Respect

Honor

The only word needed.

Pat Receives Amelia Earhart Award

In Rep. Todd Tiahrt's office this morning.

Clouds from the air at Sunrise

A few random towers just off-screen, were rising a little short of the cap. A neat sight, for someone who normally sees this from the ground...the rising columns penetrating the base layer. Cool.

Prayers for the Families of Those Lost in DC

Crash on the Red Line is in an area we'll travel through several times a day over the next 4. On our original schedule, we'd have been going the other direction right about the time of the crash.

The aftermath will be inconvenient for us. But I'll take inconvenient over what 9 families are going through, or what hundreds of others who were hurt are dealing with today.

There but for the grace of God go I.

Things like this are the reason all in our party carry an emergency medical paper, identifying each of us, who we're with, and giving the essential info doctors need, if we're unable to communicate. And numbers to notify at home if the worst should happen.

We're an hour out of KC

...Unless we decide to grab the APC. 3 or 4 hours then.

Leave me to eat,

Or I'll poke you with my messy fork.

The surly one on the right...

...Is the one this trip is for. Oh, surly is a put-on.

Two Weeks, 3 People

5 bags.

Dropping off Little Sissy

Cristi is staying with my brother Todd, his wife Sherra and their family in Edmond, OK while Pat, Roxan & I go to the East Coast. Previous experience tells us she'd be bored silly with a lot that we plan. Her sis was when we did a similar DC tour at this age.

VacationTime!

We've been planning a trip to the East Coast for my oldest daughter, Pat, since shortly after the first of the year -- it's her 16th birthday present from Mom and me.

We'll be posting pictures and videos as we get time -- it's a pretty busy trip. Four days in DC, three in Philadelphia, three in New York City, and to cap it off, July 4th fireworks over Niagara Falls -- viewed from our dinner table at the top of Skylon Tower on the Canadian side of the falls. Then we have a train ride home.

Here's a link to the Picasa page that will host our photos...

I'll be tweeting and posting some photos direct to the blog, too. Have a great two weeks - we plan to!

S of El Dorado

Taken from 70th Street and Haverhill Road about a minute before Butler county spotters reported a brief touchdown between 20th & 40th, east of Haverhill Rd.

100th & Haverhill Rd

Looking North, from about 1/4 mile north of the intersection.

Fairview Cemetery

Looking N toward Augusta. Cemetery is located near 140th & Thunder Road.
(Reminder to self -- don't chase on Thunder Road again)

Butler County Tower

Looking Northeast from near 95th & Woodlawn south of Derby

Wellington Storm as seen from N of Blackwell

Coulda Been -- But Maybe Not...

Saw this about 7pm this evening. We first called it a microburst, but when I was scanning the tape to pull the microburst video, an indistinct something showed up in the clouds to the left of the dust on the ground. Both Matt and I believe the area, which was somewhat funnel-shaped, spun for just a couple of seconds.

There's a lot pointing toward it being nothing at all, but there are some things that give it at least a possibility. Both ICT and the TWDR just a few miles east of where this occurred were showing ~60-70 knot inbound wind in this location. My radar archive jumps from 25:56Z to 00:14Z so it is of no help. The consensus so far among the NWS folks here is "can't say for sure." I'm going to pull a longer clip tomorrow morning and email it to them so they can hopefully match our video with the radar and come up with an answer.

The street sign you see flash through early on is 199th W and 111th South, and the dust is from a farm field about 1.5 miles west of Clearwater, approximately 151st-167th W and 103rd S, so it was about 2-2.5 miles east of us.

Whatever it is, it put a challenging twist to the active part of a very challenging day, forecast- and strategy-wise. A big thanks for Matt for the extra work he did this morning on the hand analysis and other things that helped me get my mind wrapped around an atmosphere I, frankly, had not paid attention to for several weeks.

It's possible (maybe even likely) this will end the spring season for me. Looking forward to our east-coast vacation two weeks from today, and have to send the laptop off to one of my newspeople so she can cover for me while she's also traveling. With it gone, most of my chasing tools are, too, and I'm pretty much ready to move into a few down months anyway. All in all, it's been a decent season, with more hits than misses.

EDIT: The pixelization of the conversion to Flash really made it blocky and hard to see. If you're interested and can take a 3MB email, let me know and I'll send you the original.