4/1/2006 REPORTS: TX/OK/KS

[Jeff Snyder]

Ugh, another frustrating day (to go with Thursday). I headed out with a crew of folks (including Jana Lesak, Gabe Garfield, Phil Hurlbut, Justin Walker, etc), originally aiming somewhere between Elk City and Shamrock, not necessarily because we thought that area was the best, but because it kept our north and south options open. By the time we made it to Clinton, we looked at some data, and opted to slide south towards Altus. We noted a subtle boundary that was located very near the Red River (pretty well forecast by the NAM and RUC, actually). With the best CAPE to the south, we figured that may be our best option. Most of the chase days this spring so far have been a little CAPE deficient, so we were happy to see >2500 j/kg CAPE. We sat in Altus for a while, as TCu bubbled around. We eventually opted to head for the storm leaving Collingsworth county, TX.

When we got to the storm, it looked quite high based, and there was massive amts of precip to the west and southwest of the area of weak rotation. The storm was spitting out lots of scud from the FFD, and some of it was being reingested it appeared. The storm did have a very nice green/cyan colored appearance though. Looking at surface obs, I was extremely concerned by the low RH / high dewpoint deficits (see my failure reason below). Regardless, we followed this storm until it was south of Clinton... It had one more run at an RFD occlussion, but that too was very wet. By the time it was into Was$$$a county (6:15ish), it was looking progressively more outflow-dominant, with a shelfy appearance. I did see that SRV imagery indicated some rotation in the forward-flank, and this was confirmed visually. However, there was no doubt that the storm was lining out.

I've chased 3 times in 4 days, and struck out all three times. Thurs and today were HP sups, none of which were really that impressive. The rotation on today's supercell was largely pretty weak, and the structure was far from breath-taking. The storm did take two good runs at producing something, but the RFD was hugely precip-filled and quite cool.

EDIT: I'll move my "failure mode" for todays event over to a 4/1 DISC thread.

EDIT2: LOL The swear-word-filter caught the county name-- Wash-ita... It doesn't like the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th letters together, I guess.

 

[samuel stone]

I dont fell like typing or doing anything at all really, so I will keep it short.

Targeted Woodward, OK arrived at about 2:30 and went over data. Basically decided to sit and wait there for somthing to pop since it seemed stupid to move anywhere else really. eventually spotted some towers south of woodward (beginings of comanche, pratt KS supercell) they slowly organized and moved north into kansas where they developed a wall cloud and looked like it might produce a tornado. However that hope was short lived as the storm moved into the red hills southwest of Medicine lodge, KS and there were really no road options at all to pursue it, so basically just went home and found a pleasant surprise as tornado sirens were blowing in town and nickel to quarter size hail was falling from the same storm that I had earlier been chaser southwest of there.

storms begin to fire south of Woodward, OK.

storm gets better organized.

wall cloud develops in southern Comanche county, KS

 

[Bill Hamilton]

Basically the same story as Jeff's.
Met up with David Drummond and Graham Butler in Shamrock, TX and waited for the storms to initiate. We then headed south and then back into OK. The storm cell we were on started out looking fairly decent with good rotation and produced a moderate wall cloud. The storm cycled quite a few time before becoming outflow dominant. Once it joined with the southern cell it was all over but the rain. Not even enough hail to make a bad story out of. With all the news crews out on that storm there should be enough video of what a BUST looks like.
Parted ways with David and Graham west of Lawton and called it a night. With as much as this round of storms was hyped it sure is a shame nothing came from them in OK.

 

[Simon Brewer]

Trying to keep it short.......

Saw a small supercell and small funnel cloud near Fort Supply.

 

[Philip Flory]

Basically the exact same as Sam's report above.

I sat in Woodward until around 5pm watching CU's form and reform WSW of town. Finally, around 5, a cluster of 2 cells began to strengthen and I headed north of town to watch the southern cell develop into a very defined supercell with an excellent sheared back anvil. The storm eventually teased me with 2 or 3 extremely close attempts at tornadogenesis. Some fairly large hail, golfball sized, was observed along HW34 where the core had passed. Followed the storm as far north as I could but after the KS border no road options existed to go east and I was forced to let the storm fade into the distance.

