May 24th - report

Hello. We started the day in North Platte, Nebraska. We decided to head south into NW Kansas as various models simulated thunderstorms developing to the west, and perhaps across the area too. We had lunch in Goodland, and waited for a while, having intercepted a dust devil on the way down! We could see a line of cumulus bubbling away to our east and south-east, and this marked a wind shift line. Later runs of hi-res models showed thunderstorms developing from this so we headed east, to Colby, which was pretty much under the line. We briefly saw Berni King, before her tour van drove off and left her - for a short while!

We waited here for a while, and I Facetimed my Mum and Dad - that was around 4pm CDT. Towards 5pm, the cumulus was getting rather larger, and so we headed just a little east to get a better view, away from the truck stop. We could here thunder rumbling occasionally. This storm intensified, and so we headed eastwards, towards (but not as far as) Hoxie. We got into the back of the storm and found some hail which was around 0.5 inches in diameter. A few larger stones, to 0.75-1 inch were occasionally mixed in, but it was mainly marble-sized. We headed east and then south, towards Oakley, but stopped as the hail got quite heavy. After a while it eased, and we carried on southwards, but found some hail lying on the road, which looked cool (ha!).

We continued to Oakley, and watched the storms for a while - Lou Ruh, Ed Sweeney and partner, and Nathan Edwards showed up too, so we had a nice catch-up. Lightning was putting on a nice show, and we had a bit of a dust storm as the gust front blew through.

After a while longer we decided to head to Garden City for the night - lightning was playing along the eastern horizon, and also to the south-east, from another cell.

It was a fun chase day with some nice photo ops.