We were captured by the weather channel?!

Video posted by the Weather Channel of another chaser. The people in that car filming were actually sandwiched between our two vans during that gustnado... at the end of the video you will see our first van driving past.  We were behind this chaser...

And here's the link again to Teri's video.

Day 8: An eventful day.

It's been a highly emotional day.  To think we were so calm in the morning. We woke up in York, Nebraska, which is about 50 miles due West of Lincoln, Nebraska.  We were positioned in the middle of the state and thought this would be a great place for storms.  A cold front would push through the state in the middle of the afternoon, firing up storms that would push across the state.  Conditions were so good for storms that we knew we would be facing a massive quall-line of storms, and not just a few little supercells.  So we knew that if we were to see storms that would be good for chasing, without risk of being pommeled by the storm as we tried to watch it, our best bet would be to view storms as soon as they first started to form.  The longer we waited, the more likely they would mold together and create a massive line.

We had quite a bit of drama in the morning.  At first our consensus was to head west across southern Nebraska and stop along Interstate 80 in a town called Kearny for lunch.  Some of us had thought that it would be best then to head north since radar-models suggested that storms would fire in the northern part of the state first.  However, the two people leading our chase for the day wanted to stay in southern Kansas, since the bottom edge of the storm is where the more isolated storms tend to form.

Our group was split down the middle, and there were a lot of grumblings and frustration.  I personally was one of the people who wanted to move, not so much because I knew any better, but because some of our more-experienced chasers knew that it would be foolish to sit around and wait while cumulous clouds were already starting to appear up north.  Our chase leaders were less experienced and didn’t want to take advice, so our deadlock was infuriating, and our lead professor didn’t have an opinion either way, so he left us to our own politics.

Eventually our chase leaders were convinced that it was time to move, and we headed up north “in no hurry” more to appease those of us who wanted to go.  Within the hour storms started to fire up north, but we were too far south of them and the storms were moving too fast for us to catch them.  These storms were heading almost straight north, slightly east, at a speed of nearly 45 knots (50 mph).  Not only were we so far behind those first storms, but we also had to deal with straight-line winds that were blowing around our 6’5’’ tall vans.  We couldn’t get more than 60mph because of those winds, and chasing those first few storms was nearly impossible.

Our view of the storms from our van.  We were afraid that this is all we were going to see of them!

 All of the people in my van were furious at this point, since all of us were the ones who wanted to head up north and not dilly-dally around after lunch.  And now we had missed those storms that were heading so far north!  

We were just too far south of the storms!

Thunderstorm Warnings were issued up there, along with signatures on the radar that indicated tornadic rotation in the clouds.  However, behind those north-moving storms were other little storms trying to fire up.  A lot of the ones trying to form died after a few minutes.  Yet they kept appearing.  After about an hour we finally started getting around to some of those lower storms.

Basically, after we tried to catch those first few storms we started heading south to see what other storm-cells were building behind them.  The first few storms we positioned ourselves around had some nice structure, but chasing overall today was rather difficult.  In north-western Nebraska we faced the terrain of the sand-hills, which offers a lot of rolling hills and terrible road-networking.

This terrain caused for a lot of blocked vision and winding roads that  made chasing more difficult.

At one point we were able to stop and really observe the structure of one of our storms.  The rain, the wall cloud, the inflow notch… it was all classic, textbook style.  However, things started to break up after a few minutes and we started heading south again toward another storm.

That lighter-colored notch indicates a very strong updraft, feeding energy into the storm.   Our professor whipped out a diagram later last night he's used in class and it looked almost exactly the same.

So many chasers were out today, it was crazy.  We saw The Weather Channel and the  Tornado Hunters.  We also saw an old graduate from Ball State too, and there were also many others along the roads.

The Weather Channel's Doppler on Wheels was riding right behind us for some time.  We finally were able to snap a picture of it as we pulled into a gas station.

