Satanta, Kansas: May 21, 2020

It’s been a bit of a challenging month of May. Although I have seen plenty of storms across the Plains, tornadoes have been hard to come by. Some storm chases make up for the lack of tornadoes and tonight’s storm chase did just that.

Late in the afternoon, I had wandered over the the Kansas/Oklahoma state line near Liberal, KS. A storm was developing in the distance, but thus far in the storm chase, I had not seen anything remarkable. A cluster of storms to the northwest looked messy on radar and the “tail end Charlie” storm to the south was struggling to organize.

With a 4+ hour drive ahead of me, I had the option of abandoning ship and getting home at a decent hour. On the other hand, I could linger around and see if storms might better organize before it got dark. Despite considering the logical decision to head home, I decided to hang out. What would soon happen would make the extra wait worth while.

I wandered back north into Kansas and multiple supercells began to rapidly intensify. In classic late May fashion, a developing low-level jet was causing these slow-moving storms to acquire better mid and even some low-level rotation. I decided to set up shop near Satanta, KS and watch one particular storm develop.

While I have seen plenty of supercell thunderstorms so far this year, this was probably the most pronounced structure that I have witnessed. In fact, it’s possibly the best storm I have witnessed year-to-date. The intense supercell drifted east-southeast across the Kansas countryside. I snapped off picture after picture and watched countless lightning strikes zigzag across the horizon.

I am not one to spend a lot of time snapping “selfies” with thunderstorms. With my camera on the tripod, I decided to give it a shot. After all, this is probably the best storm structure I’ve seen in 2020 and I might not see something as good for a while. With the camera on timer and the shutter set to 1/15th of a second, I snapped a photo. Something was blurry in the frame… Perhaps I moved or maybe the camera was out of focus. I snapped another photo and I was shocked to see what I had captured.

Even though part of the strike fell out of frame, the photo caught a pronounced lightning strike to the north, while I stood there, for some reason, staring to the south with a serious look on my face. Either way, the timing was great and despite missing part of the lightning strike, it was yet another highlight of the storm chase.

I stayed a bit longer, watching the storm and shooting some video. A strong wind gust knocked over my tripod, flinging my a7iii into the mud. To make a long story short, the camera survived the impact, but that was a signal that maybe it was time to pack up and head home. Being nearly five hours from home, I might not reach Oklahoma City until after 1 a.m., but the wait was worth it. They say that good things come to those who wait and I am glad that I waited.

If late May is the peak of storm season, it seems fitting that southwestern Kansas would put on a show on May 21st. Interestingly enough, this marked the 4-year anniversary of another prolific, photogenic supercell thunderstorm in western Kansas. Back in 2016, I was photographing a tornadic supercell near Leoti, KS.

While tonight’s storm did not produce a tornado, it gave me and a plethora of other chasers plenty of memorable photo opportunities.