We awoke to clear blue skies and warm sunshine in Amarillo. Temperatures were, for the first time, respectably high with morning values in the high teens Celsius climbing into the mid to high twenties into the afternoon. The plan today was to head east through the Tx Panhandle and end up in Central Oklahoma, ready for a day billed as very threatening indeed.

The drive east of around 200 miles along I-40 set the scene for the day, as clear blue skies rapidly gave way to towering cumulus as we punched through the dryline. We had a lunch stop in the town of Weatherford by early afternoon, then headed north towards the first major thunderstorm development of the day. This thunderstorm would rapidly become the focus for our attention for the rest of the day, as it quickly became supercellular north of Putnam/Thomas. This was our first encounter of Oklahoma's Chaser Circus, with literally hundreds of chase vehicles littering the roadway. It was like the Who's Who of chasers, with everyone from NOAA and the Vortex 2 team with their dozens of Doppler on Wheels, right through to the backyard chasers. The number of idiots was frightening; chasers of the opinion that sticking some flashing orange and red lights on their cars meant that the rules of the road did not apply to them.

We followed the supercell slowly eastwards over the next few hours, eventually ending up north of Oklahoma City. The supercell went through numerous phases of being severe/tornado warned, and some brief touch downs were reported by chasers within the cell. However, it was an extremely high precipitation storm and, for all its impressive and evil looks, was difficult to chase as everything was wrapped in sheets of rain. As we passed through the town of Kingfisher, its many tornado sirens began blaring in quite an eery way, bringing all of the town's residents onto the street (rather than into their bunkers!). After a few hours, the chaser circus grew and grew until a long line of of traffic, tens of miles long, was slowly griding to a halt and making the storm unchaseable. We couldn't complain of course, as we were just another set of chasers adding to the congestion, but the attitude of some of the chasers was very disappointing and took the shine of an otherwise enjoyable day.

We made the decision by early evening to duck out of chase mode and head to the Sleep Inn in Edmond, northern Oklahoma City. After a visit to Chili's for an evening burger/ribs, we had a relatively early night and were able to take stock of a very active start to our chase trip!