These nine days in the middle of May were lame.\u00a0 Storm chasers had little luck finding decent storms to chase.\u00a0 In addition, the images that I took are missing!\u00a0 I do not back up my images daily as I should, and may have inadvertently erased whatever I had shot.\u00a0 Well, at least there was nothing particularly noteworthy from a stormchase standpoint that was lost.\u00a0 Here is a summary of my whereabouts from May 10 to 18.<\/p>\n
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MAY 10<\/strong> — After our two good supercell days in SD and NE on May 8 and 9, we\u00a0 repositioned on May 10 from Alliance to Dodge City for what we thought would be a big day on Wed, May 11.\u00a0\u00a0 We got into Dodge during the late afternoon and had a nice steak dinner with Chris Kridler.<\/p>\n MAY 11<\/strong> — This day was characterized by preliminary optimism followed by general disgust.\u00a0 Plenty of messy morning convection from nw TX through OK and into central KS really did a number on the atmosphere.\u00a0 SPC’s moderate risk was downgraded to a slight.\u00a0 Morning storms often lead to lousy chase conditions later in the day, and this was the case in western KS on May 11.\u00a0 A decent storm tower went up west of Dodge City late in the afternoon, but it sputtered and died about an hour later.\u00a0 There were some early-to-mid afternoon tornadoes in eastern NE and western IA today.\u00a0 Some decent convection went up around I-70 from about Goodland to Burlington and Stratton, north of the surface low, but we had to play a bit closer to OKC, where our tour would end the following day.\u00a0 We drove all of the way back to the Wingate in OKC this evening.<\/p>\n MAY 12<\/strong> — The next tour was a few days away, and a couple of guests continued with us on Thu and Fri, May 12 and 13.\u00a0 On the 12th we were on some convection in north Texas near Nocona, and then dropped a little southwest to a pretty tail-end supercell near Springtown.\u00a0 Structure with this small cell was impressive for a little while, including a blocky wall cloud, but it slowly shriveled to nothing as it approached our location.\u00a0 We headed back to OKC on Friday and I had the weekend off to relax.\u00a0 The next tour began on Monday, May 16.\u00a0 Luckily for me, the weather pattern was very poor for chasers, and cool north winds blew through OK.<\/p>\n MAY 16 -17<\/strong> — The atmosphere continued to be quite dry on the Plains as Tour 3 commenced, though winds were starting to come back around from the south.\u00a0 After guest orientation on Monday (including Jim Cantore and two cameramen working for The Weather Channel), we visited the BRIDGE OF DOOM near Hollis and stayed the night in Childress.\u00a0 The award-winning images which I took at the bridge are lost forever, apparently.\u00a0 There were indications that West TX might get some severe weather on Tuesday, May 17, but that idea fizzled out and we bolted north.\u00a0 We had a good look at the terrible drought conditions in the OK and TX Panhandles on Tuesday, as strong southeast winds kicked up areas of blowing dust.\u00a0 Forecast charts suggested some storms along the KS\/CO border, and we hung out along the south end near Hugoton, but nothing went up.\u00a0 Some stronger activity occurred several counties north near I-70, and I was miffed that I had not continued north for that.<\/p>\n MAY 18 <\/strong>— On Wednesday, May 18, we began in Liberal, KS.\u00a0 We visited Dorothy\u2019s House, and then decided to start west into southeast CO.\u00a0 I figured that our chances for a good storm were much better here than in the other possible chase target \u2014 NW OK.\u00a0 Well, after 30 or 40 minutes and rechecking data, I turned the group around and headed towards NW OK.\u00a0 Prospects for a great supercell storm or two in western OK were increasing, and the tornado potential if a storm went up appeared quite good.\u00a0 We made it southeast of Woodward in time to see a storm cell develop, and it had a laminar rotating base, but it was small and it didn\u2019t last long.\u00a0 Thick high clouds started covering western OK (practically out of nowhere) soon after a tornado watch was issued, and these clouds wrecked the day for chasers.\u00a0 There were no storms at all in the watch box!\u00a0 Meanwhile, a nice supercell was moving along east of Pueblo in my original target area of SE CO.\u00a0 That\u2019s how it goes sometimes.\u00a0 On this day, when I turned around west of Liberal, I decided that it would be better to give ourselves the chance to see a significant and long-lived tornado\u2014-and that chance appeared to be better in western OK than in SE CO—but the cap prevailed again.\u00a0 We had a pleasant dinner in Cherokee, OK, and continued north to Pratt for the night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"