At one point we saw a storm that showed decent rotation, and we thought about heading to a position to intercept it.  As we drove we could see small eddies in the sky spinning like crazy.  Even though a mesocyclone, the deep vertical rotation of a thunderstorm, is normally in the center of the storm, when we have winds changing direction with height and windspeeds increasing with height, it’s easy for rotation to appear in different areas of the storm.

As we were driving along a particular storm, we ended up being right in its path.  We

 were very limited on which roads we could take, and we ended up having no escape route!  The storm that was showing rotation that could form a tornado was headed right toward us!!

We had to continue heading south, and fast!  At this point the storms were heading more east, than north, and they were going to pommel us with hail, if not a tornado, if we didn’t get far enough south.  There was a time or two where we thought we had enough of a window where we could stop and take pictures.  But it wasn’t long before he had to move on again, and we just barely made it!

All edge of the storm, gustnados were forming on and off.  These are small areas of rotation that can form dust-devil like whirls.  Technically they are tornados, since the rotation can be scene both at the clouds and at the ground.  However, you can’t normally see the entire thing rotating since the winds aren’t tightly wrapped.  They are pretty much like weak tornados that don’t have strong support and won’t last long.  But they can still do damage and can be dangerous to encounter.

We traveled parallel to the edge of the storm, with the heart of it still heading toward us, as we witnessed gustnados stir up and die off along the edge of storm.  It was both beautiful and horrifying to see all these rotating clouds pop up all around us.  It’s like those nightmares I’ve had in my sleep since childhood… being surrounded by tornadoes.  While I admire them in all their might and beauty, I also have a deep respect for their power and destruction, and do not wish to be in their path.

Eventually our road took us southeast, slightly ahead of the storm… and straight into the path of a gustnado that was about to cross the road!!  As our vans drove toward it we had to make a choice… we could stop and wait for the thing to pass, and risk being hit by the hail core or possible funnel cloud behind us, or drive straight through and risk being blown over or our windows being blown in if debris were to hit us!!

Suddenly our lead professor gunned his van and blasted down the road right before the gustnado hit the road.  We were in the van behind him, and we weren’t so lucky… we were caught up in the gustnado!!  As we drove down the road we could see nothing but swirling dust around us, small debris flying.  Gustnado Video - Teri Watkins

An irrigation chain in the field next to us completely tipped over and fell down along the hole field… at the time I didn’t realize how lucky we were that it stayed in the field and didn’t come flying into the road.  We saw light ahead and floored the gas pedal until we were out.  Honestly, we were lucky that we survived that without any major damage to our van.  After looking at the video later we even saw that we may have just missed the vortex of that gustnado… which could have been even worse…

We still weren’t out of danger yet.  Even though we got out of that whirling dust, which looked to be a mile wide, we were still in the path of the mesocyclone that could produce a tornado.  Our road took us back through the town of Kearney, NE, which is where we had stopped for lunch earlier that day.  Driving through that little town at 30 mph was frustrating, especially seeing all the people moving about their business there with seemingly no concern of what danger was heading their way.  Tornado sirens started going off, and we hit the interstate to head East as fast as we could.

Right after we got on the interstate we started observing the edge of the storm.  We were focused on a few places where other gustnados might be whirling.  Then… I saw it!!  A huge verticle rotating mass… a tornado!!  I asked the others who were looking further back and we all stared shouting in excitement at what appeared to be a tornado!!  It was scary, since we didn’t know whether it was running parallel to us or if it was going to cross the Interstate.   Our driver kept that car bustin’ forward, and we were able to get a great view of that tornado before our view of it started to get covered by rain.  Video of Tornado, by Lindsey Moistner.

After a minute or two we couldn’t see it anymore, and we were ahead of the storm in a dangerous position to do any more chasing.  With dusk coming and those storms producing crazy, unpredictable winds we just needed to get the hell out of there.

