These nine days in the middle of May were lame. Storm chasers had little luck finding decent storms to chase. In addition, the images that I took are missing! I do not back up my images daily as I should, and may have inadvertently erased whatever I had shot. Well, at least there was nothing particularly noteworthy from a stormchase standpoint that was lost. Here is a summary of my whereabouts from May 10 to 18.
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MAY 10 — After our two good supercell days in SD and NE on May 8 and 9, we repositioned on May 10 from Alliance to Dodge City for what we thought would be a big day on Wed, May 11. We got into Dodge during the late afternoon and had a nice steak dinner with Chris Kridler.
MAY 11 — This day was characterized by preliminary optimism followed by general disgust. Plenty of messy morning convection from nw TX through OK and into central KS really did a number on the atmosphere. SPC’s moderate risk was downgraded to a slight. Morning storms often lead to lousy chase conditions later in the day, and this was the case in western KS on May 11. A decent storm tower went up west of Dodge City late in the afternoon, but it sputtered and died about an hour later. There were some early-to-mid afternoon tornadoes in eastern NE and western IA today. 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. We drove all of the way back to the Wingate in OKC this evening.
MAY 12 — The next tour was a few days away, and a couple of guests continued with us on Thu and Fri, May 12 and 13. 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. 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. We headed back to OKC on Friday and I had the weekend off to relax. The next tour began on Monday, May 16. Luckily for me, the weather pattern was very poor for chasers, and cool north winds blew through OK.
MAY 16 -17 — 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. 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. The award-winning images which I took at the bridge are lost forever, apparently. There were indications that West TX might get some severe weather on Tuesday, May 17, but that idea fizzled out and we bolted north. 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. Forecast charts suggested some storms along the KS/CO border, and we hung out along the south end near Hugoton, but nothing went up. Some stronger activity occurred several counties north near I-70, and I was miffed that I had not continued north for that.
MAY 18 — On Wednesday, May 18, we began in Liberal, KS. We visited Dorothy’s House, and then decided to start west into southeast CO. I figured that our chances for a good storm were much better here than in the other possible chase target — NW OK. Well, after 30 or 40 minutes and rechecking data, I turned the group around and headed towards NW OK. 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. 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’t last long. 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. There were no storms at all in the watch box! Meanwhile, a nice supercell was moving along east of Pueblo in my original target area of SE CO. That’s how it goes sometimes. 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—-and that chance appeared to be better in western OK than in SE CO—but the cap prevailed again. We had a pleasant dinner in Cherokee, OK, and continued north to Pratt for the night.
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