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.