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David Drummond and I departed Norman at approximately 1pm and headed down I-44 towards Lawton. Storms started firing shortly before we arrived in the Lawton area and we decided to head west on US62 to Snyder for some gas.

This gave us a couple minutes to choose whether we wanted to go to the north storm or the south storm. We decided for the south storm and headed to southwest of Frederick where the storm obviously struggled and underwent a few cycles before really ramping up and producing a nice wall cloud.

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This was honestly the best looking day I chased on my chase cation. Good instability, good shear, but maybe almost too much shear. Dewpoints in Eastern New Mexico were pretty good in the 60's and it looked like super cells were likely.

Having stayed in Lubbock the night before, we woke up pretty close to our target for the day. A short drive to David Drummond's house where we picked a final forecast, before heading out to check out his horses. Sarah went for a short ride and we fed his horses and had a pretty good time before deciding to hit the road to chase.

Down southwest to Seminole for a quick stop for lunch before heading west towards New Mexico and Hobbs. A quick stop at the state line sign, which was quite elaborate, and again at the Hobbs, NM sign.

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Jari and I didn't chase in Colorado on the 6th and 7th due to the truck problems and having to drop Jena off at the airport on the morning of the 7th and pick up Sarah that evening.

We hit the road early in the morning on the 8th for Fargo, ND. Unfortunately I woke up with an aching ear and it got nothing but worse as the day progressed. I was in very heavy pain for the whole 14 hour drive, taking pain killers every few hours on the drive up.

Fortunately, I was able to get into an urgent care center first thing Saturday AM and get some antibiotics for my outer and middle ear infection. While I didn't get immediate relief, I started feeling much better a couple days later when things healed up.

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After a successful Saturday chase we stayed in Liberal, KS at the Hampton Inn then headed out Sunday morning the 3rd. The original target was somewhere near the OK/KS Border near I-35 and just west of I-35.

We headed east out of Liberal towards Greensburg where we filled up. Jari and Jena had not seen Greensburg yet, so we did a little mini tour and drive through town. It was the first time I had been through town and actually stopped for more than gas since 2008(I previously drove through Greensburg on 4/14/12 and 5/25/12). It's good to see things returning somewhat to normal in the town, however, it's obvious most of the town has not rebuilt. The roads on the north side of 400 are still blocks of empty slabs.

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After driving home from Nebraska the 28th, I ran around most of the morning on the 29th trying to get my truck fixed. I got the caliper bolts and expected them to take 15 minutes to replace, but had trouble getting a lug nut off.

JR Hehnly tried to help me and we ended up breaking a breaker bar. Discount Tire ended up breaking 2 sockets and had no luck. I ended up having luck at Ron's automotive in Norman and they were able to break the lug nut and get the caliper bolts on. I replaced the lug nut and was in business.

By this time, it was lunch time so Ashley and I got lunch before I took her to the airport to go home. After dropping her off at the airport I headed up to Watonga as the atmosphere was definitely becoming very unstable.

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I had been watching the 25th on models almost all week and knew it had quite a bit of potential, but capping concerns lead me to almost blow the day off as a non chase. Thank goodness I changed my mind at the last second and scored multiple tornadoes on a cyclic supercell near LaCrosse, KS.

As I said, I had mostly blown the chase off, but woke up Friday morning looking at the models and decided that it would be a chase day. I needed some help from Ashley to get our things together and the ducks in a line while I was at work. I left around lunch time and ran home to pick up Ashley and all of the stuff we'd need to chase and we were on the road by 1 pm.

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After driving all night the previous night, I arrived home in Norman about 3 am Monday April 30th and had to work later on in the morning. I caught about 5 hours sleep before getting up and going to work and working until 5:05pm.

Once I got to work, a little storm popped up nearby, which made me start to look at things. The previous nights storms had pushed an outflow boundary south of Norman which had slowly begun to travel north. I watched this boundary all day, and it caught my eye. Moisture (70+ degree dewpoints) had begun to pool right along it, especially right along I-35.

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I knew from the get-go that it would be a late night drive back to Norman, so I slept in pretty late finally getting out of bed around 11am. The forecast for the day was pretty local, and the SPC had removed almost all probabilities of storms in the area.

David Drummond and I headed southwest towards Seminole, TX where we ate at the Dairy Queen and then sat around most of the afternoon waiting for storms to fire. Towering CU were very prevalant, but nothing seemed to want to take the punch and get going.