Day 1: Edmund, OK to Burlington, CO

Arrival day was on 8th May this year, and after the guests had all arrived we headed north for the risk on the 9th. We stayed overnight in Edmund, OK, then headed up into Kansas for afternoon storms. A few shots from our first full day on the Plains:

The three chase vehicles, complete with mascots:

Signs of the old days out here. No wood for fence posts in the past, so they had to be made from rock:

Near Colby, KS the first storm of the day developed, with an abandoned truck giving a nice foreground:

There were some photogenic rainshafts for a time:

The storm contained marble-sized hail according to radar, so we let it pass over us. It gave the cars a good jet wash with 50mph+ winds and pea-sized hail:

The storm didn't really do much else, so we headed west to see the mammatus lit up by the setting sun. A nice introductory chase day to give everyone a taste of the storms: