05.20.11
Chase #7: Largely Another Bust
Jeff, Esther, and I went all the way up to Pratt, Kansas yesterday, in search of some elusive supercells and tornadoes.
However, as you may already know, there were two areas with supercells and tornadoes: southwest Oklahoma and just north of I-70 in western Kansas. The only photos I took were of The Weather Channel’s “The Great Tornado Hunt” vans and crew (their new storm chasing team with Mike Bettes and more recently Jim Cantore) and a street sign in Hutchinson that read “Random Rd”.
We did drive past the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, which sounds pretty awesome. They have the largest collection of Soviet/Russian space artifacts outside of Moscow, the command module from Apollo 13, and countless other interesting items. Following my recent trips to Kennedy Space Center and my revived space interest, I plan on visiting the place some time this coming week.
Anyway, we drove 550 miles over 11 hours, and at least we did see some frequent lightning, mammatus, and heavy rain as we approached Oklahoma City from the north on our way back.
It has been nice to finally get some good, heavy rain in this area. We had a large squall line pass through last night, and had a number of other thunderstorms roll through for much of the day.
Sadly, my final spring in the Plains is not turning out to be very good for storm chasing. I’ve got just couple more weeks around here for a nice setup to materialize…