As soon as I woke up I was talking with AAA, towing companies, and service stations. I had may car towed and being worked on, and back in Hays eating lunch by 11:30. The cause for the failure was a corroded positive cable preventing any power from reaching the vehicle, also some vacume tubes were replaced causing the engine to idle slightly rough, cost excluding towing was $100. The car was wet but, not too bad. I got another late start this day due to the car getting repaired. As I was walking back to the service station I saw that the discovery/dow/tiv group had a crew setup on the sidewalk pointing down mainstreet. I walked by on the sidewalk 2 feet away down the street towards where they were filming wondering what exactly it was they were filming. Then came the Dow/Tiv/Vortex group in a parade down the street. I hit the road about an hour later (picked up the car, cleaned up a bit, and loaded up). I immediately headed for Hill City trying to avoid the hordes on I-70 looking for more mature storms. Horribly saturated dirt roads, horrible contrast (no sunlight), and had a few dozen people around within an hour or so, I headed back to Wakeeny(sirens were going) to take a quick peek at the storm damage I had seen earlier from the previous evenings ordeal. I then headed onto Elis, NE where the sirens were also going off. I checked out a couple of escape routes. Two tornado warned cells one after another were stacked up like airliners as if they were on final approch into some unknown airport. I was SE of Elis for the first one, it was getting dark the East winds were blazing away. I tried to keep a decent eye on the immediate wind direction and speed for the winds around me, getting dark losing coms, kind of a hilly area I just could risk it where I then proceeded back to Hays, NE. I am not sure what happened to the first cell, if it had still be producing as it passed to my west I did’nt see it. The second cell I beleve put down the tornado that crossed I-70 blowing a couple semi trailers over. I saw chasers on I-70 for the next hour in static positions either that or the cell tower they were all using was lost. As I drove into Hays, law enforcement, fire, etc all had taken up static positions all over the place, the sirens were sounding, everything was closed down and I wanted to eat. The next cell was very obviously going to miss Hays, by at least 5 miles and I was hungry for some steak but, they closed the steak place I had gotten a coupon at earlier in the day ;( EVERYTHING, was closed, the gas stations, everything. A couple dozen stranded travelers, locals taking shelter were in the lobby of my motel, I figured I would sit down and watch TWC with them along with my live Nexrad on my lap, once to TOR warning expired everything would magically re-open. It didn’t I ended up at some breakfast type place, it was filled with chasers reviewing their tapes but, I guess the Applebee’s was the place to be that night. I did’nt recognize any obvious tornado’s, I saw a couple of heavy almost black precip shafts at a mile away that could have easily have been wedges but, I doubt it. I have not looked at the tapes yet but, I feel comfortable in a zero count for the day. I did get video driving into 4 Kansas towns with thier tornado sirens going off FWIW which was a bit unusual (I am usually not it town when they go off).
Work in progress