The wait begins . . .
We headed towards Winfield, Kansas, on day 7 (May 20) with high hopes for seeing a few storms since the setup looked better than it had all week. We had plenty of instability and moisture in place but we had a pretty hefty cap to break as 700mb temperatures were forecasted to be near 12 degrees Celsius. We knew that if we could get the cap to break that we might get to see a few decent storms.
The setup for storms looked ok, and our setup for waiting on the storms looked pretty good as well. Winfield, Kansas, is a fairly small town just like many of the towns we traveled through out on the Plains. About all there is in this type of town is a grain elevator, a co-op, and a few houses. Winfield was a little bigger than that, but the best thing about it was Winfield City Park. This park had to be one of the cooler parks that I've been to for such a small town. Basically there was a huge park in the middle with a really nice playground, picnic tables, places to play football, pavilions to have parties in, among other things. The best part, though, was that the park was surrounded by a big moat that you could fish in and also was the home to about 3 million ducks of all types.
So, everything started off nicely. We arrived and all agreed on how cool the park was. We took over the playground from the children for a while and a had a good time doing that. We threw the football around for a while. Some of us took a walk around the moat where we confronted a few hostile geese and threw some rocks into the water. We even found some really cool little ducks that would chase after the rocks we threw in by running on top of the water towards the splash. All of this was nice, but the cap continued to hold, and there were no storms to speak of. So we repeated what we had already done.
A lot of people think that storm chasing is just like the movie Twister. We all found out that day that most of the time it isn't. Not a single storm fired anywhere within our range. So we didn't get to see any flying cows, tractor trailers, or houses. All we got to see was a few clouds and some local Winfieldians. Even so, we still had a good time, for the most part, but we were definitely tired of Winfield City Park after 5 hours or so. So we headed to Wichita to stay for the night and get ready to try again the next day . . .
More later...
Drew McCombs
ABC 33/40 Weather Intern
Mississippi State University
abc3340wx2@gmail.com
We headed towards Winfield, Kansas, on day 7 (May 20) with high hopes for seeing a few storms since the setup looked better than it had all week. We had plenty of instability and moisture in place but we had a pretty hefty cap to break as 700mb temperatures were forecasted to be near 12 degrees Celsius. We knew that if we could get the cap to break that we might get to see a few decent storms.
The setup for storms looked ok, and our setup for waiting on the storms looked pretty good as well. Winfield, Kansas, is a fairly small town just like many of the towns we traveled through out on the Plains. About all there is in this type of town is a grain elevator, a co-op, and a few houses. Winfield was a little bigger than that, but the best thing about it was Winfield City Park. This park had to be one of the cooler parks that I've been to for such a small town. Basically there was a huge park in the middle with a really nice playground, picnic tables, places to play football, pavilions to have parties in, among other things. The best part, though, was that the park was surrounded by a big moat that you could fish in and also was the home to about 3 million ducks of all types.
So, everything started off nicely. We arrived and all agreed on how cool the park was. We took over the playground from the children for a while and a had a good time doing that. We threw the football around for a while. Some of us took a walk around the moat where we confronted a few hostile geese and threw some rocks into the water. We even found some really cool little ducks that would chase after the rocks we threw in by running on top of the water towards the splash. All of this was nice, but the cap continued to hold, and there were no storms to speak of. So we repeated what we had already done.
A lot of people think that storm chasing is just like the movie Twister. We all found out that day that most of the time it isn't. Not a single storm fired anywhere within our range. So we didn't get to see any flying cows, tractor trailers, or houses. All we got to see was a few clouds and some local Winfieldians. Even so, we still had a good time, for the most part, but we were definitely tired of Winfield City Park after 5 hours or so. So we headed to Wichita to stay for the night and get ready to try again the next day . . .
More later...
Drew McCombs
ABC 33/40 Weather Intern
Mississippi State University
abc3340wx2@gmail.com
on June 16, 2006, 5:18 pm
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