Day 1: Elk City, OK to Colby, KS

As I was driving this year, I arrived in Dallas, TX a few days prior to the tour to relax and acclimatise. The final 2 guests arrived on the afternoon of the 15th so we drove north to Elk City, OK to be in position for the 16th, our first chase day. On the morning of the 16th we continued north into Kansas for a marginal/slight risk of severe storms. After lunch at Ardmore, OK we stopped at Greensburg, KS, a town that was 95% destroyed in the May 4th, 2007 EF5 tornado that was over 1.5 miles wide. They have a nice memorial in town, and the remains of a building that was levelled; only the steps remain. First a couple of shots on the road as we headed north:

The memorial in Greensburg, KS. We were luck enough to be there when they did their daily tornado siren test too - quite eerie given the town's history:

Wind turbine parts on trucks at a truck stop somewhere in Kansas:

We found a storm near Herndon, KS, that was briefly severe-warned. Not much structure or thunder, but a nice taster for days to come:

We arrived in Colby, KS around sunset and called in to the Twisters Bar and Grill. As luck would have it the TORUS scientists were there too. They were conducting research in to supercells and tornadoes and had an impressive array of equipment, including use of the Hurricane Hunter aircraft, which usually fly in to hurricanes approaching the USA: