So much for the 09:00 start and short trip to Dodge City,
another WhatsApp Reveille has us out an hour early as we’re going back to the
Texas Panhandle a less that short 6 hours and 375 miles away. At least it will
be flat, dry with good roads and…no bloody trees. Always pack and sort your
stuff out the night before including getting the next day’s clothes out; expect
to be rudely awakened and be ready to get on the road at a moment’s notice.
A quick review of the SPC forecast and the next 6 days are
ALL forecast to be severe. All of them and in our general area. That’s just mad,
it can do what it likes after that as it’ll be time to return home. Think I may
have had enough by then ;o)
It’s less than warm this morning with a cold wind. We head
back to the Do Dah Diner for another hearty breakfast and a gallon of coffee
and head west on US54 in the light rain towards Greensburg which was destroyed by
an EF5 tornado in 2007. See blog entry from my 2008 visit.
We have a quick drive around Greensburg. There’s a lot of
new builds but there remain a large number
of concrete foundation pads where houses and business were swept away; the
residents left and never returned.
We continue west and the SPC dutifully upgrades the risk to
moderate with a 10% hatched area for EF2 to EF5 tornadoes, just another day on
this exceptional tour.
A quick stop at Meade for a grab and go Subway (we need to
get a shift on to get to the target area in time for initiation) then continue
south on Highway 23 before entering Beaver.
I’m woken from my slumber with a start as we go over a bump and I bite
my tongue loosing several pints of blood... We keep going south through the
grey soup and light rain on Highway 70 towards Pampa where we’ll have a review.
The scenery changes with rocky hillocks and a canyon to our left and it starts
to get a bit brighter. The sun pokes through and we’re now under a tornado
watch; it’s now 15:00 and our 6 hour target area trek (TAT) is nearly done. I
just made TAT up Rich ;o)
We head south west towards Amarillo on US60, adjacent to big
fluffy updrafts which are now severe warned. Conditions for tornadoes are more
favourable further south so that’s where we are headed.
Temperatures are up to 85f then we hit cold air at 61f. Not
good so we keep heading south of Amarillo on I27 in search of better air. We
head through the aptly named Happy and the air temperature climbs rapidly to
86f. We have a severe warned storm to our south west and it’s moving rapidly
north east. We head west at Tulia and get to Nazareth where it’s apparent that
the surge of cold air from the west is going to win out as it undercuts our
storm, the boundary is now east of the line of storm and the day ends in a bust. There were tornado warned cells to our north and reports of tornadoes but that's all in the game. We're all tired and could do with a good night's sleep
Oh well, can’t win ‘em all and we’ve still got 5 days of
severe weather ahead of us. So it’s back to Amarillo which included a detour to avoid a hail core where we are booked into
the Baymont which isn't a patch on the one in Wichita. A nice steak at Chili's, a rainbow and some mammatus and it's a fairly early night.
Total Miles: 540
No photos!
No comments:
Post a Comment