2014-03-15 REPORTS: Central TX

[James Gustina]

Still amazed that a ballsy move actually paid off for once. Chased with Charles Sayre, Tyler Snider and Ben Davis. Ended up ditching the garbage near Comanche early on and blasting west towards Abilene to get into the CU field that had better looking convection going up behind the line of doom. Made great time and paralleled I-20 to Baird, gassed up and moved south on US 283 to get in front of the then developing supercell that had recently separated itself from the pack and taken on a very interesting look on radar. Had a very nice base from a good distance as it crawled towards us on an ESE course.

It started drawing in scud pretty fast and got a lowering going quick:

After the second photo, a funnel cloud condensed pretty quickly under there. We were never able to tell from our distance/vantage point if it made contact with the ground but it condensed a bit further than this photo shows:

We started getting heavy rain and hail mixed together shortly after a few more cycles of lowerings and re-positioned south on 283. It had one of the most turbulent looking bases I've seen and made for a great shot:

We kept dropping south to avoid the updraft and more frequent rain that was getting drawn in and eventually got behind it. Since it looked elevated and was putting out some monstrous hail, we dropped to Coleman then cut back northeast behind it. On our way to Cisco for dinner we found some pretty decent sized hailstones. We found quite a few golf balls and one hen egg mixed in there. Pretty great way to start chase season on a marginal day.

 

[Zack Cooper]

Just now getting around to this report. Targeted the Waco, TX area initially during the day. Once we saw storms going up along the dryline out near Abilene, we began to head in that direction. Played on three different storms total during this chase, getting some decent structure, an abundance of quarter size hail, and a rainbow. Not a bad first chase of the year.