Early in the day, our Enhanced Risk was upgraded to a Moderate Risk.
We started the day in Tucumcari, NM, and headed northeast to Perryton, TX. By Gruver, TX, we could begin to see a few cumulus clouds. We were approaching the dryline.
We stopped and refueled in Perryton, TX. It looked like clouds were dissolving to our east, indicating sinking air, and to our north, cumulus clouds were beginning to have some vertical development. We headed north towards Liberal, KS.
Our kitten’s first chase was no big deal to her:
In Liberal, we hung out for a while at a Love’s, and watched a storm drift out of the Dodge City area. It has clustered together quickly, and had a lot of lightning. While at the Love’s, I bought a phone mount that was defective, so I returned it immediately.
We decided to get a little north of town, and ended up sitting at a baseball field, and then at the back of the Comfort Inn parking lot.
We got hit with some of the outflow dust as we drove south back to Perryton. There were some neat features with this storm, but it couldn’t keep from getting absorbed by the Mesoscale Convective System (MCS) that was gobbling up all of the storms. In Perryton, we turned southwest on TX-15 to try and catch the next cell to form on the flanking line. We would park for a few minutes, then get blasted by the cold air and dust, so we’d jog southwest a little farther.
Along TX-15, I ran into a few of my storm chasing friends from Virginia Tech, and so I chatted with them for a few minutes while the last minutes of daylight slipped away.
With the last cells clumping into a mess, and light beginning to fade, we decided to call it a night, and headed for Amarillo, NM, to stay in the Quality Inn on the east side of town. We’ve stayed here before, but we found a few friends in the parking lot this time. This cat ran up to me, rubbed against me, and purred and purred. However, she didn’t like our kitten, so I think this pretty cat will stay here at the hotel instead.
This frog was hanging out nearby, as well.
The only reported tornadoes were a few landspouts at early initiation in northwestern Kansas. The cluster went tornado-warned a few times, but no tornadoes are showing in the reports this morning.
Our route:
Thank you for reading my post. I will add to it later- my computer isn’t acknowledging that my camera exists, so I will deal with that when I get back to NM.
Sources:
Storm Prediction Center
College of DuPage
Google Maps
High Plains Chasing 