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I'm super tired and behind on things, so this may be rushed a bit. Left Blair around 9:30 and headed for south central KS or nw OK. I get to Alva OK, just nw of the triple point. I spent about an hour there screwing with the problematic laptop("yay" for vista). I've never had GR3, just the trial before. I got a new laptop and was going to buy it, but put another trial on first. Well it worked fine at home! Apparently the new Vista update screws it up. I never got it to work again. I then couldn't get java to download and work. It'd just sit there saying it might take a few moments. So I looped nothing all weekend basically lol. Well the ADDS satellite site worked fine. I then had my wifi card jump onto the motel nearby, which didn't work anyway. Lets just say it took me a long time to find where you disable that on Vista. I had to because it kept connecting to everything and screwing up my phone connection. Other than being new to Vista, and Vista problems, the laptop ran great! It's nice to finally have a brighter screen(at least till night, lol). I have to work on that thing before the next chase. So an hour later I get it set up for what will get me by. I thought the triple point would be the spot, I was near it, but the latest satellite loop made it pretty clear sw OK would be it. So I dropped south. Towers began to erupt down there. I wasn't in a huge hurry the whole drive since the storms were struggling on radar so bad. I couldn't loop radar, but it looked like some splitting going on. I get to I40 near Geary. I could have shot sw into the storms closer, but wanted to leave options open for the cell to the sw of the lead one. Two were beginning to dominate. I top off in Binger then head west of town. The lead storm was looking pretty good, though a little small and high based. In the above photo that lead cell is on the far right. The following cell to its sw is right above the road on the left. The problem with this is the western storm will tend to rain, or seed, the storm ahead of it. That's not good. It's always hard to know which to choose, as often the sw one will up and vanish. Not sure why, capped or sinking air behind the first....no real sure idea, I've just seen it enough. But the lead one seems to do worse more often than the back one. Inflow winds for the day likely make the difference. If it is strong the back storm can ingest some good air. If not, it might be trying to use the air from the lead cell too much. So anyway, I mostly opted for the west storm, but stopped where I could keep both options open. I'm stopped just west of Ft. Cobb in the first photo here. I would be at this location for an hour and a half. I park 1 mile north of the highway on a gravel road. Amazingly enough I didn't see a single chaser the whole time. I looked at spotter network earlier in the day to see how bad it would be and it looked pretty darn full of chasers, lol. May should be nuts. It's always nice to feel alone with a storm, or at least with few people. I like it as well with some friends as without, either's cool to me. I just can't stand it when you feel like you have to look at vehicles more than the storm while moving around. Seems that happens whenever you go to get closer. I got closer later and was surprised it wasn't too bad. Maybe 6 or 7 chasers parked on the shoulder or going by. It's only really annoying when there's nowhere to turn around or pull over and you are getting boxed in by chasers(as you yourself get in the way of others obviously).
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The western supercell was really trying now, but just a bit too high based, or more importantly probably, not getting enough shear yet. With that sun setting like that I was like, oh c'mon, figure out a way to tube.
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Would have made a cool picture if it was producing a tornado.
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Big ol mammatus forming now. The view is north towards the lead supercell.
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Still in the same spot. I couldn't see much of the western supercell thanks to constant clouds right ahead of it. It didn't look that great on radar still. I hoped it would offer some good twilight lightning ops, and it sure came through! The hardest part about chasing(other than deciding to leave home for a long drive in the first place) is deciding when to be on a storm and from where. At least with the 10mm lens I can be close and still get the whole thing in. The base of the supercell is just left of that bolt.
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Low clouds finally lift out of the way and the show begins. Twilight rules. Mount the camera, open the aperture, put the shutter on bulb...then just change the ISO around to see what you need. Really simple stuff.
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