Day Eleven

The day started in Colby, Kansas, in the western part of the state.  It looks like things might fire up late in the day, but it was questionable, so we were wondering if we should head north to be in better position to chase on Sunday (likely Nebraska), or should we try to see if things pop around here.

After much debate, we decided to stick close.  We headed south toward Oakley, the home of Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley.  Spent some time in the Fick Museum (pics below), which featured fossils and various other exhibits.  The kids spent some time on the playground, while Gus investigated some development. 

After seeing the Buffalo Bill statue and a quick gas station hamburger (better than you’d expect), we headed even further south toward developing storms.  The problem with this area is that the major roads are few and far between, with very few cross streets that aren’t made of dirt or gravel.  We found ourselves in a position where we would not be able to get behind the storms like we wanted, so we drove to the nearest town (Syracuse, KS) and looked for shelter.  We found an empty car wash with two bays, so we put the vans in them and waited.   

We beat the storm by about 10 or 15 minutes.  We experienced the strong inflow, increasing lightning (including some CGs), and the gust front, which dropped the temperature by at least 20F.  The wind picked up significantly (30+ mph easily), and then the sideways rain kicked in.  We even got pea-sized hail.  Amazing that we played chicken with a bow echo and won.

After it let up, we drove back north on Kansas 27 through Tribune (where Arnold’s bully from Diff’rent Strokes apparently has a store) and Sharon Springs (where they have our movie theatre) pics below) to land in Goodland, KS, which is a very small town spread out over a large area.  Saw some great clouds from the hotel parking lot (see pics).  An early briefing and a quick dinner and debriefing with Gustavo and the night is over.  Looks like we’re heading to Nebraska again for our last potential chase day.  We’re planning to do the South Dakota parks on Monday and hopefully get to Wyoming that evening, and then drive to Colorado on Tuesday for Rocky Mountain National Park and a Wednesday departure.  We shall see.

Dustin asked me what my favorite part of the trip was…hard to say, really.  Seeing storms develop in their environment in real-time is pretty spectacular, but so is seeing that the things I teach in class or learned in texts or journal articles actually works in the real atmosphere.  There’s also the fact that even though I’d been to all the states we’ve been to (so far), I’ve seen areas of the states I’ve not been to yet.  In other words, it’s all good.

 

BTW…we crested 4K miles today.