On May 29, 2026, Alethea Kontis and I headed east out of Denver with Jason Persoff, hoping to catch landspouts and maybe lightning in Colorado. But the Colorado storms were lackluster, and the chase pulled us into Kansas.
At the border, we paused in Kansas, looked west and watched a line of storms gusting out, complete with what looked like twin gustnadoes. And then we headed east to the next target.
A brief hailbow flashes with color under a storm.
Near Levant, the sun lit up hail shafts under the storms, even making a brief and colorful hailbow. Meanwhile, storms produced outflow boundaries, and one heading toward us blew up a dramatic line.
We hastened to catch up and get ahead of it before we were doused with rain — and while it was still pretty. We headed north until the road turned to dirt and had a few minutes of a glorious view before the rain overtook us.
It began to overtake us almost as soon as we arrived.
We chose separate photo ops as we moved south, then east. And then another circle was in store as we eyed multiple updrafts and rain shafts in the advancing line.
The storms moved off to the north, so Alethea and I stopped by an apocalyptic junkyard on the edge of Colby to take pictures. And then we found a more pastoral setting, a field full of cows, as we photographed a sunset in golds and blues.
Amazing color, a wee weird funnel, and cows. What a Kansas scene!
It was a day of chasing scraps, but we had some lovely moments.
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