4/3/08 REPORTS: OK/TX/AR

[Chris C Sanner]

Honestly, not really that much to report. Got stuck on the north side of the cell that traversed along the Red River that dropped softball hail finally pulled ahead of it and crossed the Red only to find it wasn't all that impressive. First photo is of that storm second is of the outflow dominated storms along the OFB/Cold Front in Central Oklahoma on my way home....

 

[Quintin Erdman]

Iowa chasers chases Texas

Right at the end while stopping at a stop sign I caught up to one of the vehicles and it had Iowa plates. If it's Thursday it must be Iowa. I don't know I just thought it odd that a chaser had come all the way from Iowa for today's event. Perhaps they had been down for the one the other day as well - not sure. I let them go and Alvord so never found out who it was. Likely they are reading this.

I am venturing a guess that was us you were talking about. Kevin Sarazin and myself left Ames around 4pm Wednesday and met up with Ben McMillan in West DesMoines around 5pm. We took off and rolled into Oklahoma City around 2:30am. Staying at a lovely Super 8 that may or may not have been the site of a homicide. The cockroaches didn't say.

The next morning, after speaking to Ryan Pfannkuch, we made our target area Wichita Falls to north Dallas and were hoping to follow anything that formed into a more favorable environment and then coast home afterwards.

The first big storm of the day we caught up to just south of Wichita Falls. The storm looked great on radar. The storm produced very nice wall clouds and several funnels.

Two funnels in this picture, they were rotating, not scud. (Pulled off of camcorder, sorry for the bad quality of picture)

Storm produced hail

We lost the storm breifly in the rain but continued to followed it for about 10 more miles until the southern storm near Seymore became isolated and big. While I had a hard time letting go of the storm we were on, Kevin and Ben, whom have a lot more experience than I do decided it was best to chase the southern storm.

We met up with the southern storm near Scotland Tx and move out of the path of the core just in time to avoid the 4.25 inch hail. Although the new car did get dented courtesy of 2 inch hail.

Big piece broke in two. We ended up finding a piece just over two inches.

The chase rig (Now with more dents!)

Fortunately the storm died before we got to I35 and decided to call it a day. We ate at a nice restraunt called Sirloin Stampeed in Ardmore Ok. While there, some chaseres from OU showed up and started yammering on their cell phones about passing people at 100mph and taking out a mailbox. While not saying anything to them, I was highly disappointed as this gives chasers a bad name.

Things that went well
We were in a good position for each storm
Mobile Threatnet was working well as was my Sprint AirCard
Texas has a lot nicer roads than I am use to chasing

Things that went bad
My computer had some issues later
There was no favorable shearing or surface winds
Bens new Rav4 got some dents in it. (Although the video is priceless)

This was my first big chase, and the first time all three of us chased Texas. Since this is my first post on StormTrack and I am still new at this I am guessing there are things that I described wrong.

~Quintin

 

[Tony Laubach]

http://www.tornadoeskick.com/logs080403.html

Took the chance that we may get lucky considering the 180 the models did. And for the third time in as many chases, enjoyed some big ol' hail! I love hail and was spoiled over the last week with all I saw! By week's end, my van is in need of a new windshield and has been well peppered with some good-sized dents!

Carl Young and Tom Dulong jumped in with me and we were met by Ed Grubb who I owe a special thanks for hauling one of my van chairs out to seat Tom safely in the van.

Ed, who has bragged to me about how he took his old chasing ride out for a dozen or so years and never dented her, brought his new chase ride out on its first chase only to have this happen...

Oddly enough, he was running away from the core we stopped under and likely hit a curtain of bigger hail than we saw. He broke in his new ride with some good dents. Randy Denzer, who met us as well, did a good number on his vehicle in even bigger hail!

Anywoo, full report on my website with more pics and fun stories...

This chase was a significant chase for me as I have officially crossed the 100,000 career chase mile mark! Did all this since I started keeping logs back in 2002.

 

[Dennis Sherrod]

Well, I believe I was in the same general area as most everyone else here. Met up with and talked to several others including the group from Greeley, CO. We were chasing the same group of storms and then met up for some late evening chasing only to see them fizzle. We saw some nice cloud formations and rainbow near Jacksboro, TX.
Finally quit and did some lightning chasing on Hwy 82 east of Sherman. Got some really nice shots of in cloud lightning. See the first photo for the unique lightening what it looks like. I titled it "Chasing The Storm" ( Click each photo for a larger picture. )

 

[Bill Tabor]

I have finally reviewed my dash cam videotape from this day. It appears that I briefly see a weak, tornado to the WNW of the intersection of 281N and hwy 114 to the west of Jacksboro. I had to review this back in forth on FF and Rew and normal speed. The issue was it was a wallcloud / funnel cloud with 2 or 3 minor pendant funnels. These were not too pronounced. The funnel was very near the interface to the downdraft and sported some rain curtains. However if you watch closely you can see that apparently the residue beneath the funnel isn't just precip, it is also apparently dust. A few times looking closely I can make out a small funnel appear just beneath the bottom of the funnel cloud and then it briefly connects with a tube that runs into and is almost completely obscured by dust - however I am able to make it out. These funnels are slowly moving and ground dust beneath moves with. A picture wouldn't do it justice - not much to tell from just that. A small vid clip may show if you look close like I did. I may post a snippet when I have time.

More review...not much of a tornado - but technically it may still be. I'm not 100% though.