Day 5: Late Reward

I woke up at 7 and quickly got dressed. Met Lloyd at 7:30 for a quick breakfast. We walked into town to Wolfe Camera, where he bought some batteries and some DV tapes. We met up with Roger and Alister when we got back into the hotel. We went up to pack up our things and then came back downstairs with all of our gear at 9:40. The models started looking better and better. We left the hotel at 10, then circled back because Roger thought that he might have left his camera at the hotel. He hadn't, so we left again. Then Lloyd thought he had left his tripod in the room. He hadn't, it was under the front bench, but we circled back again. Finally, we got out of Topeka and drove southwest to Wichita.

The overcast skies gradually cleared as we stopped off at about 12:20 for lunch at a Cracker Barrel. I found a geocache right outside the door of the place. We were split into two groups, and the later group got served first. It was quite delicious. After, we bought various sundries in the gift shop and then left to get gas across the street. After that, we headed south once more, on I35.

At 2:50 we entered a truck stop near Billings, KS and waited for things to develop. SPC downgraded the chances of seeing anything. There we sat as nothing happened. It got hotter and hotter and the clouds scudded by from the southwest. 3:30 passed, then 4:30. Tom finished his book (Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill, Stephen King's son) and passed it along to me.

I got bored of waiting and went outside to get some time lapse shots of the clouds. Alister set up to do the same. Finally, Roger said we were packing it up, there was a mesoscale discussion for eastern Kansas. We blew north on I35, past Wichita and El Dorado. The cumulus towers were finally beginning to form after sunset. We stopped to look at the nearest tower, which did nothing. We went south and got gas, and a massive supercell fired 70 miles to the south. We raced off after it, by now it was about 9. The storm split and the northern split weakened and died. The southern split intensified greatly, but started to die as we approached it. We sat in the darkness as it regained strength. There was a bright moon lighting the storm, and we got magnificent shots of it kicking off lightning. A brilliant orange fireball flew overhead (I missed it as I was checking the camera). We stayed until the storm died, then headed south to Oklahoma City and our hotel. We got in just short of 2.