We chased a weaker threat yesterday, but had a good time anyhow. As it turns out, the bigger threat only produced a few tornadoes:
We started the day in Amarillo, having breakfast at Youngblood’s Cafe, which was pretty good. Based on the SPC predictions, the greatest severe weather threat was far out of reach, so we were hoping to pull a rabbit out of the hat by getting severe weather in the large Marginal Risk area.
We headed north to Liberal, KS. The Marginal Risk threat was based on storms firing along the dryline and so the game was finding subtle features along the dryline that might boost one storm over another. However, when we reached Liberal, it was dry- the dryline had moved. Behind us, dewpoints had dropped into the negative numbers, so we decided to continue northeast on US-54.
As we approached the town of Bucklin, KS, I noticed on the radar that there was some sort of faint boundary just to our west. Some storms had fired around and north of I-70, based on this boundary. We turned an headed northwest towards Dodge City.
Soon after Dodge City, we headed north on KS-23, and then back east. In Jetmore, KS, we ran inside a convenience store. To our west were a few cumulus clouds. When we came out, those cumulus clouds had exploded.
We followed these developing storms until sunset.
When we reached US-183, we turned south towards Kinsley, and then towards Dodge City for the night.
Somewhere outside of Kinsley, I hit an (already dead) armadillo. It sounded metallic and solid when it hit, so I wasn’t even sure what I hit. After inspecting the car, we walked back and found him. I thought for sure it had been a hubcap or muffler or something.
This was our route:
Thank you for reading my post.
High Plains Chasing 