16 May 2026: Gnarly Colorado storms and psychedelic Kansas sunset

 
May 16 was our first real chase of the 2026 season, and it brought us from Kansas to Colorado and back again.

Our hopes for a splendid isolated supercell weren’t realized, but we bounced between cells in eastern Colorado, eventually getting on the south side of an irregular line of storms. The storm there had a whale’s-mouth appearance and dust under the base as it pushed out an outflow boundary and a couple of gustnadoes.

We experienced the intense winds of the boundary and let it pass. What next? There was little chance of getting east of the most intense part of the line now.

We knew we wanted to go north for the next day’s chase. The question was, which way to go? We could’ve gone straight north and tangled, at least briefly, with the line. Instead, we moved south and east, back into Kansas.

We caught strangely elongated mammatus over Sharon Springs, Kansas, then moved north, eyeing the back side of the storms as they were lit by the setting sun.

 

This was the best part of the day – stunning mammatus over western Kansas wheat fields at sunset. Gorgeous colors, golden light, and a soft stub of a rainbow all made this a magical conclusion to the chase before we headed up into Nebraska, anticipating the next day’s chase.

Click on any photo to see a larger image and start a slide show. I know there are a lot of sunset photos, but you should see how many pretty ones I left out!

 

Storm chasing updates from the road

Videos show our updates before and after today’s chase. We have a whole playlist of these from 2026, and more from 2025.