I have a bunch of different shots of this, but not nearly as many as I wish I could have. Thought of things too late. When I first woke I saw that rainbow circle on the wall of my McCook motel room, but it wasn't that bright yet. I was like, eh? After about 3 hours each night the two nights before, and maybe 5 hours this night, lots of miles driving, I sort of wondered if I was losing it, looking at that thing. It just looked like a rainbow circle of faint light on the wall where it didn't seem to fit quite right. Then I saw what was happening. Rising sun was just right, shining through the peephole in the door, across the room, bouncing off the mirror and landing back next to it. Picture taking became a little interesting when you consider there was one on the mirror as well. So you look at the mirror and see the peephole light, and both rainbow circles...so long as you didn't get in the light obviously. If you used the mirror one, it looked like a ring floating around the room behind you. Anyway.
Wound up chasing NE, mostly because it was on the way home. I did not like the cu behavior on satellite I80 south after a while so I hedged my bets north, just staying east of everything as I did so. Wound up ahead of a very nice low topped, sheared over to hell, supercell. I was amazed just how bad these looked on radar and how good in person. It ramped up as I went north of Lindsay, on "highway 121"...which was NOT a highway there in reality(note to GPS). So it was ramping up as I did about 75mph on a gravel road, trying to reach a real highway as rain from a storm going up south of this one got me. I'm just amazed how often your perfectly good gravel will turn to crap, especially after seeing all the local areas flooded on this one.
Right around here I met the train of chasers, not huge, but not small....the dow and discovery crew, and others. Flew north into the core then east into Norfolk. I actually thought it had a fair chance of dropping a tornado near town back in the occluded area.
East of Norfolk catching the one behind it now. The wall of rain in the notch was pretty cool looking as it raced ne.
I waited in the rain for a short bit to see if anything was burried back in the wrape. This lowering emerged with a brief tail cloud with it. Hoped again for an occluded tube, especially with the setting sun, but no go.
Congrats to all those targeting OK who bagged more tubes.