Day 18: June 10 - Event in the Oklahoma panhandle

Friday, June 10: Started in Hays, Kansas and drove down to the Oklahoma panhandle, stopping in Meade, KS and Beaver, OK for data, where we ran into Erik Rasmussen and talked for a few minutes. We had three choices - storms near Liberal looked somewhat nice, a storm near Woodward that had no upstream storms to foul its inflow, and the southern end of the cluster along I-40 in Texas. None looked particularly appealing. Since we needed to get back to Hastings so Kurt could get his car, we chose the Woodward storm. Saw a few nice lightning strikes, lots of significant flooding, and a nice shelf cloud over the mesas east of Mooreland. I guess it was good that there wasn't much to see Friday, because it was 'National Farm Machinery Moving Day' or so it seemed. We managed to get behind a few long convoys of slow-moving trucks hauling massive farm machines. They were a huge pain to get around, requiring numerous leap-frog style passes over 10-15 miles to get by. We ended the day in Russell, Kansas as we need to get Kurt and Nick to Hastings so they can continue on in Kurt's car. Not sure if we'll make the setup in the panhandles today. Sunday is my last Plains trip, then I'm heading home. Hopefully I'll get one more shot in IL on Monday on the way home.

Updated! A full log of the day's events from June 10, including digital photos, has been given its own page posted at the following link:

June 10, 2005 Oklahoma storms