Our crew started the morning in Great Bend, Kansas and worked our way south into the Texas Panhandle where morning data indicated a solid tornado setup along a retreating front moving through the area.

We finally arrived into the area, gassing up and grabbing some lunch before retreating to a desolate dirt road in the northern Panhandle.

Storms fired, and quickly went HP.  We were uncertain about the tornado prospects, but waited the storm out to see if anything would open us for us.

With visibility low and tornado threat looking low as well, Tim decided to try and sample one of the cores to collect hail data.  I navigated us on a bumble-screw road (Road U) that took us eastward near Wolf Creek State Park and Lake Fryer.  With terrain and road options limited, we parked and waited for the storm core to get to us.

As we were waiting there, Tim and I just chatting, he suddenly interrupts the conversation when he took notice of a feature off to our 10-o’clock..

“What is that over there?  Straight ahead!  It’s a tornado!”

So much for hail, huh!  We quickly pivoted our thoughts and moved westward to try and catch the tornado coming up from our south.  As we turned west, the tornado lifted, but we continued to track the funnel.  Tim and I were both kind of astonished, and a little frustrated as we were in an area void of any cell phone service and were likely the only ones actually seeing this tornado.

Shortly after  that tornado lifted, we were a little further down the road, watching a new area of interest.  Tim, who was out filming, saw what he thought to be another tornado.

Before I could fully get out of the car, Tim jumped back into the passenger seat, instructing me to floor it to get up over the small hill.  As we crested, we got a better view to confirm a second tornado was ongoing.

We were unable to get into the tornado’s path due to lack of roads as we were frantically trying to stay ahead of it.  Once we finally got lined up in the path, the tornado was completely gone and we did not see any further tornadoes.

We would later finally find some hail, most of it an inch or less before calling it a day and heading up to Garden City, Kansas for the night.