We’re up ready to go for 9:00 and breakfast is at Perkins, the food was decent but the service was a bit mechanical and you could sense some issue between the staff.
Such has been the relentless chasing on this trip, combined with the long drives to target there’s been no time for any Plains tourism. Today we have some free time, our target is a couple of hours south so it’s off to see what North Platte has to offer.
First up is Fort Cody Trading Post, a place I have been past a zillion times but have never been in. It contains a collection of Wild West memorabilia including the double headed calf, set in what is essentially a gift shop.
The Golden Spike Tower is next which overlooks the world’s largest rail yard. The tower is manned by retired rail workers. We spent some enthralling time with Gary, one of the volunteers who took us through the marshalling operations, repairs, schedules and so on. Really quite interesting, even having visited here before I still learned a lot. If you’re into trains this place should be on your bucket list.
Finally we go to Buffalo Bill’s house; built in1886 it’s now a museum with some outside exhibits. Definitely worth the $4 entry.
We’re underway in the early afternoon, heading west on I80 to Sutherland before dropping south on Nebraska 25 through Wallace.
Today’s risk has been upgraded to Enhanced with a 5% tornado risk over south west Nebraska and north west Kansas. Sometimes you need to read the emphasis in the associated commentary; often it’s heavily caveated, “a couple of tornadoes are possible”, today however states “very large hail, 2-3” and tornadoes expected” but then talks about “considerable uncertainty” in the forecast.
We stop at Sinclairs in Trails West. For reasons best known to ourselves we have chilli on nachos. I eat some of it but remain unconvinced by its preparation…came out of a tub and partially reheated. Hmmm…most of it gets ditched.
Our new target is Wray, Colorado, so we head west on US34. We eventually arrive at Wray at 15:30 and head north on US385: there are two severe warned storms to our north west both showing rotation.
It’s 16:10, the southerly storm has an 86 knot rotation marker, a couplet, wall cloud and hook echo. We head west on US6 to intercept. True to form it collapses as soon as look at it…so about turn and target the easterly cell which now has a 102 knot rotation marker.
We cross back into Nebraska towards Imperial. There’s a lot of outflow which spins up a gustnado on its leading edge. It’s just gone 17:05.
The storm had flattened out into a huge bow echo, a long line of outflow wind churning up monster amounts of dust. We head south on Nebraska 61 and are in storm fleeing mode as we’re on the leading edge, masses of tumbleweeds are blowing across the road in spectacular fashion. It’s all we can do to stay in front of it, we pass another gustnado. It’s now 18:40.
We’re near Benkleman, we park up to avoid the massive hail core. Wow! Alex snaps it out of the window. Lightning is all around us, we’re all staying in the vehicle. There’s 3” hail in the core which would really ruin your day. The gust front we’d recently escaped from is catching us; we’re meat in the sandwich.
We dart west on US34 into clear anir and snap some mammatus with the outflow boundary clear on radar surging southwards. We get to Haigler and head south on Nebraska 27 and into Kansas. A quick pit stop at St. Francis and we head east on US36 then drop south on Kansas 27 towards our hotel in Goodland, subject to negotiating the storm that is now in our way.
We get a Big Mac and can barely force it down. Initially thought that it was shut and we’d have to go to Sonic next door…thankfully not. It’s 20:00 and we just want to go to bed. Knackered. Some mammatus overhead then we’re checked in extremely efficiently into the Super 8.
Total miles: 385
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