UK Storm Chasing - Tornado Alley (day 3)

Day 3 (16-5-2002) Click on any of the the Photos to Enlarge
We leave the Super 8 in Hutchingson Kansas, we decided not to fetch any data that morning from there due to the fact that they charge for local calls, the few number of calls we made the evening before (as we found out when we went to check out) had cost us over $10. We headed to Charlie's Diner in Newton Kansas, Tom had stopped there a previous year and had connected to the internet from there. That was our first mistake! When we got there we found we couldn't connect to AOL, we even rang the operator who told us to try another area code, no joy. Using the data we had got from the night before we continued towards our target area in Blackwell Oklahoma. Second mistake! On the way we try calling in at a few stops in hope of a data point (a phone socket for the laptop to connect to the internet), nope even asking in the tourist information center just north of the Oklahoma boarder on the I-45 was no good. As we turned off the I-35 just a few miles from Blackwell we hear a report on the weather alert radio that there are going to be storms in the west of Oklahoma, everything had changed and because we had fetched no data that morning we were the wrong side of state. Quickly we plotted a route for Alva Oklahoma, that way we when we got there we had the choice of two main roads to continue on.
When we get there, we called into a motel, we had decided that if we book a room for the night we could connect to the internet (so far all rooms we stayed at have phone lines). We have some luck, Steve and Tom had gone inside while I had stayed with the car, they bump into Silver Lining tours and are talking about the target area being in the Oklahoma panhandle, we didn't bother with the room, instead we went off to fill the car up with fuel. Another bit of luck, the station we stopped at not only had a data port connection, but better still had a little computer in the corner where you can pick up all the weather data from anyway! We left there and headed west on the US-64, from listening to the weather alert radio and looking at sky and the need for a motel room we turn right at Laverne Oklahoma and head for Woodward Oklahoma.
We book into a Days Inn inn Woodward, get to the room see where the storm is, it's heading our way, with report of posbile 3 inch hail, while waiting for the storm to turn up its a good time to nip round to McDonalds and get some food. With the chance of large hail we park the car under the canopy at the front after asking the manager Mr Patel if we could.
The weather radio started giving thunderstorm alerts, the storm then came over, no large hail but at the front of the storm there was heavy rain, but we had another good lightning display.
After it had passed over us, we then got back in the car and followed it, there was then an alert for a posible tornado but that was 50 miles south east of us. It was then 1-30am we called it a night and went back to the motel
Map of route