Lucas is pointing to our location on the radar.  See all those little circles?  Those are bad news if we didn't get moving!

The rest of the night was a hot chase east to get ahead of those storms.  At this point there was a line of storms extending from the Dakotas all the way down to the middle of Kansas.  And the portion where we were kept showing signature after signature of tornados and hail on the radar, and as the sky darkened we were in a dangerous situation.  Ahead of the storm front, like earlier in the day, we had straight-line winds that were blowing us all over the road.  And while at least before we were on smaller roads, tonight we had to share the Interstate with semis that kept waving back and forth in the wind.  It was a pretty tense 150 miles all the way back to Lincoln, Nebraska.

Now we’re in a Comfort Inn in Lincoln for the night.  We made it about 45 minutes ahead of the storm front, which had weakened some since we had last encountered it.  Tomorrow we don’t plan to chase anywhere, since nothing really looks good in our part of the country for chasing.  This will be a great time to rest since a lot of the people on our team have great videos and pictures to upload. 

Day 7: Finally, a storm!

We all woke up this morning, begrudgingly, around 8:00am.  We had hoped we would sleep in longer, but that wasn't the case.  However, the models were showing us that we could either continue on up to Iowa and chase storms there, or head west for the middle of Kansas.  Since we were all too tired from the night before, we decided to take a nap and meet half an hour before check-out at noon when the new model updates would be out.

After that relaxing nap, our forecast leaders for the day decided Iowa should be our destination, and so up north out of Kansas City we went!  An hour north of the city we stopped at a Cracker Barrel for lunch.  Oh, it was so nice to have mashed potatoes, chicken and dumplings!!  AND... I had green beans!!  Even though I've had good food these past few days, nothing beats a homestyle meal.

After lunch, our lead professor really decided it would be better to head to Kansas, and so he pushed us all to think in terms of driving west.  We agreed, and raced toward Salina, Kansas, since that is where storm initiation would be taking place.  It was a rush to get there... a dryline would be pushing storms to develop around 5:00-6:00pm, and we had to push it to get there.  As we got closer to the area a few storms fired up, and it was difficult deciding whether to chase these storms that were moving along at about 45-50 knots (50-60 mph) or to sit and wait for storms further south to come at us.

We made the decision to hurtle up towards the storms that were already in our area, and we saw our lead professor in his full-throttle mode.  After getting off the interstate, on a north-south road that would take us to our storm, we ended up driving way above the speed limit in order to catch up.  At one point our van was going 95mph... the speedometer only goes up to 100 on those vans, so we were really pushing the limits.

Eventually we stopped in a position to watch one of the storms from a safe distance.  Above we could see the mammatus clouds in all their glory!!

These clouds are formed by the rolling winds aloft, and signify a healthy storm.

Off in the distance we were seeing whether a wall-cloud would develop in the storm, which would indicate rotation within the storm's center.  We started to observe that the storm was weakening, since the radar showed that more storm clouds were developing on the tail end of it, choking off the updraft that keeps a storm alive.  After about 15 minutes of picture taking, radar analysis, and talking with another chaser, we decided it'd be best to see if the storm developing behind our current one would better for chasing.  Back in the vans we went.

Look at the top of the clouds... see how it's like the whole top of the storm is slowly whirling?

Unfortunately, our route to get to the next storm took us on some really "local" roads... mainly dirt roads.  Some of them were muddy, and we were kind of afraid at certain points just because of how rugged the terrain was.

We stopped at another point and got out to observe/take more pictures.  By that point we only had about 45 minutes of daylight left, and while that's not too terrible we were also on dirt roads that could be extremely difficult if rain headed our way.  Also, the storms appeared to continue weakening... Not really worth chasing, especially if it took forever for us to go through dirt roads at 30 mph.  While we didn't get to see a strong storm, we at least got to see a storm!  It's the best we've had since last Tuesday.

