Heading for Nebraska

We've been pulling our hair out this morning trying to decide on whether to head NW into S Dakota, where there is relatively good moisture, and strong surface convergence - or SSW towards SE or Central S Nebraska, where the chance of storms is much lower, but the parameters suggest that should something develop here, it would be isolated, severe, and bring the risk of a tornado.

After much deliberation and chart watching, we've opted for the Nebraska target. This is partly because there was a consensus that missing a tornadic supercell would be more gutting than missing some high based supercells! However, I'm sure that if/when storms develop in S Dakota, we'll still be annoyed! Oh well - the perils of storm chasing!

Tomorrow is our last chase day, and at this stage, SE Nebraska looks like the best area, so if nothing else, at least we should end up in a reasonable spot by the end of today.

Iowa

Hello,

We drove from Salina, Kansas, to Sioux City, Iowa, today - this is in readiness for a risk of severe storms on Sunday.

Paul.

Not a sausage!

The long drive from Amarillo to Kansas was fruitless as far as catching storms was concerned, although we have now positioned ourselves for possible chases in the closing days of the trip.

We covered around 560 miles today, heading north and then north-east from Amarillo, to Liberal, KS...and then north to Oakley. We then headed towards Hill City, as there were some cumulus off to our east which looked marginally promising for a time. Realising that nothing was going to come of them, we booked into the Sleep Inn at Salina whilst on the move. We then headed south to Hays (which brought back memories of the spectacular chases we had last year, when based in that city), before heading east on I-70 to Salina. We've had dinner at Applebees.

Tomorrow, we will attempt to chase again - perhaps either far eastern Kansas, or across the border in Missouri.

Heading north!

Good morning! It's 10.15am CDT and we're on highway 287 north out of Amarillo...we're heading towards Nebraska in the hope of seeing some LP supercells. This is quite a long drive so it's heads down and away!

Steak steak steak!!!

Hello!

Well, we hauled ourselves all the way to Amarillo earlier this evening, and got to the Big Texan before closing time. Helen and I got ourselves onto the Big Texan webcam, and Gareth and Claire on the nightshift at work saw us on the webcam, and grabbed a picture (below!).

I've also put a few of Helen's weather pictures from the holiday so far below.

One more thing...

I should add that as I type this we're driving past the 2nd biggest wind farm in the world, near Sweetwater, TX. The 1st biggest one is just down the road too!

Oh yeah, and Helen has come up with a better name for the post about the cat mess...."A room with a poo"!

Off to Amarillo again!

We've spent the day SE of Big Spring looking at a couple of OK storms, although they weren't especially good - some nice boiling cumulus though, and a bit of lightning.

We've decided to head to Amarillo now, and hopefully we'll get there in time to be able to eat at the Big Texan. If anyone's up in the middle of the night UK time, then have a look for us on the webcam at www.bigtexan.com!