Tempest Tours Tour 2 in 2024 started about 26 hours too late. Our turn-around day in OKC between Tours 1 and 2 was April 26, which was perhaps the best tornado chase day of the year. An outbreak occurred up in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa. Such is the storm chase tour life.
April 27/Seymour, TX Tornadic Supercell
Start: OKC/lunch ??/End: Ardmore, OK/501 miles
See this separate entry for this chase day.
April 28/Junky Chase in E OK Tornado Watch
Begin: Ardmore/brunch in Madill, OK at Country Kitchen/End: Okmulgee, OK/254 miles
The risk for today was well into the trees of eastern OK and eastern TX. I eschewed the somewhat better chance for tornadoes in TX and tried OK. We got out of Ardmore, where there was no power due to the tornadoes the previous evening, and had a nice brunch in Madill. From there we drifted mostly north and watched storm cells which never got very strong. There were nicely-backed winds and very low storm bases in our Tornado Watch, but the atmosphere was not in sync to make us happy. We ended the chase day north of I-40 a bit on a discrete and rotating cell northwest of Okmulgee, but mediocrity prevailed.
iPhone pics and radar screenshots for the day below
April 29/Reposition Day northward
Begin: Okmulgee, OK/lunch Stoney’s Pub and Grub in Independence, KS/End: Council Grove, KS/277 miles
The Day 2 Outlook showed a 5 percent tornado risk from Wichita, KS, to Worthington, MN. We made our way north at a leisurely pace on the 29th to get ourselves in adequate position for the 30th.
April 30/Severe Near Anthony, KS
Begin: Council Grove, KS/brunch: Taunte Lieseja in Council Grove/End: Kiowa, KS/286 miles
This was another in a long line of chase days the past two weeks which looked like it could be a great tornado day, but it just did not pan out that way. I decided to play the tail-end of development along a boundary through eastern KS, southwest of Wichita. We found a robust supercell with tops over 60k, and baseball hail in Anthony, but the low levels just seemed blah and undercut. Structure was ho-hum also. We ended the chase at Kiowa, with a top-notch in-cloud lightning show.
iPhone pics and radar screenshots below
May 1/Healy, KS, Supercell
Begin: Kiowa, KS/brunch at Yur Place in Hardtner, KS/End: Dodge City, KS/286 miles
My notes indicate that I was waffling between the warm front play across western KS and the area of the northeastern TX Panhandle. I chose the former, and we eventually were heading north out of Dighton to new storms near Healy. We spent a few hours along Highway 4 from about Healy to Shields with a couple of decent supercells along and just north of the road. Both of them tried to tornado at least briefly, and we saw a weak, dusty one. Around sunset our western-most cell became stronger and more organized, with a good couplet near the road. We found ourselves in very strong and dusty/dirt-filled inflow on the southeastern side of the storm. It was rather miserable.
iPhone pics and radar screen grabs below. The radar grabs aren’t corresponding time-wise to the images. Dumb.
May 2/Hawley, TX tornadoes
Start: Kiowa, KS/grab and go lunch in Sayre, OK/End: Abilene, TX//489 miles
See this link for the account of this high-end chase day.
May 3/Robert Lee TX Tornadic Supercells
Begin: Abilene, TX/brunch at Cracker Barrel in Abilene/End: Colorado City, TX/258 miles
We were on a large and impressive tornado this chase day like white on rice! But, there was little to see as the thing was horribly rain-wrapped. We positioned ourselves in front of strong development between Colorado City and Robert Lee, TX. A supercell spawned a good-sized tornado to our west, in the vicinity of Silver, but our group never got much of a look due to poor contrast and a road network which provided few options to get into better position. Later, southeast of Robert Lee, a tornadic supercell spun hard and a large tornado (see radar below) looped around for a while. It was rain-wrapped and we were not going to go in to see rain blowing sideways at 120 mph.
iPhone pics and radar screen grabs below
May 4 Rainy Junkola near Midland, TX
Begin: Colorado City, TX/lunch: Al’s and Son in Big Spring/End: Wichita Falls/517 miles
This day wound up disappointing, as my target area (near Midkiff) was too far east of the initial development (which was out west towards Kermit). By the time we got close, it was becoming less organized and more of a rainy mess. We turned around and headed to Wichita Falls, as this was our last chase day for this tour and we needed to be in OKC on the 5th.
A other obvious chase option was the Fort Stockton area, with a decent tornado threat. But I was reluctant to target storms that would be moving south of I-10 into the road void.
May 5, Wichita Falls to OKC, end of Tour 2
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