16 May 2019
“What do pterodactyls have to do with storm chasing?”
McCook, NE to Ogallala, NE (735 km)
Well, I got six hours and fifty-seven minutes of sleep and was up by seven. I processed some photos and had my oatmeal breakfast while The Weather Channel spoke about the storms approaching for the next six days.
We had our orientation at ten and Bill decided on northwest Nebraska region for today as the better air was starting to flood into the central plains. We headed out towards Ogallala where we had lunch at a pizza buffet called Valentinos. I loaded up on salad, a couple slices of pizza and a great piece of fried chicken.
We were done by two and continued to the west towards Wyoming. We stopped at three in Bridgeport where we met up with a Storm Hunter truck.
With a little time to kill, we drove a few miles to the Courtyard and Jail Rocks where we had a half hour to wander around and burn off lunch.
We headed north at four and had a pit stop in Alliance where we watched some lightning for a few minutes.
Then we drove east about ten miles, stopped for a few minutes, returned to Alliance and then the storms fizzled, so Bill decided to head for the storms to the south.
We went east to Hyannis and then south towards Ogallala. When we were about twenty miles short of Ogallala, we could see the southern storms coming towards us. We turned around and found a spot to watch the approaching storm.
We stayed about twenty minutes and relocated a little farther north where the sunset was lighting up the foreground while lightning and rainbows took care of the background.
We had another twenty minutes here and then went just east of Arthur to see if we could get a lightning show but the storms had moved off too far to the east.
Our hotel for the night was in Ogallala at the Travellodge which used to be the Stagecoach Inn. I’d stayed there twice before.
One last glance at the forecast still pointed to some pretty severe weather for the next day.
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