Meade County, KS

Today was the first offical day of my storm chasing vacation, and our leader for the trip is Bill Reid.  We began the day in Oklahoma City (OKC), and we were on the road around 10:45 AM.  Our inital target was Dodge City (DDC), KS, as the models were showing storms to be in that area close to the time of our arrival.  In addition, they were also showing that the storms would quickly congeal into a big linear mess.  Therefore, we knew that targeting the tail-end storm would be key.  We drifted NW out of OKC towards Woodward, OK, where we stopped for a Braum's lunch.  After lunch, we continued heading N towards DDC.  As we were driving, a storm developed SE of Limon, CO, and it was moving at a very leisurely pace towards the ESE.  We saw it was looking nice on radar, so we continued heading towards it.  Even though it never really did a whole lot, we stayed on the storm for a while.  When we reached Meade County, there was another storm 25 miles to the east, and it was moving very slow.  Bill decided to go after this one, and that was a great call!!  We were treated to very nice laminar structure.  At this point, the storm had estimated wind gusts of ~80-90 mph, and it was dropping 4" hail stone.  Holy cow!!  We were glad this was moving very slow, as it gave us time to stay ahead of it and stop for pictures.  As the chase came to an end, we were treated to an amazing sunset, which backlit this cell.  In addition, we were treated to nature's own light show.  Not a bad way to start off a chase!  We ended up in DDC for the night after driving 483 miles.

The storm as it was impacting Meade, KS

Lightning

Beautiful sunset!