Day 2

We began yesterday with a decision...do we stay put for one more day, or do we head south to an area with limited probabilities for storms.  Since the point of this vacation is chasing storms, we decided to head south to an area that had a small potential for thunderstorms with some hail and wind.  Our goal was the Wichita Falls, TX area, so we headed out in the morning, as we had a good 8-hour drive ahead of us.The storms were predicted to fire after 4pm, so we had just enough time to get there.

As we were nearing the area, we saw a storm fire up and began to navigate to intercept it.  I must give the National Weather Service (NWS) kudos for their forecast ; ).  They were right-on with their predictions of small "storms."  We chased the cell for a couple of hours as it moved east, then south.  As we got closer to it, we saw another "storm" pop up just west of where we were, but to get to it we had to "punch the core" of the storm we were on. Now, don't get too excited, it was a very small hail core (plink, plink!)

We then set up on a road to wait for the next cell to come to us.  A little more hail this time, but again, tiny.  And that was about it for the day.  Nothing spectacular, but successful in finding the only storm around.  And we had fun!  Mark says storm chasing is just like fishing, catching a small one is still better than working.

And I just want to let you all know that we weren't the only "crazy" people out there.  There were several other storm chasers following the same storms.

Today we are driving, and driving, and driving!  We're heading to North Dakota where the NWS has given probabilities of 15% for severe weather tomorrow.