Saturday was a day I had on my radar for most of the week, mainly cause it was probably gonna offer up my only real chance to chase anything within a very quiet severe weather window. Initially, I was eyeballing central Kansas, but as the day approached, the better setup started to shift further south into Oklahoma, and it just wasn’t anything I wanted to make that kind of effort for. Briefly, I had considered the play as there was a Sunday play in north Texas, but both days looked like hail risks over anything particularly tornadic, and with me not wanting to extend myself, still kinda getting my brain right, I decided nah on both. Until Saturday morning… I got up a bit late after making a 6am check of things to make sure I wasn’t going to lose out on a big chase day. But the near lunch reawakening gave me some pause. For a couple days, the HRRR had good tracks across northeast Colorado, so I decided a backyarder was in order, left about 2p, and was on storms pretty much all day. I will have a write-up coming on this day, but bottom line was the marginal risk exceeded my very low expectations. I ended up in Goodland at the end and made the three hour drive home, getting back in shortly before 2am. I slept away most of Sunday haha That’s the reason I choose the hotel most times cause I was basically useless on Sunday after that.
The week looks mostly quiet, but we’ll start to see an uptick in severe weather potential toward the latter part of the week, maybe as early as Friday. Right now, SPC has highlighted SATURDAY, the same day as the Wakita 30th Twister Anniversary, in the same area as Wakita. I have debated on attending the celebration, but should a legit chase opportunity exist, that will probably mean I am in the area by default, so we’ll see. As the back half of the month rolls, we should see the pattern change back to something that supports a more active stretch, so I would imagine the downtime will be closing out here this week. I have updated my chase outlook days accordingly.