Started in Kearney this morning (well, yesterday morning, now), zipped over to Lincoln and started south to Manhattan, KS. Along the way, convection started to fire in Marshall County. I corepunched a developing supercell (very quickly -- didn't look like much on radar, but lo and hehold, marble sized hail and lots of it), got south of it, parked, and asked myself: "Self, do you want to try to chase after that thing?". The answer, of course, was no, and so I missed the one area of the state that actually DID tornado today. Instead, I opted to continue south to Manhattan, where the setup for supercells looked better and I didn't have to worry about pesky river crossings. 
Headed south and west of Manhattan to try to catch that world-eater (on radar) over I-70. Of course, my digital cellular coverage died when I most needed it, leaving me radarless. I ended up nudging up torwards the storm, but turned around eventually again to the south and east to try to find some radar coverage again. Luckily I came aross a pair of chasers in an SUV who let me poach their XM data for a minute or two. After that I headed back towards the storm, caught a couple of pictures of a couple of wall clouds that lowered and fizzled, then threw my hands up in frustration and headed back southeast. I ran into Mike Hollingshead & Randy Chamberlain along with what became an Oklahoma-style convergence up there and, without much else to do, we sat around and prayed to the weather gods.
Fun things: Literally feeling the warm surface winds battling the outflow. 10+ degree instantanous shifts in temperuature.
And, of course, driving into outflow and having all the car windows fog up.
Funny things: Watching chasing groups/tours race back and forth north and south on the road next to us.
A few pics:
The only really interesting lowering I saw all day.
What year is it again? Oh, yeah, it's 2005. Why are we all the way out here?
XM radar is pretty awesome, as Mike demonstrates -- though it has a habit of making things look more powerful than they are. Likely it's something that you learn to read, as a lotta good chasers swear by it. IMO XM radar would be immeasurably better if they didn't smooth so much and clip the dbZ.
Back in Manhattan. Found this great example of why it's usually not a good idea to try to drive through standing water, especially in your low-clearance compact car!
All in all, I'm a bit bummed I saw no tubes, but I did get to punch a hailstorm, meet a few chasers, and check out yet another rural part of Kansas I'd never seen before. After 2004, it only figures we'd get 2005. Dear 2006: I think after this year the slate is cleaned. You can resume the production of tornadoes.
