Day 6. A Surprise Ending

We left Ponca City, Oklahoma at about noon today thinking that there was nothing brewing within reach, so we would just head west toward eastern Colorado to get into position for tomorrow. We got on Route 11 and headed due west. We decided to spend the night in Liberal, Kansas. I'm pretty sure that Liberal is a misnomer and I'm the only liberal in Liberal.

We checked into our hotel (Dave and I are in the lap of luxury tonight at the Quality Inn) and let the dogs run for a bit in the back. We went to dinner at Crapplebees at about 6:30 and thought we'd all call it an early night. At about 7:15ish, Dave gets a call from his friend, Keith, a great forecaster, saying that there's a supercell right outside Liberal and we need to go check it out. Sure enough, we pay our checks, and walk outside, and there it is. This big, giant, black, rotating supercell. We hopped in our cars and off we went, seeking the best viewing area and hoping for tornadoes.

There was a wall cloud that had some funnel clouds coming out of its base. Although the storm never actually produced a tornado, it had some incredible structure. It made me really see why David comes out here every year to do this. Mother Nature is spectacular and awesome. It made me feel small and relatively powerless.

Unfortunately, since we unloaded the car before dinner, I didn't have my camera. The only pictures I got were taken with my iPhone. Now we know to always keep the cameras in the car.