Monday's adventures

As we left Hays KS, the surface winds were just howling out of the south.  Not only were they blowing dogs of chains, the wool was getting blown off the sheep.  We measured the winds at great than 30 knots on more than one occasion.  That is over 60kph.  Now, that doesn't sound like much, but it will blow you off your feet.

On our drive to Wichita KS, half of it was with the wind trying to blow us off the road from right to left.  The other half was driving into a head wind.  We saw 2 traffic accidents directly caused by the winds where trailers were blown off the road.

As the storms weren't scheduled to pop until later in the day, we had time for yet another trip to Best Buy and a lunch stop at a place were you could pay your $7.99 and eat all the meat you want.  A place called the Golden Corral.  I think they filmed 'Super Size Me' there.

About 50km's south of Wichita, we crossed behind the only storm of the day we chased.  It had a rotating couplet on it and some pretty good shear.  With good roads, we turned to the East and into the parade of chasers.  It was one of those storms that wanted to drop to the ground, but it did great a funnel and a pretty good wall cloud.  Not too bad considering it is March.  For the next 3 hours, we worked our way across KS in a NE direction, criss crossing both dirt and paved roads.  In our of our cross country treks with Ron driving on a dirt road (actually, it was more of a crushed bolder road) I could tell by the map that it might go down into a valley.  I look up and see a deer bolt out and then stop as we blow by.  We have that on video somewhere, and once I get a chance to look through the video camera we have in the back, I will see what it captured.

Someone reported to the SPC that there was a brief touchdown, but we honestly believe that it might have just been rear flank winds.  We stayed with this thing from about 3:30pm until the sunset at 7:30 and it never really got organized enough to drop to the ground.

Since we had already picked up our hotel room back in Witchitka, we headed back, stopped at anIHOP for a quick snack and called it a night.

Now, as I write this, Ron tells me that it is 3C.  I say.. "In Toronto?".  No, he says... outside the hotel.  ARRGGHHH   It was 24C when we got back to the hotel last night.  Where are my shoes???  I've been living in Teva's for the last few days.

That means, we are headed east to Missouri and then south where it is warmer.