Day -1 - Room 101...

A bit bleary eyed but here I am back at the Wyndham Gardens in Oklahoma City and I've been put in Room 101. I wonder if there's room in here for the death ridge as well? More later.

As usual I'm wide awake at 4:30 a.m. so force down some bedroom coffee and boot up the laptop to pass the time until breakfast. Wi-Fi is a bit prissy but it final connected with the same password as last year.

The journey? Not too bad if I'm being honest. 9 hours to Atlanta then a 3 hour stop over before the flight to OKC Will Rodgers. A bigger plain (sorry, plane) than usual and full too, the pilot announcing that they were having some "maintenance" done on the nose wheel and that they were now waiting for a guy to bring a sledgehammer to move the chocks which were now stuck under the wheel. Now I'm not an expert in this kind of stuff but plane repairs and sledgehammers don't seem like natural bed fellows...

I sat next to chap called Ken who was flying back from a holiday in Florida. Typical Mid Westerner, friendly and interested in chatting to a total stranger, we struck up a conversation which helped pass the time. This worked magic as we set of 25 minutes late and got there 20 minutes early. Thankfully the nose wheel did its job.

Anyway Ken was born and bred in Oklahoma City and mentioned May 3rd, 1999, the date of the EF5 tornado that went through Moore, Bridge Creek and Newcastle with the highest ever recorded wind speeds of 304 mph (+/- 20). His dad lives in Moore and had the roof of his house lifted off. They rebuilt but Moore then got two more unprecedented EF5s in the subsequent years. Brings it home and keeps you grounded while you're out here.

On arrival at OKC I phoned for the courtesy bus and the phone was answered by a Welsh voice. Before we could have a discussion on the make up of the British and Irish Lions squad touring New Zealand the bus arrived which I shared with one other traveller, an international horse judge. Turns out that there is some sort of horse show in town and he's flown in from Palm Springs to judge the show. His speciality is Quarter Horses, these are horses that sprint over a quarter of a mile, not what you order in a horse restaurant...The net result of this is that the hotel is fully booked, after I booked in there was..."nay" room at the inn...

While contemplating the grits and gravy breakfast which awaits me shortly, it's time to boot up the SPC and have a scan of the outlook. Couldn't do that on the way here as the 500mb, 4 quid a day data package I ordered from EE will only connect to the EE landing page whatever you type in. Grrr...

While one chasecation group that's chasing for 2 weeks is talking about coming home a week early due to the death ridge, Peter is happily bimbling about Colorado hoovering up some non-severe pulse storms. That's the attitude! A quick check of the SPC shows a declining influence of the ridge during the week with a marginal risk for isolated supercells on the southern High Plains on Tuesday with the 4-8 day summary also bit more optimistic. Some marginal and slight days on the Plains will do nicely, hopefully with some nice, late season photogenic supercells. Hopefully those bloated moderate and high risk days with the associated chaser convergences have been left behind.

Time for gravy. Sweeeeet!