Tulsa and on to Enid by early afternoon.  I decided to head more west than north at this point as the dryline appeared likely to start some storms west toward Woodward, OK.  I proceded westward toward Woodward, OK coming to with about 15 miles before at around 330pm i looked at the sky and realized i had gone a bit too far west.  To my east the clouds were better organized so i headed back east a bit.  The clouds were looking pretty descent so i hung out between Fairview, OK and Woodward, OK for a hour or so.   Then i was informed of some storms going up to the northwest of my location so i decided to go ahead and go.  I decided to go back towards my initial destination of Alva, OK and get ahead of the storms from there. At around 530pm i arrived in Alva, OK.  The storms were now just 15-20 miles to my north and were looking impressive. (see pic below)



I continued north of Alva a few miles when i looked in my rear view mirror and saw a new storm going up to my south from where i had just come from.  Now comes the mistake of the season.... Thinking about the long way back and how i would be driving into Kansas and really because i was again solo i decided to go for the storm behind me even though i was closer to the storms to my north.  (see new southern storm below)



The storm looked fairly impressive from afar but as i drew near i could tell it was having a hard time.  I  got to the storm around 730 at Orienta, OK.  The storm was really neat to look at and you could tell it was trying and for a while it looked like it was gonna go but all it did before it started to die quickly was drop some nickle size hail on me.  A report from 3 miles west of Orienta had 1" hail.  The storm was right on the dryline and i think that it just had too much dry air entrainment and also the storms to the south and north contributed to its demise.  It was a true dryline storm with no rain just hail. What is sad is that as this point i still could have went north to the storms in southern Kansas and seem some nice stuff but i had a intense headache so i started the long drive home. When i was near Enid, i found out that the storms in southern Kansas were going strong and there were numerous reports of tornadoes.