Overall, I would consider today a success. It was a visually impressive supercell and had some pretty wicked rotation that nearly produced. Observed an excellent lightning display on the drive back to ICT as well.

 

[Donald Giuliano]

Long day with many not-so-supercells but not much of anything else. Only things of interest we saw were some hail, rotating wall clouds, and a probable tornado dissipating halfway between St. Leo and Calista, KS, around 8:30pm (excuse me while I yawn with excitement over that one). No confirmed report and I was sitting on the wrong side of the car to see it, but both my chase partners saw it at the same time (backlit by intense CG lightning), so I'm inclined to believe them. No pics or anything...not like it'd be that interesting anyway.

 

[Bryce Stone]

Not much to report here. Was all over the Beckham County storm until it fairly rapidly became outflow-dominant (and for a while afterwards), then I came back home. The storm did very briefly try its hand at a wall cloud a few times, but it never quite got there. Saw quite a few chasers around this one. Was a little surprised at the HP-ish structure, as I thought we'd be in for more of a classic sup mode today, but oh well. What else can you expect on April first? On a side note, the county road grid southeast of Sayre is horrible. The county roads kept going in very unexpected directions, with T intersections and not very many east options. The east road I was on turned around and had me going back west into the core. I finally gave up and lost some ground going back to marked paved roads. Not a bad chase day, but a little disappointing. At least today's storms were easy to keep up with.

 

[Mike Gauldin]

Well, all I can say is this was one of the less-than-exciting chase days I've had. My girlfriend, one of my good buddies, and myself set out for around I-40 close to the OK/TX border. On the way, I noticed my car was on the verge of overheating, luckily it never did. Then we stopped to fuel in OKC and a guy passing by says "You're leaking something". Turns out to be oil. Again, luckily, it wasn't bad enough to call off the chase. Then, while just west of OKC, I couldn't get my camera (that's Matt for the loaner!) to charge or power up, so now my camera is out of service. So I'm thinking as long as I see something today, I can still be happy with the 500 mile chase. When approaching Elk City, I hear a loud bang on my roof and my amber lightbar power cable pulls tight all of a sudden. So I pull over and it turns out my amber light-bar, for the first time ever, came loose (it's magnetic with four 25lbs magnets). When it did, it took out all of my antennas and my anemometer. Luckily none of them were broken. THEN while trying to hit up a hotspot for some radar in an area where we had no NWR reception, we lose the power supply to the inverter the laptops were running off of. Thought it was a blown fuse... nope; melted fuse. There's just something wrong about that. So we just cut it out of the line and hard-wired it back.


So we set off down south of Sayre and caught a decent looking cell and followed it for a while. Produced a not-very-spectacular wall cloud. So then we jumped on another cell that was around the Clinton area. It ended up merging into the ugly squall-line that ended up eating everything and then raining out the state (which is good I guess, for the state). So in the end, we blew about $100, mainly on gas, no tornado on a day when EVERYONE was talking about "Outbreak similar to May 3, 1999" and models that backed that up to a point. But when dynamics don't happen at the right time, and your car is about to explode, and your equipment fails, then you get rained on all the way home, I'm just friggen happy to BE HOME.

 

[Nick Benson]

Like some of the others here, Emily and I were following the cell that moved from Ft. Supply, OK up through Medicine Lodge, KS. Between 2350 and 0030 we watched it cross OK-34/KS-1 and followed it north on KS-1. We had a pretty clear view of the wall cloud until it became obscured by precip while still south of Coldwater, KS. At 0037 we were finally able to go east on US-160. The precip was pretty intense, and we pulled over for a bit around 0045 to wait it out. At 0059 we got out of the precip near Mule Creek, and could see the structure pretty clearly until the sun went down shortly thereafter. We didn't see any funnels after we went east.

