Another frustrating chase.
Left Norman just before 11 AM. Initial target was somewhere near Stephenville. Planned on taking U.S. 281 south from Wichita Falls to get there. After lunching in Wichita Falls, however, we noticed storms exploding off to our southwest. We kind of missed/overlooked the storm farthest south, and at the last second at the junction of 281 and TX-79, went towards Archer City instead. We intercepted a supercell while north of Albany as it approached from our southwest. It initially looked pretty good and even appeared to try to produce a tornado, but it went outflow dominant and we abandoned it. At this point we decided that we would try with new storms developing immediately west of the current storm, back where there was more clear sky and heating, and just ahead of the dryline. That turned out to be a mistake, as we didn't consider the poor moisture return thanks to the first tornadic supercell moving eastward to our south. Add in the outflow from our first storm, and I think it just messed up the environment too much. Regardless, we drove all the way west to about 10 miles east of Anson before turning back to the east.
Honestly at this point I thought we were screwed for the day. It looked like outflow from the primary supercell - by this point nearing Stephenville - was going to persist and completely ruin the environment we were in. We didn't think we'd be able to get east and then south fast enough to get on the storm, but we drove east anyway, albeit somewhat leisurely. We stopped in Breckenridge for gas and then entertained ourselves by letting ourselves get cored by a new storm that popped up just south of town and had 60+ dBZ on it. We only got very small hail out of it.
After that core passed we noticed new development due south of us and a little behind the primary supercell. Although it was north of the outflow boundary, it looked to be growing fast and was headed generally NNE - almost right at us. So we zoomed south on U.S. 183, diverting to TX-112/TX-6 to Eastland, where we caught some small hail from the north side of the left split of what was becoming the second tornadic supercell of the day.
As we moved south towards Carbon, we had to decide to either core punch the storm by continuing southeast on TX-6 or by sliding in behind it by taking a ranch road (1027). We chose the latter. Although I doubt the core punch would've ended well (given what we encountered on the ranch road), we definitely did not help ourselves by making this choice. The road was twisty and was absolutely covered in hail from the core. There was also a lot of water very near the road surface. The biggest stones were golf ball sized, and there were plenty of 1" and larger stones.
Not only did the hail and road path slow us down, but we also had lost internet by this time. We got one radar scan around the time we got to FM587 that showed the storm had a bizarre shape and didn't look organized anymore. Couple that with the knowledge of it being north of the outflow and how friggin' cold it was in the cold pool (car temp was 13-15 C the whole time), we figured it was not going to pose a tornado threat, despite having a nice wide base easily visible to our east. We passed on it and got on TX-36 southeast towards Comanche.
I saw an MD suggesting the tornado threat would increase between 00Z-01Z as the atmosphere south of the outflow was recovering, and we were very near the boundary and could see clear skies to the south with new storm bases to our southwest. One particular base, which would become the third big storm of the day, was clearly visible to the distant southwest and looked good.
Even after we reached Comanche we could get absolutely no data. I had to call a friend to ask what the radar was showing around us. He informed us that the storm we had previously left (#2) was producing a tornado near Stephenville. We chose not to go after that storm because 1) we figured we were too far behind to catch up, 2) it was wrapping hard and we'd have to get east of it, and 3) the storm to the west of Comanche had improving looking supercell structure and a mean looking cumulus tower aloft.
We went north of town on a few different roads to get a good view of this storm. It briefly developed a wall cloud that was slowly rotating and even appeared to try to produce a funnel cloud before the RFD came in and blew everything out.
We went back to town and went east on U.S. 67 to intercept it up the road. We had plenty of time to wait for it to pass us by Proctor. It again developed a large wall cloud with continuous upward motion, but little, if any, rotation could ever be discerned. A large RFD punch came in but never did anything.
At this point we were getting in behind the core and put ourselves just behind the updraft base. There were several areas that were low hanging and occasionally appeared to rotate, but we never saw any sustained rotating wall cloud. It really looked like the storm was struggling to convert shear into vertical vorticity in the low levels.
I don't know if anyone else saw this, but the feature in the image above, shot looking northwest from U.S. 67 just a few miles southwest of Dublin, was rotating and pulling in scud. The problem was it was well removed from the updraft base and was basically behind everything, so I don't know what it could've been.
Anyway, we found stones up to 3" in diameter laying on the street in Dublin. Then we headed east on TX-6 again, stopping for awhile a few miles east of town. The updraft base continued to look high and generally non-threatening. To the north of the highway, in the core, we saw this suspicious feature.
It doesn't appear it was anything, just a tease to the eyes. But perhaps someone else saw this from a better angle.
Anyway, we let the storm get a little ahead of us here, so we had to catch up. Darkness was setting in as we moved east on 6, and we briefly stopped to observe what looked to be wrapping rain curtains, but by the time we could see again, nothing was apparent. We saw it again after turning north on 281 again, but it was getting really dark by this time, so it was hard to make anything out. We cut back up to 67 again via FMs 1824 and 2481. By this point it was almost completely dark, and even though we could see some sort of darker column under the base, it was too dark to tell for sure if it was anything. All I could manage to shoot was this blurry image.
The absence of lighting to this point was remarkable. Almost nothing. It started to pick up after we got back to 67 and were basically ready to call off the chase since the storm had, in our experience, continually failed to produce anything resembling a tornado. We were right behind the hook at this point and were ready to head home, but the storm was basically blocking our route back to I-35. We said, "to hell with it," and hook sliced and core rubbed our way past it. We could never see anything ominous during that passage, and only encountered about quarter sized hail in our brush-by of the core northeast of Glen Rose. Sure enough, as soon as we got clear south of Ft. Worth, the storm began producing tornadoes. Whatever...
We watched the madness unfold on the way home.
I'm ready for May/June. I'd appreciate some easier chases where the moisture is not an issue.
