Bust in Oklahoma Panhandle

Chase Recap:

Morning Analysis

We woke up the 28th in Salina at the Hampton Inn and decided after some debate on heading out towards the Texas Panhandle. The 500mb winds seemed to be better down there, and the rest of the conditions would be the same. Unfortunately we overlooked the outflow boundary.

So we bailed on Salina and headed southwest through Hutchinson and Pratt and then through Greensburg and Coldwater. We were stopped twice by flag men and pilot cars, and held up for probably 30 minutes total.

Oklahoma

We stopped in Buffalo, OK to gas up before heading out towards the supercell in the Oklahoma Panhandle. As we were filling up, a tornado warning was issued on the storm with a reported tornado.

We hurried up and went west, getting on the storm after the tornado had dissipated. It was a nicely structured supercell at least. We pulled into a drive way to an oil rig of some sort, and a local driving a truck pulled in and asked us if we had seen the tornado – He saw it, and it had been on the ground for about 10 minutes.

Obviously we were bummed out, but stayed on this storm pretty much the rest of the day. Storms erupted in Michigan as well, which produced some tornado warnings, then news started rolling in about Kansas and the wedge going on in Bennington.

We sat at the Buffalo Airport as a cold, outflow-dominant storm ran us over. We saw the pictures rolling in from Bennington and felt like idiots to say the least.

Drowning Sorrows

We decided to stay the night in Dodge City and visited a great restaurant/bar called Central Station. Beverages a plenty for our awful bust.