We started the day in Liberal, KS, after having very little sleep. We worked on building a dash cover and checked SPC and some of the soundings in our hotel. We targeted north of Dodge City somewhere, and began our drive. Here is a photo of the chase wagon for this year:
We drove up US-54 to Dodge City. We picked up lunch at Arby's and Sonic and filled the tank in anticipation for an active chase day. After lunch, we headed up US-283 towards Jetmore. Storms began to build...
Here is where things get crazy. These storms are moving between 50 and 70 mph. Our road network allows us a turn every 20 miles. We tried to keep up, catch up, and stay out of the way, making many large circles between Dodge City, Jetmore, Dighton, Ness City, Kalvesta, etc. but were unable to catch a tornado. We did get a few shots of some mammatus...
As this storm morphed into a raining, hailing mess, we cut through it to get west of it and find a place to stay for the night. We fueled up over an overhang to avoid some heavy rain on the east side of Scott City. After fueling up, we figured we could drive behind the line that was forming and be in the clear... though we left our cover a little early to do this, and ended up ducking into a carwash to avoid hail later on, just north of Scott City.
We ended up spending the night in Oakley, KS, near the I-70 interchange. Every other crew was somewhere far east of us getting hailed on and looking for a hotel out of the storm's path. We had a relaxing dinner and early night.