After dinner we went up north and are now in York, Nebraska.  Tomorrow looks promising for the Dakotas, and the Storm Prediction Center has already issued a moderate risk for that area.  The biggest issue is NOT whether storms will fire, but how many and how wide-spread it will be.  Conditions may be such that there will be too many storms for us to chase safely, especially if they form a fast-moving squall line.  But we shall see what happens...

Day 6: Kansas City

Yesterday we had a down-day to relax.  Even though there was a slight risk issued along Interstate 70 for severe weather, nothing seemed promising enough for us to plan a chase.  Instead we decided to spend the day driving and positioning ourselves for the next day.  Kansas City was our destination, so we took our time driving up there and planning what we would do for the evening.

Booking a hotel in the area was a challenge, since most of the hotels downtown are nice and we try to limit the prices of our rooms.  We booked several rooms in the Clarion Hotel up near the Kansas City airport, a nicer hotel for just $71/night.  That was pretty awesome... as soon as we got there we headed for the hot tub, and then we went off to dinner in the city.

We ate at Arthur Bryant's for dinner, which is a local BBQ place downtown Kansas City.  It's owned by a group of African Americans and had that soul-food style to it, mit was FABULOUS.  I had the pulled pork open-faced sandwich, and a lot of other people in my group had the rib-tips.  While we were waiting in line to order we noticed the pictures of famous people who had visited this place in the past.  Steven Spielberg, Jimmy Carter, Sarah Palin and John McCain were just a few that I can remember.  I'm glad that we have chosen to eat at local, non-chain places for dinner on this trip.  Finding little places like that really adds to the charm of traveling in a new area.  :)

After dinner we headed downtown Kansas City to the Power and Light District, which is the heart of Kansas City's nightlife.  I've never seen anything like it before... we had our ID's checked at the entrance, and then we walked inside to an area that looked like an outdoor mall.  However, instead of there being an array of stores and food places, the whole area was filled with bars and a main-stage at the center.  We spent most of our time at a place called Tango que Sed Cantina, which seemed like a place out of a movie.

Of course city night life seems crazy to us since we live in Muncie where we have $3 you-call-it-drinks for specials and the bars are mostly filled with college students.  Here we had city people and city-prices, so it was a shock but so much more full of energy.  I felt kinda weird going to a bar with two of my professors, but we all had a good time and it was fun to unwind after the stress of being in a car for hours at a time, every day.

After a late bedtime, we planned to get up kinda late and head out for Iowa to see what storms would pop up there.

Day 5: Not so uplifting...

Our morning started with a rush.  I got out of bed, showered, and was in the van within about a half-hour time frame.  We were off to Oklahoma!!  We saw that there was plenty of moisture, the right kind of winds, and hope of some possible lift for storms to form.  The chance was enough that we were willing to take the risk.  After all, we all paid to see storms, right?

When I got into the van in northern Kansas it was cool even with a fleece jacket on.  When we stopped in northern Oklahoma the air was heated up, and we were already starting to burn.  The hourly weather-model outputs still hinted at hope of rising air which would help give birth to form.  Yet, there was no guarantee.

We decided it would be best to head south-west of Oklahoma city... that would be about the place where storms would fire, based on the position of the dryline.  As we drove through the damage by the El Reno tornado that came through on our first day of chasing.  (For more info on this tornado click here. )  On one side of the highway the trees were completely stripped of their bark and smaller branches.  On the other side was a barn that had collapsed.  We were hoping to avoid going through El Reno because we knew there would be damage... but thankfully nothing obstructed us too much.  That's always the heartbreaking thing about storms... even though they are beautiful in their structure and power, they can devastate or even destroy people's lives.

Our final destination was a little town called Chickasha, Oklahoma, where we decided to wait and see if storms would pop up.  We had to get out of the city limits and ended up on some gravel roads, on top of a hill where we could see the sky and look for any clouds beginning to form.  And then we waited.  In the 93 degree sun.

