The entire drive from St Louis to central Kansas consisted of status clouds and statiform rain as far as the eye could see (which is pretty far out here). When we reached our target, Salina, KS, it was still under a stratus deck and was only 65 degrees. This was disheartening so we moved a little south and west toward Great Bend hoping to see the sun. From there, with the help of the Western Kentucky University chase group, we picked a storm to go after and followed it until around 7pm when it seemed to fizzle out (it later restrengthened but not until after sunset). Visibility was poor all day, and by the time we were on the storm it was difficult to even identify a base or the rotation from our vantage point. It was somewhat disappointing, but we at least got used to working as a group to navigate the chase, and got some decent lightning and wind gusts. There were a couple of tornado reports from the storm that we were on, but they are questionable.
The highlight of our day was probably when our car killed an endangered species. This was not uneventful as we are all animal lovers. It stayed with us for a couple of hundred miles before a bump in the road freed it from the car's grill.
A salute to the poor Great Prairie Chicken.
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