Day 1: The Trek Begins

Today was the first day of our long trek west. After meeting on the Cook Campus at 6 AM to load up Scarlet and Goose (our two minivans for the trip) and discuss a destination, we departed our familiar surroundings. Before going far, we stopped at a Cracker Barrel in PA to load up with the most important meal of the day. From there, we travelled west. After almost 600 miles and about 12 hours of traveling, we’ve made it to Richmond, Indiana!

But today was not all travel, as we were greeted with a cold front across the Ohio Valley that produced some isolated thunderstorms capable of small hail and damaging wind gusts. These thunderstorms were not favorable for tornadoes because of a lack of shear present in the atmosphere, which is changing wind speed and direction with height. Nevertheless, they were something to watch out for.

Since the route to Texas, our intended destination ran through this area, we were able to get a little warm-up (or as Dr. Decker called it, an “appetizer”) before we hopefully get to see what the Great Plains has to offer. We weaved our way through central Ohio and around Columbus as we made our way west and got to see some of these isolated thunderstorms. We were not able to witness any hail or strong winds, but we were able to partially see the full structure of everything and see the atmosphere at work.

While we hope to see some more action on Friday near the Texas Panhandle, today was a nice warm-up for this trip. Plus, we were greeted with some frequent lightning as we stopped for dinner. A fellow classmate and I almost got soaked as a line of thunderstorms started making their way through where we were. We even got to see a wall cloud illuminated by the frequent lightning and the little remaining light there was after sunset (see below).

Even though today was a long day, it was an enjoyable one and I cannot wait for what the rest of the trip has in store! Hopefully, I’ll have some more weather to share (more pictures and videos for sure)!