J.P.

I’m back in Colby, Kansas. Tomorrow’s forecast includes wild weather from Omaha, Nebraska, across Iowa, and well into Wisconsin and Illinois. I’ve set a personal maximum of Des Moines, Iowa. I shall not go further east than Des Moines.

Today I drove from Wichita, Kansas to Brush, Colorado. There were a BUNCH of storm chasers in Northeast Colorado, and this storm had the graciousness of allowing me to get set up and in position to record events.

I ended up chasing the storm along some dirt county roads near Brush, and spotted a small little funnel along the way.

I have plenty of video to put together from the day’s activities, including some nice lightning shots. When I get home on Monday I’m going to be very busy in the video editing bay. I’m concerned about running out of storage space on my external hard drive.

As mentioned earlier, I’m in Colby, Kansas tonight. I was planning on heading toward Omaha via Interstate 80. But most of the hotel options were booked, probably by other storm chasers, for a reasonable distance for tonight, so I opted to get back down to I-70 and grab a hotel along that corridor. There were several vans of storm chasing tours doing the same thing; they stopped in Goodland, Kansas. I went a little further and opted for Colby.

So today I drove from Colby, Kansas down to Scott City, Garden City, and Dodge City, as the National Weather Service was predicting a line of storms with very strong winds to pass through this area and march across Kansas.

I noticed a lot of storm chasers opted for northwest Oklahoma, below my target chase area. They intercepted a few tornadoes. I intercepted a lot of wind. The maximum gust I clocked was 79 MPH. I thought the car was going to blow off the road. It didn’t.

There were a bunch of storm chasers in my target area near Meade, Kansas. We all ended up chasing a storm cell along US Highway 160 east to Harper and then up to Wichita. I didn’t spot a tornado but I encountered hail, and at one point I thought I was going to lose the windshield. I did not.

By the time I turned onto K-42 in Harper, the rain was coming down impressively. I practically floated the car around the west side of Wichita before getting settled at a Wingate Hotel near the airport.

Tomorrow I head west, probably toward northwest Kansas/southwest Nebraska. The Nebraska panhandle doesn’t really look to be in the mix, but the northeast corner of Colorado might definitely be in play. I’ll be working with data coming out of Goodland, Kansas.

In the meanwhile, I just ended an excellent dining experience at a place called Sickie’s Garage Burgers and Brews. I didn’t realize they were a chain; they reminded me of Quaker Steak and Lube back east. The bartenders were Pat and Q and they were a hoot.

Today I drove from Los Lunas, New Mexico to Colby, Kansas. At about 475 miles on Interstate 25 I was ready for a change of pace and turned northeast at Trinidad, Colorado. This mixed up the view a little bit and gave me a chance to enjoy the beauty of the older U.S. highways. It was a lovely day for a drive.

I wasn’t really expecting today to be a chase day; the plan was always to get into position for chases Sunday through the end of the my chase-cation. I have achieved that objective.

I stopped by “Twisters Bar and Grill” here in Colby for a beer and some supper. The bartender was very kind and we had a good conversation about storms and what it’s like to live in Colby, Kansas. I feel very comfortable in this city, though I have no idea why. Perhaps it’s familiarity; I believe I’ve been here for the past three chase trips.

After Twisters I stopped at Walmart and bought some Rain-X to apply to the windshield. Having the rain whisked away by Rain-X is super helpful when you’re chasing a storm.

I’m headed to bed. There’s a line of thunderstorms passing through tonight but they’re mostly disorganized and don’t really carry a severe threat. Tomorrow looks very promising to the southeast of here, and I want to save my strength for that chase. It may be intense.

Here’s some shots from my drive today.

I don’t leave for my storm chasing trip until Friday afternoon, but Mother Nature decided I needed some teasing action this afternoon and evening.

There has been no mention of any rain or storms in the Tucson forecast for the past month. I was surprised to receive lightning alerts from the home weather station right before supper. We haven’t had any rain, but the lightning show continues this evening, right up until I’m writing this a little after 9:00 PM/2100 MST. Photos taken with my iPhone 13 Pro, no tripod, from the roof of the house.

I’ve always been fascinated by clouds. I remember taking photos of clouds back in the days of film and an Instamatic and when getting the photos back from processing my mother asking, “Why did you take so many photos of clouds?”

“I like them”.

She wrote on the back, “John’s pretty clouds. July 1981” (or whatever the date was). The photos are probably still in a scrapbook back east.

I wasn’t really engaged in my high school freshman Earth Science class. But that was over 40 years ago and I’ve grown a lot since then. As I ramp up to my storm chasing trip next week I’ve been reviewing various videos the like about storm clouds, specifically Shelf and Wall Clouds.

Here’s one of the videos I’ve watched as part of my studies and preparedness for the trip. As a private pilot I just know to stay away from these clouds in a small airplane. As a storm chaser, I’m looking for the ones that are going to produce the best photographic results. Hat tip to Raychel at TornadoTitans.com for this great explanation.