For the first time this spring, a legitimate chase was on tap for today. The upper storm had moved further east, moisture had surged into the region and a strong dry line was forecast to move into western Ok. A high risk had been issued and a tornado outbreak was a distinct possibility. Some early morning storms with hail across central Ok had us feeling pretty good about the day.

After going to the OU map room to check out the situation, Terry Kern and I figured anywhere along the dry line would be good . I thought we should go west on I-40 but Terry really seemed to want to go southwest. That seemed like as good an idea as any so off we went, fighting the graduation day crowd on the campus. Low clouds cleared off as we neared Chickasha and revealed a hazy sky, with cirrus and not much else. We picked up a tornado watch on the portable TV and heard it was a PDS watch. We took the back roads southwest instead of the turnpike and as we reached Cyril, I figured out why Terry wanted to go southwest. We ran into Fred Ikard, my old college roommate and mutual friend. We stopped and hung around with him. Fred is basically the reason I am chasing today, the first person I ever met that chased storms and he took me on my first chase, April 22, 1985. He was monitoring the situation also, and was waiting for things to pop. We stayed at his house, keeping an eye on things and reminiscing. After awhile we drifted south of town and saw a few turkey towers to the west. We also heard of a severe storm in northern Ok on the Kansas border near Manchester. We watched the puny towers to the west for about an hour until they faded away. It was now apparent things just weren't meant to be around Ok. This was my first " Blue Sky Bust ". We went back to Fred's house and his wife whipped up a good home cooked meal. A major bust, but it was good to see Fred again and get a decent meal out of it as well, which, as a poor college student I didn't see much of!

This was a major bust throughout Ks/Tx/Ok with only a few isolated hail reports, mostly from the morning storms. Tornadoes did touch down in Nebraska, with one near Omaha causing 2 deaths. The following day 57 tornadoes occurred in the upper Midwest.