The catch of the day was this good sized hail, which was picked up off of KS-1 a few miles north of the OK border. The biggest pieces were nearly 2" across.

Tip of the hat to Eric Whitehill for nowcasting.

Distance/Time: 630 miles in 13 hours.


EDIT: More pictures are now on my website.

 

[Melanie Metz]

Thanks to Peggy, Bill, and Kevin Polston for nowcasting! After waiting around until just before sundown for storms to organize I got on a tornado warned cell WSW of Medicine Lodge, KS and watched it tighten up with a nice clear slot and wall cloud (as a couplet appeared on radar) just before a cell from my West moved in and obscured my view. I didn't get a shot of the wall cloud at it's tightest but the clear slot is well defined in the first image below. After I got East of the precip from the other cell I ended up under the SSE edge of the meso and saw another very suspicious lowering just to my north when lightning flashed (no pictures, only video). And that was it! At least it wasn't a bust.

Melanie

 

[Jason Boggs]

Started off at the station going over the final details with the chief meteorologist. Went up Hwy 60 to Pampa where I saw Amos Magliocco but I didn't have a chance to stop and say hi. My chase partner and I finally made it to the McDonalds to get wireless access and something to eat. Noticed right off the bat that the moisture was mixing to the east pretty fast. If I remember correctly the obs in Pampa were T78 Td54. We knew immediately that we had to go east and fast! We saw the better parameters in western OK so we went out of Pampa and ended up going east to Mobeetie where we saw the nice anvil and overshooting top to our SE. We then went to Wheeler and then finally down Hwy 152 to Sayre. Stopped in Sayre for gas and a quick phone update and was told the storm had golfball hail in it. Blasted south out of Sayre to a couple miles north of the Brinkman-Willow area and stopped to look at the storm to the SW. It was ok at this time but quickly strengthened up into a tight meso a few minutes later. We then went north on Hwy 34 toward Carter...then we blasted east to the intersection of Hwy 55 and Hwy 6. We were in great position at this point and got out of the vehicle to see a very large wall cloud and funnel to our NW and it looked like it was about to produce a tor as it was rotating fairly rapidly. Chasers were everywhere at this point! The storm never produced for us as it began to gust out and lose any tornado potential. We then went east a few more miles and then north to Elk city and then back to Amarillo on I-40. Overall it wasn't a bad chase day for early April. It was a chance to get all the kinks out of the equipment and smell the moist air! Here are some video stills of the wall cloud and funnel near the intersection of Hwy 55 and Hwy 6 East of Carter, OK:

 

[Scott Bell]

it was a LONG day today. I initially targeted Clinton, OK since it gave me good roads in all directions. I arrived there maybe 20 mins before the svr warning was issued for Beckham and Greer counties. I caught up with the cell just south of Sayre. There was some vertical scud motion, but not much visible rotation.

The road network left me on the wrong side of the storm and a semi truck catching fire on the on-ramp to I-40 left me in the storm's dust for a while. There was a very impressive hail path just south of Sayre and some localized flooding. When I caught up again it was definately very HPish and there wasn't much to see. It was starting to get dark at that point and the southern storms were starting to pinch in on me so I made a run for it. There was an awesome lightening display as the HP mess was approaching Oklahoma City.

Thanks to Brian Emfinger for nowcasting support.

 

[Jason A.C. Brock]