And no storm clouds ever appeared.  Even though we had the moisture and winds for a storm, and there was even potential for tornadoes, the uplifting mechanism that we needed just wasn't there.  In order for our clouds to form we needed that moisture at the surface to rise up into the atmosphere, cool and condense, to form clouds that could produce storms.  And that just never happened.  After about an hour of rechecking conditions, seeing the situation with our own eyes, we realized that no clouds were going to form.  So we started looking ahead for our new destination for tomorrow.

On a side note... apparently chasers from the Weather Channel were in the area today, and had already tweeted that they had given up and headed toward Wichita, KS for tomorrow.  We figured that was also a sign that we needed to accept our busted forecast and just move on.

Back up north we headed for tonight.  In Oklahoma City we ate at a nice Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant, which was a nice switch-up from all the greasy food places we've been eating at.

Tomorrow we may be chasing anywhere from Colorado to Iowa along Interstate 70.  Up in the future we could be looking at Colorado, South Dakota, North Dakota, or even Minnesota as possible chasing areas.

Days 3 & 4: Travel Galore!!

I think we've been in the van for almost 16 hours in the van these past few days.  Yesterday was a down-day where no weather was expected within our area... we thought about chasing nearby in Missouri since there was a High-risk for severe weather over there, but the terrain is so hilly and the road systems are not good for chasing.  We saw there was a small chance there may be some storms up in western Nebraska/eastern Colorado, so we used yesterday as a travel day to position ourselves up north.  If weather conditions improved, we'd travel to where we needed to go, and otherwise we could head back down south for Oklahoma to possibly chase on Friday.

We took our time heading up north.  We started off in Wichita yesterday morning and made Colby our destination, which is in the north-western part of Kansas. On our way there we stopped at Hutchinson, Kansas to see the "Cosmosphere", which was an aerospace museum.  I wasn't expecting to see much there, but I was honestly shocked by how much I enjoyed the museum.

For one, the museum had an IMAX theater and we saw the documentary "Tornado Alley", which seemed quite appropriate for us.  The museum also had some planes and aircraft history in it, which didn't really interest me.  I fell asleep during the planetarium show.  BUT, what was somewhat fascinating to me was the space technology walk-through.  I especially loved seeing the actual Odessey capsule that was in the Apollo XIII mission.  Apollo 13 was one of my favorite movies growing up, and with a mission that famous I'm surprised that capsule landed itself in a little podunk town in Kansas.  Either way, I was glad to see it.  We also ended up eating at a little local bar-and-grill while we were there.  And that's when we got all the weather reports...

As I said, there was nothing going on in our area.  However, back in our homeland of the Midwest there were all kinds of storms going on.  As we sat in T-Bone's Bar and Grill we were glued to the radars we had on our phone, and our professor even brought his laptop inside to see what was going on.  It was terrible... a solid north-south line of tornado warnings marching through the Midwest.  That was the same storm system that moved through Oklahoma the day before, pushing up storms so quickly that it made it almost impossible for us to chase.

We pushed on to Colby, KS, and we continued to watch the weather fire up, slightly envious of our friends back home who got the kind of weather we wished we could see.  A lot of us were also on the phone with friends and family, asking about conditions and warning them of what we saw on the radar.

The hotel we stayed at in Colby was nice, considering that we've been staying in Motel 8's the past few days. The Comfort Inn was a nice change of pace, and we had fun and relaxed in the hot tub when we were there.  One of our professors got sick on the way up, and he went to bed with 6 blankets on top of him as soon as we got home.  We were concerned if we would have to call of chasing the next day and take him to the hospital to get him some help if he wasn't feeling better in the morning.

This morning, the next day, we took our professor to the hospital, and he was diagnosed with a virus that could easily be defeated naturally.  He was already feeling much better today.  We headed off toward Scott's Bluff, Nebraska, while looking at the computer models on the way and seeing if conditions would improve for storms to pop up.

