Chase Update, May 4, 2009

Hi Friends,

I have some time here in Lubbock, TX, to catch up a little on the web site…but not enough time for more images yet—-sorry!

Our tour group met last Wednesday, April 29, in Arlington, TX, around noon, and we hit the road quickly and caught a formerly tornadic storm near Matador.  It was spewing cold outflow, so we went south to Dickens County, where a new storm was brewing.  It quickly became tornado-warned and it had a good look to it, but it failed to produce a tornado.  Nevertheless, it was fun getting on a couple of severe storms right off the bat for this group.  We found a gas station for cover in Guthrie, and allowed a windy hailstorm to pass over.  The hail was almost 1.5 inches in diameter.  On our way to Childress for the night, the lightning display to the east was insane!

April 30 was a great supercell chase in western OK — see the page already posted here on Stormbruiser for that one.

On May 1 we targeted northwest TX, and dropped south to Vernon for lunch.  Storm towers went up kind of early to our southwest, in Knox County, and we got on the storm relatively early.  It wasn’t early enough, though.  As we entered Knox City from the north, a really nice narrow funnel cloud was hanging out of the updraft base to our west!  I didn’t even have my camera stuff ready yet!  I managed to shoot some video of the funnel with Bob’s camcorder as we went into Knox City.  The funnel was halfway to the ground, and other observers confirmed that this was indeed a tornado.  It dissipated as we went a little west of Knox City to get closer.  The supercell that caused this tornado trekked southeastward towards Stamford and had several wall clouds thereafter, but no decent funnel clouds (or tornadoes).   The storm died quickly at 6 p.m.  We considered going north to the Baylor County storm, but it looked a little sick, too.  I elected to target some new weak cells a couple of counties to the west.  We stopped about 20 miles north of Abilene at sunset, and these cells really started to strengthen after dark.  Our group had about five tripods set up and we managed to get some decent lightning and structure shots.  One cell started dropping southeast towards our location and became tornado warned.  Lightning got too close and we scurried west to get out of the way.  This was a very satisfying chase day!  It was just a bit of a bummer that we were maybe five minutes late in order to get a good look at the tornado.  That Knox County storm must have gone from first radar-echo blip to a tornado in 45 minutes or so.

So, our group had three supercell days in a row and were feeling pretty good.  On Saturday, May 2, the chances for severe were good in northeastern and central TX.  I wanted no part of the DFW area storms or the trees in the northeast, so we targeted the area south of Brownwood and west of Waco.  It didn’t work out, as thick high clouds and a strong cap prevented convection.  This was the day of the strong winds in Irving that collapsed the Cowboys’ practice stadium roof.

May 3 was a re-position day, with no storms expected.  We drove from Temple, TX, to Sweetwater, TX (west of Abilene).

And, May 4 was without storms, too, as the best moisture was shunted too far south in south TX.  The moisture should be back tomorrow, the 5th, and severe weather looks like a good bet not too far east of Lubbock.  This morning we were having our weather briefing at the Super 8 motel in Sweetwater, when someone started banging on the door and said we gotta get out!  The motel was on fire!  We went outside and saw black smoke coming out of a broken window at the other end of the motel, above the office.  The Sweetwater fire department came to the rescue and put it out.   That was about as exciting as the last three days got!  I had planned on getting some images up on SB yesterday, but the Super 8 Wi-Fi was flaky and I couldn’t keep a connection.  Maybe the modem exploded and started the fire.