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<br />\\ <br />:'; <br /> <br />Northwest Kansas storm where one cloud base aircraft and the cloud <br />top plane had already been directed--it was moving into Wallace <br />County near Sharon Springs. With time and the continuad evolution <br />of the storm, we learned the radar wasn't giving us the full <br />picture and that cloud intensity measurements were significantly <br />weaker than they actually were. Our electronics technician in <br />Scott City was. sent for. Unfortunately, until 5:16 p.m. all radar <br />echoes and measurements appeared waak, never giving us a <br />representative picture of storm intensity and areal coverage. <br /> <br />The first plane to begin seeding the Wallace storm started at <br />2:48 p.m. and joined by a second plane at 3:06 p.m. when it was in <br />extreme southeastern Wallace County. When the cloud top plane <br />began aeedingat 3:21 p.m. the severe storm already had intensified <br />and begun deviating to the right of its southeasterly track, moving <br />almost directly south overlapping the Greely~wichita county line. <br /> <br />Both planes seeded the Hamilton storm complex as it moved into <br />Stanton County, however, as updrafts .became weaker, at 3:20 p.m., <br />one plane was diverted to the Greeley-wichita storm. . Seeding ended <br />in Stanton County at 3:33 p.m. when updrafts became nil; the last <br />plane seeding then was sent to assist on the Greeley-Wichita storm <br />complex. Subsequently, the Stanton storms moved southeast through <br />central and southeast Stanton county into southwest and southern <br />Grant County before leaving the target area. It later appeared <br />there must have been severe storM redevelopment in that complex <br />sometime after seeding ended. The two cloud base planes seeding the <br />Stanton storms began working on the Greeley-wichita complex at 3:36 <br />p.m. and 3:57 p.m., respectively. More new storm development built <br />west across southern Greeley County and others built well to tn~ <br />east around Lane and Ness county. All aircraft seeded the Greeley~ <br />Wichita storm as it moved into Kearny and Hamilton counties where <br />it broke up into mostly rainshowers. Other new storms formed around <br />Ford county, however, no aircraft were able to be sent there. The <br />radar system was back in service at 5:16 p.m. The cloud top plane <br />ran out of dry ice at 4:43 p.m. and returned to Dodge city. The <br />cloud ~ase planes ran out of seeding agent between 6:01 and 6:04 <br />p.m. /1S the leading edge of general storms area neared the southin:n <br />part of the southern tier of target area counties and could not be <br />seeded all the way across them. <br /> <br />The cloud top aircraft was airborne a second time at 6:20 p.m. <br />and was seeding over north-central Haskell County at 6:56 p.m. At <br />7:04 p.m. seeded ended when radar no longer showed high storm <br />intensities in the target area. As seeding was ending, the cloud <br />top plane experienced an unexplained engine power outage for 1 - 2 <br />minutes in addition to taking a lightning strike (doing only minor <br />damage to its ailerons). Total flight time this day was 20.4 hours. <br /> <br />JULY 1st - OPERATIONAL DAY #24: Storms began developing outside the <br />target area south of Stanton County by early afternoon. Three cloud <br />baSe planes were initially scrambled at 3:30 p.m. and were sent to <br />a rapidly building new storm about 5 miles south of Johnson. The <br />last planes two were scrambled at 3:47 p.m. Despite some clouds <br />