It was a long drive, about 5 or 6 hours.   The night before I had ran to Walmart and bought some knitting needles and yarn to make a blanket, and I was SO glad that had.  With all those hours of car-riding, there was no way I was going to sit and be idle.The terrain at this point became more flat, treeless, and desolate.  While the open-wide country certainly gave a feeling of isolation, the range by which you could see the sky was fantastic.  Oh, to live out there and have half of what you see be blue sky and clouds!  You don't get that back in Indiana... too many trees.  

Also, some of the hilly parts of Nebraska were pretty cool.  Grass with little shrubs, shallow soils, cattle-country.  We also saw some cattle feed-lots, for mass production of beef (basically), which were gross and depressing to witness.  Soils black with cattle-waste... the smell was horrific.  I've been told I may be convinced to turn to vegetarianism on this trip.... now I see why that's possible.  Makes me not want to think about where my food comes from...

We drove into Nebraska and waited for an hour or two in Sydney.  We had the moisture for storms that we needed, we had the right kind of winds... the problem was that Nebraska had cloud-cover for most of the day that blocked out the heating that would normally provide lift for our storms.  Conditions just weren't looking good, and with the fact that we have potential chasing in Okahoma.tomorrow, we decided to just abandon hope in Nebraska and get as far south as we could.  On the drive back we noticed that some storms did fire up.  It was frustrating to see, but overall the storms weren't that impressive.  We weren't expecting to see any tornados up there, but with big open country like that we were hoping to get a look at the structure of thunderstorms, since we could see them so much better in that wide open space.

The drive back was long... as I sit in my hotel room now I sigh as I think about how long this day has been.  We spent probably 10-11 hours in the van today.  I actually drove for the last 2 hours to get here.  My professor was so tired by the end that I offered to give him some relief.  While the roads were easy enough, mostly straight, the difficult part was overriding the winds that blew so quickly across those open fields.  Because I was driving at night there was also risk of colliding with little critters.  I managed to straddle our van over a opossum, avoid another one on the side of the road, and drive past one or two other dead ones that someone else had unfortunately hit fairly recently.  After the close call with that first opossum I was tense for the rest of the drive... and was so thankful to reach the hotel.  I'm exhausted... it's been a long day.

Tomorrow is still undecided as to what we're doing.  We are currently in Hays, Kansas, and will figure out tomorrow morning what we need to do.  Conditions in Oklahoma look somewhat favorable for storm development... we have moisture, winds, but not the instability that we need.  If things change, and the computer models show we may have all the ingredients we need for storms, we will continue south.  Otherwise, we may get to sleep in tomorrow.  At this point, I can't tell which option I like better.

Day 2: Disappointing Pursuit

We woke up early and left Kansas City, Missouri around 8:45am, filled with high expectations for tornado sighting.  The Storm Prediction Center issued a High-Risk area for severe weather, with an emphasis on tornado formation.  We decided our best chance for a sighting would be in Oklahoma area, so we headed toward Wichita, Kansas.

We got to see a lot of great landscape on the way over.  Computer models and updates were flying through our computer... when we got to Wichita we decided we needed to head south toward Oklahoma.  And that's where we headed.

By afternoon the SPC had moved the high risk area south all the way into northern Texas.  There were so many storm spotters on the highway, and we were afraid we were going to have spotter-backlog.  All the little red dots below are registered storm spotters.

We had a difficult time during chasing.  Storms were firing up all over the place, and the problem was they were lumped so close together that they started to interfere with each other.  Not only were the individual storms merging together to form a squall line, but they also gave us little room to navigate safely between walls of rain and hail-cores.  Also, the storms were moving northeast, and we were limited to north-south, east-west roads that were paved... so we had limited access to where we needed to go, AND had limited escape routes.

