We lunched in Wichita (Chipotle!) then sat for a while in Emporia, where a line of cumuli was persistently sending up pulses. A storm went and it looked kind of lame visually, and so we let it be. Another one went, looked lame again and we let it be. Then, one of the storms we had seen started to look good (according to RADAR) and we were torn: it was going into a relatively dry area, so the tornado potential was reduced. But it was the only game in town.
We got to Topeka after the storm decided to get a monster hook and hit Tulsa hard, with 5 inch hail. The wall cloud was rotating quite nicely, but it was pretty high-based--I would say 6000 feet or thereabouts.
We followed it along until nightfall, but it never really came close again.
While that was going on, my CoD friends sat just southwest of Emporia. Their patience paid off, as initiation along that part of the line finally occurred, starting up the storm of the day. That storm ended up producing a tornado that badly damaged the town of Reading, where one person was unfortunately killed and 5 were injured.
The storm then went on to produce nighttime tornadoes. It looked impressive on RADAR; we could have caught up to it, but doing so at night would be the epitome of hubris, not to mention just pointless and stupid.
Anyhow, patience paid off for my friends, but I don't know that I would have done anything differently. I'll try not to dwell on it too much. There's so much more chasing to do.
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