On 7/5/2015 2:42 PM, Tony wrote:
Bob, low level winds were southerly at 15-20.
Inneresting. Beneath Nebraska's panhandle in NE Colorado, there was
essentially zero ground breeze all day, while the (few for the most part)
convective clouds reflected the satellite loop.

Terrain wasn't so much an issue as the transition from cut wheat fields in
Kansas to Very Tall Corn in Nebraska. I hit the south edge of sand hills at
Taylor and without enough altitude to clear them and no landable field in
sight on course I turned 90 degrees and landed at Burwell.

Ah so...technically/topographically, the stretch from Kearney to Burwell is
considered "dissected plains - hilly land with moderate to steep slopes, sharp
ridge crests, and remnants of the old, nearly level plain. The dissected
plains are old plains eroded by water and wind." Burwell is on the (roughly
E-W) dividing line between dissected plains and sandhills - "hilly land
composed of low to high dunes of sand stabilized by a grass
cover[which...]mantle stream-deposited silt, sand, gravel and sandstone." In
current populational terms, it's pretty thinly settled between Burwell and the
Missouri River Valley up at the SD border. Makes that downwind dash "to
Thedford glider flight" (about 60 miles west of Burwell, smack dab in the sand
hills center of a N-S transect line through Thedford) from way back when
something to better appreciate I'd reckon.

Way to go!

Bob W.