The Storm That Changed Everything by Jessica Moore
If there was one storm that laid the foundation of my storm chasing career and showed me all the possibilities that existed before me, it was the now-famous Leoti, Kansas supercell that I photographed on May 21st, 2016.
A storm chaser drives toward a menacing supercell near Leoti, KS on 5/21/2016
I’d always dreamed of seeing a perfectly sculpted supercell drifting across the plains like those I’d seen captured by other storm photographers I admired, such as Mike Hollingshead, James Langford, Marko Korosec, Kelly DeLay, Chris Kridler, Shannon Bileski, Paige Vincent, Jim Reed, David Mayhew, the late Eric Nguyen, and so many others.
When I departed my hotel room in Hays, Kansas on the morning of May 21st, 2016, I walked out the door and was greeted with screaming low-level surface winds out of the southeast. This scenario is ideal for transporting Gulf moisture northward, as well as for providing strong low-level shear given the mid-level westerlies.
The air felt like tornadoes.
A simulated sounding and hodograph for 01z on May 22nd, 2016 (which would be 8pm CDT on May 21st)
If you aren’t a meteorologist or storm chaser, don’t worry too much about the above sounding and hodograph; a deeper dive will be taken into explaining these charts in a future educational series we will be releasing.
For chasers, you’ll note the gorgeous spiraling wind barbs along the Y axis of the Skew-T, which is visualized with a beautifully enlarged, curved hodograph on the right. There is nearly perfect streamwise vorticity throughout the entire hodograph (again, don’t worry if you’re unfamiliar with these terms, as we’ll take a deeper dive into these concepts later on. For now, know that the charts above indicate an unstable atmosphere that is primed for rotating supercells).
We drive towards a rotating supercell on a muddy Kansas road.
Once we got into position in west-central Kansas, it took quite a while for things to get going. We knew we’d have a later storm initiation that day, but the anticipation was enough to keep me anxious and fidgeting in the car. I kept messing with my equipment, making sure all my gear was charged and memory cards cleared (even though I’d already done this the night before), and cleaning all my lenses.
Anything to pass the time.
But finally, we had storm development, and we watched a storm slowly begin to churn and organize in the late afternoon sun. Lightning began to pick up. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Slowly but surely, a powerful storm began to take shape.
We pulled off on a random dirt road and watched it spin. We watched for what seemed like 30 minutes or so, and then we began to see tendrils of condensation reaching toward the surface, spinning as they did so. Finally, around 7pm CDT, a series of weak tornadoes occurred, one after the next.
They were a bit grungy and somewhat obscured by curtains of rain, but we were excited to witness them nonetheless.
Below is a wider shot of the structure with a small tornado.
A wide-angle perspective of the supercell with a tornado beneath it.
It wouldn’t be long, though, before we realized that the tornadoes would not be the main story of the day. As we continued our pursuit of the storm, repositioning to stay ahead of its slow meander northeastward, we noted the impressive structure beginning to take shape. Although we’d seen perhaps 4 tornadoes by this point and were hungry for more, we felt the tornado threat was decreasing; meanwhile, the structure show was just getting started.
We put ourselves in the perfect position to just sit and marvel at this perfectly structured classic supercell forming before our eyes. The striations were so chiseled that it looked a lot like a wedding cake. Perhaps more accurately, it could be likened to an alien mothership hovering and spinning ominously in the sky.
We pulled off on the side of the muddy road for a few quick shots here.
We continued to enjoy the beauty of this storm until well after sunset, and boy, did sunset treat us with a marvelous display of colors and mammatus clouds. The golden light was spectacular and I was grinning ear to ear by this point. We also saw the DOW radar truck drive by (3rd photo below).
As the storm began to dissipate after dark, it did so with quite a bit of flare in the form of a nearly constant lightning display. There were endless anvil crawlers and occasional CGs, and I just so happened to get lucky enough to capture both in the same image below.
A CG and anvil crawlers reach out of the dying supercell.
I didn’t know it then, but my entire life would change as a result of this storm.
The incredible Leoti supercell was so much more than a storm; this chase, and being able to capture the storm’s entire lifecycle with my camera, showed me for the first time what I was truly capable of as a storm chaser and photographer.
Not only had the forecasting paid off well, but we made perfect decisions the entire chase. We navigated muddy roads, stopped at the perfect times, captured incredible images, and had a truly memorable chase experience.
This chase showed me what my future could be in this field. It showed me that I was capable of standing alongside some of the great chasers and photographers in the field and being recognized among them. To this day, people recognize my images of this storm; it’s been used on book covers, exhibited in prestigious art galleries, and reached a global audience. It is so humbling and amazing to me to know that my images have had such wide-reaching impacts. These images captured 9 years ago have shaped my life and chasing career ever since.
Looking back, I still can’t believe this day was real, and I was fortunate enough to be there. I am forever chasing moments like this out in the field. I’ve come to recognize the atmospheric and thermodynamic patterns that often yield these beautifully sculpted storms, so I will always chase these setups hoping for more structured epicness.
I hope 2025 brings opportunities to witness more storms like this.
Written by Jessica Moore
