5/19/13: So Many Squall Lines

Today was supposed to be the best day of the best severe weather outbreak of the season so far. I was one of the chase leaders today, my third and final time. We set our sights on southeastern Kansas for the day. After getting to our spot, we had had very low clouds throughout the entire morning and into the afternoon which is not good for formation of storms. About an hour west we had a storm starting to form, becoming severe quickly. We decided to start chasing toward it as it kept growing. Eventually, due to the way the atmosphere was setup today, instead of storms being supercells which are good for tornado formation, all storms started to form into long lines of storms, called squall lines. Squall lines aren't usually great for finding tornadoes, but if you find one, it'll be in the southern edge of the line. The line of storms we were chasing never reached extreme severe potential, but we got to see some really good storm structure in spots. There were reports of tornadoes in Wichita, KS and Oklahoma City, OK today, both locations being out of our range at the time of the tornadoes. Unfortunately, there have been some fatalities with the tornado near Oklahoma City. Our outlook for tomorrow looks to be a little bit south of OKC. Hopefully we can see a tornado, it's our last day out chasing.