Day 4 May 29, 2007

We were going to head south towards southeast Colorado today, departing from Murdo, South Dakota around 7 am. It was a pretty cool start to our day because a boundary had gone through the area. We took I83 south through Cherry county once again. Ron decided to change the target area a bit more north, in western Kansas and eastern Colorado. On our way down in central Nebraska, we saw a storm trying to get together. There was a tornado warning because a trained spotter had reported a small funnel cloud moving towards North Platte. We decided to play around with this storm for a little bit. We pulled off the interstate to take some images. The storm seemed pretty outflow dominant... cold winds were blowing away from the storm while a wall cloud wannabe was trying to gather. Realizing this storm wouldn't put on a great show, we decided to continue on our trek west into Colorado to play the triple point low.

A little later, a tornado watch box had been issued for southwestern Kansas. YAY! Temperatures were finally getting warmer and the southeast backing winds were increasing. We ate lunch in McCook, Kansas. A little further south, we decided to fill up on gas in some small place. Scott and Ron noticed some people from Oklahoma trying to get into their back trunk... apparently they had locked their keys in there. Without success, we had to leave and continue on. The Gravelle Positioning System showed some shortcuts to get to the target quicker.

We did one final stop. I looked at the Baron radar and saw a supercell near Denver. Mike then got a voice mail on his phone saying there were tornado warnings issued, and that roads in Denver had to be closed because there was 3 inches of hail accumulation. When we got closer to the storm, winds began to pick up. We saw a fairly decent sized multi-teired shelf cloud. It looks like our supercell had turned outflow dominant, but at least it was still cool to look at. We pulled off the interstate to take some images. Holy cow I must say I have never felt outflow this cold before. While I was taking video on my tripod, my hands were actually freezing. This felt like November temperatures back home! Given how outflow dominant the storm was and how cold it was, it was pretty clear that a tornado wasn't likely. The hail and rain core looked pretty heavy duty and it was coming for us, so we had to load the vehicles and shoot east back on the interstate. We pulled off once more to get another look at this thing. Tumbleweeds were flying all over the place, and one had got caught in the van's front grill. It looked like the storm wasn't going to do much of anything else at this point... they were starting to fall apart. It was time to head back into Kansas. I saw what looked like a small gustnado off in a field. Later on, we were treated to a nice lightning show. If it weren't for the driving rain and cold winds, I would have probably attempted to get lightning stills.

We ate dinner at a Pizza Hut and are staying at a Super 8 in Colby. Tomorrow we are going to head south of Amarillo, Texas.