One of the storms we chased had a tornado, but it was frustrating because we couldn't get to it safely.  With long time-lapses between radar updates and rain-wrapped wall clouds, we didn't get as lucky with our storm sightings as we had hoped.  After the line of storms passed we followed up behind them in hopes that something would form in the back end.  Unfortunately nothing ever solidified.

Exhausted and disappointed, we pulled over to the side of the road to observe the storm from behind.  We spent about half an hour just taking pictures, stretching, and reformulating a new plan.  A Schwann's icecream truck passed by the road while we were taking our break, and he gave us all free popsicles.  That random encounter really boosted our morale.  :)

We decided to head back toward Wichita for the night and chase anything that popped up on our way back. There were a couple storms that seemed like potential for fun, but we had trouble with our mobile broadband updating our computer, and so our radar images weren't updated enough for us to figure out how to respond to these quickly-developing storms.  We got south of Wichita and thought about chasing another storm cell, but it was moving too fast and we couldn't see where it was going.

On the way home we stopped by a local BBQ place... best pulled pork I ever had.  We had to make it to the hotel quickly before a squall line came through... though it fell apart before it ever reached us.

Overall it was an exciting day weather-wise, even if we didn't get to witness it.  A massive tornado whipped through Oklahoma City, and down in Texas a tornado went through downtown Dallas.

While there were a lot of storms with damaging winds, hail, and even tornadoes, it wasn't a good day for storm chasing because there were so many storms that a squall line formed.  Perhaps later in the week, if we aren't expecting a massive storm outbreak, we will have better luck and maybe chase a little storm instead.

Day 1: Road Trippin'

If I were five years old this road trip would have been torture, but at age twenty-two a 10+ hour drive wasn't so bad.  We left Muncie after 11am EDT, and we checked into the hotel in Kansas City, Missouri around 9:30 CDT.

We've already drove through a storm and observed the life/death of several others along the way here.  And to think that last week we had a pessimistic attitude about this trip and future weather patterns!  Mid afternoon, soon after we entered Illinois, we noticed a huge storm system with a bow-echo storms heading straight toward us.  As we approached the storm we pulled off the road, near Effingham, IL, and wrestled over whether or not we should find a place to watch the storm go by.  After looking at the radar and the components of the storm, we decided no tornadoes would come out of the storm, and continued due west.  We were on a collision course straight through Mother Nature's fury.  After she passed, we had a pleasant but long drive to Missouri.

We stopped for dinner in St. Louis, right in the hammer-blow of rush hour traffic, and we decided to stop for dinner.  We tried to steer clear of food chains, and we picked out a BBQ place that seemed local.  Perhaps it was a little too "local", because they weren't open on Mondays.  We tried a local sushi restaurant as well, and it was closed too.  We finally found a little place called Moe's Pasta Bowl, where we stopped for dinner.  The food was pretty good... everyone around me raved about how it was the best they've ever had, SO much better than Olive Garden, etc.  Personally I wasn't terribly impressed, AND I still love Olive Garden, but it was still great to eat something that wasn't fast food.

After dinner we kept on chugging towards Kansas City.  As we approached the horizon we noticed a few towering clouds off in the distance.  The further west we went, the closer the storms came.  Eventually one of the storms formed an anvil, and it was, as Dr. Call put it, a "classic Low-Precipitation Supercell formation".  It was beautiful to look at, and eventually we pulled off to the side of the road to determine whether or not to chase it.  By that point we only had about 30 minutes of daylight left, and it would take that long to get there, so we decided once again to move on.

As we drove I was able to take a few pictures.  As we checked out that cell we noticed it had turned into a multicell development pattern, where one storm formed on the back-end of another ... it was the real-life version of what we had learned about in classes.

Now we're at the hotel, and after a swim in the Quality Inn pool and a nice, hot shower, we're looking at tomorrow's chasing potential.  The storm potential is looking almost dangerous with how great the potential is for tornadoes.  Some meteorologists are calling it a "textbook tornado outbreak", with tornadoes popping up all over the place.