What a bad chase trip. 1299 miles on the clock and we're just outside Vernon TX headed to OUN after two days of chasing that simply didn't have *that* zen going.
Busted in the PDS box yesterday. Woke up this morning in Colby KS, after a night spent battling the 50mph post-frontal 35oF chill. Swiveled the laptop on the table next to the (warm) bed and pulled up day 1, email and surface. My heart sunk when I saw northerlies in the TX Panhandle all the way to AMA - ouch. Plunging cold front - as advertised. Never favorable to chase.
......crossing the Red River as I type this.....
Busted south out of Colby towards Garden City while downloading photos on here of last night's SoD in SW KS. Ouch.
Knew that there really was only one play today - and for it you had to get to the warm/stationery/cold/whatever-the-hell-it-was front in the southern Texas Panhandle. Met Bill Tabor and chums in Perryton - apologies for my being so grouchy, Bill. Not having a good time. Tired.
As soon as we got into the TX Panhandle, it was evident that an area of agitated showers and cu were outh of the front southwest near Plainview. Being in the northern Texas Panhandle, this worried us. Thanks to my husband's navigation and my driving, we busted south at a great pace and got onto the storm just after it had tornadoed over Plainview airport. This was around 3.00pm and was very tortuous due to the crap road network...hmmmm.....somebody remind me of this when I hark about the awesomeness of chasing the TX Pan. next time. Come back South Dakota......all is forgiven.
Storm looked disorganized and was having a lot of trouble entraining cold air from its core up north. Very scuddy, scud being drawn in from the precip. and occasionally joining the wall clouds.
About 35 mis after getting onto the storm, a blockyish wall cloud developed and about five minutes after THAT a dirt whirl developed underneath this wall cloud and persisted for some time, displaying nice strong rotation and occasional multiple vortices. It lasted about two minutes, then we received a phonecall from Tim Marshall, congratulating us for joining the dirt-whirl club (he got his in SW NE yeterday).
We stayed in one spot, were joined by first Jason Boggs and co., Hank Baker, Rocky Raskovich and co., and Australian super-chaser Jimmy Deguara and friends. Great chaser convergence with some of my best chaser-friends out there -
We postulated and had fun discussing the storm's problems for quite some time amongst our group. This was just due north of South Plains by a mile or so. Storm seemed to be redeveloping southwest, and a large area of wall cloudiness came up from that area and began spinning HARD for us. RFD occlusion began, fully occluded, and managed to give the wall cloud a tail cloud and some fingers that MAY have been more dirt whirlies.
This then proceeded to move into a general downward/outward progression of the storm. Very gusty outish in appearance. We went north slightly and examined the scuddy/gusty appearance of what was left of the main storm cell, then decided to blast southwest to catch anything on its flank.
Just east of Plainview, we stopped and filmed some nice gustnadoes which Gene was very enthusiastic about and I less so. Some exhibited nice tubes of dust. Woohoo. A point to note of interest here is that, when Gene attempted to get out of the door to video these, the easterly inflow overpowered HIM dragging him out of the truck with the door as it swung open. Guess that should have been our clue, huh??
Once dusty whirlies were over with went south to Lockney where we stoped again with Hank, Rocky, Tim and Kaye Marshall and Dave Gold and tour. Discussed at the intersection our woes about this gusted-out, wrapped-up storm. Five minutes later, Hank Baker yelled from his cellphone that Dave Ewoldt just got done filming a HUGE tornado ten miles to our north.
Shortly thereafter, unsurprisingly, our little group dispersed. Some trips just weren't-meant-to-be. By the time we even KNEW the first thing about what was transpiring to our northeast, the gates were already slammed shut in our faces.
Blasted southeast on Hwy 70 - the only road option which was torn up and under construction.
Worth noting here that the return of the "smaze" seems to have been fully consummated. Once you got between 5 and 7 miles away from ANY storm - you no longer had a visual on ANY of its features.
Farted around just east of Floydada and took a road north and east which was progged to come into Whiteflat TX. One mile onto this road it turned to packed dirt/sand. Niiiiiice. We persevered with it although God knows why - I don't drive on dirt roads much at all unless it's likely to reward me with a tornado intercept. The likelihood of THAT was fading as fast as my enthusiasm.
After arsing around in the deep sand and FINALLY getting onto paved road, we blasted north from Whiteflat to take a look at the storm. CGs with this storm were INCREDIBLE. Anvil-to-ground bolts with very high multiplicity - relighting the channels over ad over and over for as long as 5-7 seconds.
Finally got up to JUST south of Turkey where we had visual on the ugly face of this now non-tornadic, beastly HP with dark greys and greens and blacks filling the sky. It was almost like nightfall it was so dark, but the sun hadn't set yet.
Took one look at the core, the large raindrops on our windshield and the tortuous escape route east of Turkey, and turned around gleefully. Busted south very fast to escape getting munched ala last April in eastern OK. Made it OK to Matador, and were faced with a very long drive home.
Anybody who uses Cingular - did you have ANY voice coverage in this area today? OR yesterday in northern Kansas???? We have been blindfolded and gagged by our Cingular cellular coverage lately - almost so much I am beginning to wonder if part of their network is down. NOT happy. My Tracfone TDMA got LOTS of use over the past two days - including Dave Gold having to use it for rudimentary data in southern NE yesterday. Wow. Talk about stone-age.
Got into Vernon TX. about an hour ago and ate at the local McDonald's after FINALLY getting some conversation with some other of our chase friends. We busted along with Hank, Rocky, Jimmy, Tim and Dave.
The McDonald's in Vernon served as a good point to try and refuel our empty shells of bodies for the drive HOME. My leftover coke is already beckoning. While eating in McDonald's, an eery song began to play. I can't remember what it's title is, but it's the one where the guy wails about
"Number one is the loneliest number that you'll ever do..."
It wasn't exactly a direct relative in nature to chasing storms.......but it sure sums up how we feel, strangely enough. Som things just strike a chord with you, you know?
A warm congratulations to Roger Hill ("bionic-chase"), Dave Ewoldt, JR Hehnly and I THINK Shane Adams was on it too - that dusty stovepipe must've been quite the sight. I hope anybody who's windshields got busted out are OK - like Scott McPartland.
Shane - I'm beginnig to believe in your theory of zen chasing and the fact that you either have it or you don't at any one given time - and nobody has it all the time. We sure didn't today, or yesterday.
But a big thanks to my employers who let me off again and again and again for this system!
In Lawton now and headed home to our poor parrot who's been left alone for the past 48 hrs.....
Karen Rhoden
[Broken External Image]:http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v143/mikeperegrine/WEB512050012.jpg
