The last couple weekends in May are usually busy with bad weather… it’s the climatological peak of severe weather season, and despite 2020 being VERY slow to this point, it definitely peaked at the correct time.  Unfortunately, so did my weathermanning, and I already was coming off a ludicrous stretch of days that involved an 8-hour morning weathermanning shift (usually kicking off with a 1am alarm) followed up by an afternoon of severe weather coverage in the field.  With the exception of not chasing Friday, I had done this two of the last three days, and I was about to add another one today.

After finishing my Sunday morning weathermanning, I headed home, attempted (and failed) at a nap, a feat all on its own given how little sleep I had going into all this, and headed out the door for southwest Kansas.  I drove out to Dodge City and perched myself on the south side of town, waiting for storm initiation.

As storms fired, I did a loop up through Dodge, then back around to the south on a storm that had snuck up from the panhandle.  It was warned for big hail, possibly up to baseball size.  I directed myself back down to US-54 near Bloom and cut back toward Minneola.  I was hoping I could beat the worst of the core into town, but I did not.

I took a beating, a relatively fresh windshield was no longer so fresh thanks to the baseballs that nuked me there, literally a mile from town.

After the core had passed, I worked my way back east on US-54, staying just behind the storm as I tracked it across southern Kansas.

I stayed out through the evening shows, providing updates on the storms as plenty had popped up, but I had stuck pretty close to US-54 as I was not feeling particularly motivated to make a long night of things as I was coming to the end of this crazy stint.  Fortunately my storms were leading me straight back home to Wichita, and I followed them straight in and straight to bed to wrap up the crazy stint.