Start: Liberal, KS
Lunch: Guymon, OK (Braums)
End: Amarillo, TX
472 miles
Yep, this chase day was a big dud for us. The storm (and tornado) of the day was south of Lubbock, near Tahoka, and I was looking at areas farther to the north. From Liberal, I thought that the central Oklahoma Panhandle and vicinity was a good starting point. After lunch, however, I noted better backed surface winds down south, south of I-40. We made our way south, and I homed in on a nice, new, and discrete updraft that was a little west of Tulia. At the same time, a very nice supercell had developed near Tahoka, a few counties to our south. I wasn’t seeing too much in the data which heavily favored the Tahoka storm. We MIGHT have been able to get there in time for the main event! But this new development near Tulia was looking good as we approached from the northeast. As we came up to the base from the east, there was much consternation and gnashing of teeth. The updraft was dying quite quickly.
We tried to salvage something to the north, coming out of Deaf Smith County. This one hailed on us a little and showed very mediocre structure. It was generally a wet mess. My notes indicate a briefly strong-storm intercept near Happy and Silverton, but I didn’t even take any pictures.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.