Jeff Papak and I left Wichita Falls about 1pm and headed for an initial target of Shamrock Texas but decided to top off the fuel tank in Childress and noticed convection starting to our SW. We chated with a few fellow chasers at the Shell in Childress and decided to head SW towards these developing cells. We ended up North Of Matador and watched as a cell tried to get its act together initially but soom other smaller cells began to form all around one main cell and battle began between storms. Things mostly looked high based with little or no features so we sat and watched awhile and noticed a cell North of Childress forming in the distance. This cell actualy from a distance looked rather good but with it being Jeffs first chase of the year I decided to let him make the decisions so we stuck it out on the storms to the South hoping eventually a tail-end charlie scenario would unfold.
We decided to get ahead of the Southern edge of cells and for awhile a cell somewhat ahead of the main blob of storms to the SE began to look fairly impressive and things began to look much more surface based. This cell would pelt us with quarter to occasionally half-dollar size hail North of Paducah and hail even began to cover the road but we were able to get into the clear fairly quickly.
W e headed ito paducah and then jsut NE of the town and watched a poorly organized wall cloud eventually turn into a very outflow dominant mess.
We then headed back home towards Wichita Falls on the Southern edge and enjoyed the incredible amount of rainfall that had occured NE of Paducah where ditched ran full all the way up to the sides of the roadways and small creeks formed in rain starved fields. It was a nice site to see in this rain starved area.
We would follow the tail end of what turned out to be a bowing structure and took some OK lightning pics along the way and some structure shots of the gustfront.
I am wonderingif anyone had trouble getting Wifi at the shell or behind the Kettle in Childress like we did? I usually can get a pretty good connection there but not today. Also at the roadside rest stop on 287 Near Chilicothee we were unable to get their Wifi on the East bound side of the highway. This is another area I can usually access trouble free but not today. I know my Wifi was working because we were able to connect at the Best Western In Vernon.
Ive added a new extra Wifi card with an external antenna but the antenna wont be here until Monday. Hopefully this will greatly improve my signal.
I was also baffeled by why todays setup wasnt producing more tornadic storms even watching them on WX WORX up in Kansas. Reading Jeff Snyders synopsis of the situation brings things into light well however. I do recall a chase friend of mine earlier in the day mentioning he was concerned about the mixing scanrio however. Then again ya just never can tell.
At least ill have some video and pics to play with later today. Ill try to get them on my website this evening but I do have a test I need to study for. We shall see.

 

[Dick McGowan]

Full chase account coming tomorrow Here is a pic sw of Elk City. 0 tornadoes, but nice structure.

 

[Craig A. Green]

Short - Observed the early high based convection near Matador and followed the
discrete cells until they coalesced into "The Blob". No tornadoes but watched a
spectacular outflow dominant "mothership" on the front of "The Blob" with a nice
sharktoothed shelf cloud as the it crossed the Red River and devoured
Altus/Snyder OK.

Long - Drove to CDS and decided on a more southerly initiation target cell
firing near Matador around 2120Z. Took US 83 south to FM 94 and met the first
cells 10 miles S of Northfield. The convection was high based and rapidly
produced dense/dark precip cores and FM 94 was paralleling the cells' movements
to the NE. I saw three other vehicles in pursuit or fleeing the storms along FM
94. Cells began forming nearby on the east side of FM 94 and I did not want to
be digested, so I began to follow the storms back along FM 94 and decided that I
would pursue the storms on the eastern flank across the river. I did not want
to drive up US 83 through the cores to reach US 62 and continue flanking the
storms.

Decided to cross on the 1-lane bridge at FM 680 so I might observe if anything
became of the multiple shear markers that MTN was now painting on the FF and
eastern flank of "The Blob". (In for a penny, in for a pound). I manuvered to
the bridge with beaded close bolts striking all aound and saw a relatively
high-based cowcatcher and short inflow band on the FF of storm and was able to
cross the one lane bridge just in time. A car full of teenagers were stopped at
the OK bridge end and when they saw me hurry away from the bridge they also left
in haste.

I zigzagged on the county roads S of Hollis trying to keep the storm in sight
and then made a quick gas stop in Hollis and drove east on US 62. I then took
more county roads back south and zigzagged trying to keep the storm in sight.
Ended up back on US 62 stopped for some pics (in poor lighting due to rain
curtains obscuring the sun) near dusk of the storm as it neared Altus. The front
flank of the storm had a barrel mothership look with a ringed shelf cloud of
near vertical sharkteeth surrounding the central precip core.

Stopped a few more times to watch lightning and finally headed south on US 183
at Snyder and then back to DFW.

A bustola for tornadoes, but a good chase to see what "air and moisture" can
sometimes conjure up with a little insolation added and some much needed rain
for TX/OK.

Craig