Northern Plights

16 May 2015

Today's forecast covered an enormous area, with a Moderate Risk area from south central Nebraska through to central Texas, with some fairly serious storms set to affect some of the places hit just a week ago. While the southern targets were probably the best options for bad weather, they were also looking to head into populous areas, on a Saturday, which on the whole means crazy numbers of chasers around. Coupled with our general rule of staying clear of anything going into metropolitan areas we decided to stay at the northern end of the potential targets.

This turned out to be a bad decision from a weather point of view. The storms were very strong to the south, and they cut off any moisture getting further north, which undermined much potential where we were. After flitting around for a while underneath a line of bubbling convection, to see if anything would happen, we decided to bail and head for our first meal out since arriving here.

Before leaving we drove a couple of miles down a road to get underneath such storms as were in the area, and stopped for a few minutes to take a look.

As is the way in some remote areas, both cars that passed us stopped to check we were OK. Including the Sheriff, who gave us some really bad weather advice, before going on his way.

We finished up by driving through the line of storms we were underneath, pretty much as they reached their greatest strength. It was easily enough to clean the massive yellow trail of bug entrails that had been stuck to our window for much of the day. Getting rained on hard enough to clear this off had become our success criteria, so a success it was.

We finished the day with a meal in Garden City Applebee's, which is over the road from hotel Walmart.

Here we were served by a guy who was excited to meet some English people, but was unmoved by our accents because he's used to them from playing Call of Duty. Makes sense. The evening was rounded off by Cambo finding a truck full of horses to say hello to in the carpark, though sadly they didn't leave any behind…

SPC Day 1 Weather Outlook as at 06:00UTC (01:00 Central Time the night before)

SPC Day 1 Weather Reports for the day.

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