Day 8: Unbelievable Colby Supercell

Got in just short of 2 AM and went to bed. Woke at 7:45. Went down to breakfast, met by the rest of the gang. We all walked over to the Dorothy Gale house. I grabbed a geocache with Jacquie's help, then we perused the gift shop and returned to hotel to pack for a 10 AM departure. We got out the door, but were stymied at the gas station by Roger's credit card. We headed north and north to Wakeeney, stopping off at Dodge City for a quick grab and go lunch. Jacquie and I walked up to the drive-in at Sonic. We got to Wakeeney at 1 and parked by Twisters II Bar and Grill. Josh Wurman and his Doppler On Wheels crew were there with a full contingent of Discovery Channel personnel. The Tornado Intercept Vehicle had lost two tires (flew off while driving down the interstate), their third axle broke and their bearings went. We bought T-shirts at Twisters. The Discovery crew interviewed myself and Lloyd and took shots of my tornado and other storm pics. We stayed at that place for what seemed eons. At 3:30, SPC issued an MD for Oklahoma, and in dramatic fashion, Josh Wurman swept his crew up and they left. Roger said the MD gave more reasons not to chase there, which was good, as we were not sure which play was better.

At 4:30, storms started popping up on the CO/KS border and were getting stronger fast. We hopped on to I-70 west and drove until we reached Colby. There we encountered a high-based beast of a supercell with another one right on its southwest flank. Our storm developed a hook and tried to build a lowering. The storm to the SW was looking stronger. We rushed to the east to get a picture of the storm structure. It was a striated barber-pole updraft with a stack of plates. It would be difficult to top this storm's structure. Meanwhile, the SW storm began to crash into our storm...and they merged. We raced along dirt roads to keep ahead of it. It became a sculpted and electrified monster that got lower and lower and started pulling in strong inflow. Wall clouds developed, refocused forward. We were about to blow it off when a massive lowering occurred right to the NW perhaps half a mile away. It jumped to a new spot a quarter of a mile away and started spinning like crazy. I don't know how it didn't produce a tornado, but we were as close to having a massive cone tornado less than 1/4 miles from us as you can get. We had to get out of there, so we jumped south on terrible dirt roads until we reached the highway. The storm wrapped up tight and developed over 130 knots of shear with an amazing couplet on radar. We raced east towards Hill City and Roger told us the storm had major tornado written all over it. By now it was dark and we were relying on lightning or power flashes. The storm picked up speed and headed right for Hill City. We got ahead of it and stopped for a look. The RFD core was headed right for us, and Roger thought he could see a tornado just behind the hook. We never could confirm it. We dove into the van before the RFD could kill us and drove to Hill City and turned south. We parked on a hill a few miles outside of town and watched this monstrosity bear down on it. Public vehicles like ambulances and fire trucks evacuated towards us in a caravan as the town's tornado siren blared. The storm cycled, weakened and just missed Hill City to the north. We headed north and Roger, Alister and Steve got out in a field and gathered monstrous hail. Hail to 3" went into the freezer in the back of the van. The cold front surged forth and produced wind that nearly blew us off the road. Alister fought it well, and despite the wind's best efforts, it could not wrest us from the safety of the highway. We stopped for gas in some small town in southern Nebraska and the wind was driving ice-cold rain that stung our faces. We drove on to Kearney, Nebraska and stayed at the Country Inn and Suites. We got in at 12:30 AM, I got to bed at 1:30.