We left Columbia this morning with a thick blanket of clouds covering much of Missouri. The final flakes from last night's snowfall were still drifting in the breeze and a steady, northwest wind heightened the chill of the cold, humid air. Wet pavement and road grit along I-70 coated our windshield with back-splash all the way to Topeka, where the low level moisture began to dissipate. Unfortunately, a shelf of high clouds kept the morning sun at bay and the filtered light had little impact on the drab, February landscape.
As we approached Salina, narrow swaths of blue appeared above the western horizon, in striking contrast to the gray winter sky; it looked as if a painter had attempted to brighten the scene with a bit of color. As we continued west, past the Smoky Hills Wind Farm, the patches of blue became more numerous and more extensive, giving the flat, gray sky the appearance of a tattered blanket. Near Russell, we reached the west edge of the cloud mass, though its shaggy margin had several tendrils that reached all the way to Hays.
By then we were traveling under a deep blue sky, so typical of the American High Plains. Though this geophysical province gets its fair share of severe weather, especially in the form of blizzards and tornadic thunderstorms, dry, sunny skies are far more common. Cut off from Pacific moisture by the high spine of the Rockies and far removed from the Gulf of Mexico, the High Plains are semiarid, a welcome change from the cold, damp weather of a Midwest winter.
