May 22 Chase

Several Updates will be posted within this post, the posts will be in chronological order with the most recent update being first. The time of the posts will be shown in bold for ease of use (All times are CDT).

12:45 AM Update: Spending the night in Hays, KS after a tremendous day of chasing throughout north-central Kansas. The day totaled ~8 hours of chasing fun while covering just over 300 miles (307 to be exact). We had kind of a late start out of Goodland today, but that turned out alright as we bagged at least 4 tornadoes around the Hoxie, KS area. One of the four included the multi-vortex that was near Hozie and was quite tremendous in its' circulation; ended up within a mile of that as it crossed highway 24. To the northeast of Hoxie along highway 23 also held some fun as we had two ground circulations develop within 100 yards of the mesonets. A solid day with a lot more stories then I have to offer tonight, all the more exciting as we still have at least 3 more days of chasing to go!

3:05 PM Update: Finally got outside of Goodland, KS after getting all of our mesonet problems and logistics out of the way. As we left we got a dose of some pea to just above dime sized hail and the storm went severe warned. Now headed east on I70 and then will likely dive south or await the arrival of a line of storms, which now include a tornado warned storm. Very windy, 35-45 knots on average, with plenty of tumbleweeds to catch in grills like Verne Carlson already has. The fun is about to begin with storm motions 40-50 mph and plenty of them. As stated, Verne Carlson is with the crew and actually has his live streaming online, check it out here.

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9:00 AM Update: With several hours of waiting on our hands, we are stuck looking at everything you can look at as far as model runs and mesoanalysis go. Samaras, Laubach, Carlson, and others should have to depart Denver by 11 AM CDT or within 2 hour to make it to Goodland, KS by 2 PM CDT as planned. Model forecasts from last night and this morning are liking a surging dryline, but I'm not sure if I want to believe whole-heartedly in that decision. The warm front is also shown to not be nearly as far north as previous forecasts, and although it should surge northward it has a question in how far north it may make it. I believe that we'll drop south from Goodland, maybe a bit east if the dryline does look like it will make that surge. Storm motion are expected to be nearly north, ranging from 30-40 knots, but any strong right-mover should be able to go northeast or maybe easterly at a pace of only 20 kts (I hope). I may throw in another update this morning once I hear word from Tim, otherwise look for the next update to come early/mid afternoon as we make our adjustments.

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8:00 AM Update Awoke to the sounds of constructions workers leaving the Super 8 here in Goodland, although I'm sure there are plenty of chasers around as well in town. The rumor that Colby, KS was chalked full of chasers was true, the Discovery/TIV/DOW circus group was staying at the Super 8 over there. Plenty of chasers out today and likely the remainder of the weekend as this is shaping up to be one of the better outbreaks of the year, with the addition of it being in extremely chaseable territory. Thus far the plan for today will include sitting back and relaxing here in Goodland until ~2 PM CDT when the remainder of the group will hopefully arrive. After that, we'll head off to our best target area which will likely come a bit south, maybe east, from where we are now in Goodland.