Left Austin at 12:30 - Target: Mineral Wells, Tx
Expected Initiation: 20z
Approaching Jacksboro from Mineral Wells on Hwy 281
One of the funnels and part of the wall cloud when I finally got stopped a number of miles west
of Jacksboro as the storm approaches from the west
Large rain free base and whats left of the wallcloud with a bit of rain foot from the downdraft
on the edge of the inflow
Contented cows lounging with 80mph to 91mph wall/funnel pass in the background northeast of
Jacksboro
Summary: As expected it was a bit of a tough day for tornadoes since the models changed the other day. With weak sfc flow, veered 850mb winds, stout capping much of the day, the main wave north of this area, and the sfc low staying north too long IMO made it difficult to get a good supercell with tornado potential. Based primarily on NAM forecast soundings earlier Thur I particularly liked Ft Worth and Mineral Wells. Of course the dryline was a bit further west. I was hoping for it to move east into some better higher helicity air, or the NAM showed a small N/S wave at 18z west of this area that I thought would help kick it off. I kept hourly watch on Digital Atmosphere's sfc map and mesoanalysis showing the low in nw OK actually moving east and not diving south as the models had shown. The low did later reform south but it was fairly late. I let the Wichita Falls storm go and didn't attempt to chase it. I figured it was a bit of a sucker storm, but particularly it was not my forecast target. I got to Mineral Wells about 3pm or so I believe and stopped and chowed down on a Subway sandwich while convection was building and increasing just to the west of town. For a while I couldn't tell if that was the storm I expected or if it should really be more on the true dryline which would have been over by Graham (west of Jacksboro). Eventually the showers near Mineral Wells died down and the tail end section of the dryline / boundary extending from the SPS storm began developing supercellular characteristics. I felt the sky had shown it's hand so I took off north for an intercept course to put me in front of the fast approaching cell. It was moving about 48 as I recall at the time.
The cell got stronger and was severe warned. I didn't see any shear markers on Threatnet but I could see some rotation on another velocity product. The storm indicated up to 2" hail, and took on a bit of 'flying eagle' with a hook shape as best as I could tell by using Threatnet. I took 281N out west of Jacksboro to the intersection of it and hwy 114. This put me directly in front of the lowered wallcloud and funnel in the distance. At first as I approached and while still somewhat distant there appeared a very large funnel most of the way to the ground. I took a picture but the contrast isn't very good - so didn't post it. I was too distant to tell if it was in contact or if there was rotation. When I first arrived at the intersection it was somewhat impressive and showed some vertical motion of scud from close to the ground shooting skyward near the funnel / wall cloud. There was a fairly large rain free base as well and this was next to the downdraft interface which had a bit of a rain foot or 'slant' appearance. I watched the storm from this position about 15 to 20 minutes with no sign of any other chasers yet. I was a bit surprised. A bit later the storm started weakening and the lowering moved more to my north and headed northeast or east. Actually the storm was headed almost due east due to it's right turn while it was strong. Once it weakened it began travelling ENE or NE with speeds showing from 80mph to 91mph most of the time according to Mobile Threatnet.
I raced to keep up with the storm and managed to do a fairly good job. As I worked back east I began seeing lots of chasers. Probably I saw close to 20 or 30 different vehicles. I took hwy 59 over toward Cundiff and eventually raced my way with the storm all the way to Alvord. But it was getting away from me and appeared to be weakening. It was starting to show shear markers of 69knots but that was on the front side of the storm so likely turbulence and downdraft shear.
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.
At Alvord I did meet another chaser named Chris Rice (hopefully correct) with Storm Chase Live dot com or something similar. They were from Kansas City and had a little drive back too.
It was a reasonably good chase considering. I didn't expect a lot, but had talked myself into doing it a couple of days ago. I made a good forecast again, and intercepted the cells well again, but circumstances and the atmosphere (primarily) prevented me from scoring a tube. The equipment all seems to be working well though. I may start streaming video of my next chase.