June 1st - messy storms in Kansas

Hello.

We had a later start than planned as I turned off the alarm clock when it first woke me at around 0840 and thought we'd have 5 more minutes. When I next looked it was just after 1000! The plentiful driving and late nights have started to take their toll and so we needed the sleep. We packed our stuff, but thunderstorms were already developing/ongoing, and a strong gust front moved overhead around the time we wanted to check out. Cue torrential rain and strong winds! I reversed the car right up to a door, into a kind of porch area - it clearly wasn't meant to be used like that but we didn't want to get soaked!

We headed south into Kansas, and stopped for lunch in Oberlin. Several other chasers were there too. After a while a storm developed to the west, but soon fizzled. We decided to head south to intercept storms to the south and south-east of Oakley. We did this, but the storms morphed into something of a mess - this was expected today, but it's a shame it wasn't a bit later! Even so, we saw some great lightning and some interesting cloudscapes. We could have continued south to try to get to the south end of the line - which would have yielded better storms - but we decided to just hang around and take in the sights and sounds of the prairie, with the storms rumbling away.

Whilst taking some of this in, a car pulled up and a lady called Lori chatted to me for a while about storms and living in Kansas - it was lovely to meet her - the folks out here are very friendly.

We then decided to head east - another thunderstorm developed overhead and we watched that for a while - it gave us a great rainbow too.

We ended up in Hays, and ate in Applebee's - where else?! It was packed - some kind of dance event was going on.

No pics tonight as it's late now!