Bobby Edmonds and I ended up in Garden City, KS from the night before. We woke up the next morning to find a moderate risk and potential for a tornado watch box in the panhandles of OK and KS. It was only about a four hour jog to this area, so we decided to pack up and head down to Liberal, KS for a real lunch instead of Pringles and crackers. Here are a few photos of my dirty car before we left:
A nice lunch at Applebee's, and we were back on the road to Perryton, TX. We arrived at a McDonalds with wireless internet, and got data there. The weather radio kept saying thunderstorm development would be east of 'U south', so when I had internet, I found that the meant U.S. Route (whatever), but the automated message treated S. as south. Soon, there was a tornado watch box, and we were in the right place. I worked on the car a bit, fueled up and waited. Bobby did the same. Eventually, we saw a cumulus field developing farther south, so we headed south again. Driving down some back roads, we ended up on the southeast side of a few nice cells.
Sunset was approaching, the road network was not very good, and the potential for chaseable storms was diminishing. We decided to call it a day and head south for a hotel. Along the way, Bobby's WXWorx indicated a discrete cell southwest of where we were. It had a well defined hook echo, and so we headed towards it down a dirt road. About a mile down the dirt road, there was a spot in the road that had flooded, so we were forced to turn around. A few people tried to cross, and I know of at least one car that stalled out. Don't ever cross running water, it's dumb. We never saw a tornado on this cell, but it had some amazing mammatus in front of it. Here are a few photos of the cell and the mammatus.
The sun had set, both for the day, and on the chase season for Bobby, and maybe me. We spent the night in Amarillo, and headed west the next day.