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On May 16, Dave Lewison, George Kourounis and I decided to head toward northwest Kansas from the Texas panhandle, where we'd spent the night. These storms going up around Garden City weren't that powerful, but they looked great after so many days of sunny weather under the high-pressure ridge. Image from video.	My car's odometer rolled past 100,000 miles somewhere around Liberal, Kansas. Wow. Lots of those miles came from chasing storms. Image from video.

This downpour - or maybe microburst - was typical of the kinds of stuff we saw as we drove farther north into a line of severe storms. Image from video.	This bolt hit something tall in the distance! Image from video.	Another bolt lights up a mushy storm that briefly got electrical near Hays, Kansas. The storms were dying off at sunset. Image from video.

The May 17 dewpoints in central Oklahoma should have provided ample fuel for storms, but the stuff we saw go up in early afternoon died fast. That night, a squall lined crashed through the state, moving east. Image from video.	May 19 seemed to hold a lot of promise. We initially headed into southwest Oklahoma, then saw better conditions setting up west of Childress as other storms fired in the northeastern Texas panhandle and moved into Oklahoma. We decided to check them out, north of Childress, and found the cluster had become outflow-dominant. Image from slide.

The outflow boundary turned all our warm, juicy, southern winds into cold, northern blasts. The environment for storms was completely screwed up, as this mess south of Childress demonstrates. Image from video.	Dave called Philip Flory to find out if there were good conditions for storms anywhere. The situation seemed hopeless. Image from video.

We ended up in Seymour, Texas, along with lots of other chasers and the Doppler on Wheels trucks. Taz, placed on one of George's many antennas by Dave and myself, enjoys the show. Image from video.	We headed northeast and saw these low-hanging clouds before getting into the core of a storm north of Archer City. When a tornado warning was issued on the storm, we were surprised - until we saw a radar image. We blasted east to try to get into position but saw only rain and small hail. It was too messy to see anything tornadic. Image from video.

We got rooms in Denison, Texas, and were treated to a lightning show from one of the last storms of the evening. Image from video.	Zap! There goes another one. Image from video.

Links to 2001 chase reports:

• February 14-March 31: Fog, a few storms and blue-sky distractions in drought-stricken Florida
• May 6-8: Roiling severe storms in Oklahoma and a mothership in Kansas
• May 9-11: Pretty storms in Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri
• May 16-19: Lightning and downpours during a Kansas chase and an outflow boundary from heck in Texas
• May 20: A too-close encounter with a tornadic supercell in Oklahoma
• May 23-27: Dust devils, Texas storms and a dust-bowl-style gust front in Kansas
• May 28: Beautiful storms in Colorado and a tornado at dusk
• May 29: A monster, rotating, layer-cake supercell in the Texas panhandle
• May 30: A gorgeous storm from New Mexico that produced hail from hell
• May 31-June 1: A look at Texas tornado damage and pretty rotating storms in Kansas
• June 3-24: Severe storms and fantastic lightning in Florida
• July 3-August 4: Shelf clouds sweep over the water in east-central Florida
• August 10-11: The Florida Keys offer a skinny waterspout and shimmering sunsets
• August 17-23: Florida again proves itself king of the shelf clouds, lightning and sunsets
• August 31-September 24: A layered gust front, lightning and the remnants of Tropical Storm Gabrielle