5/13 REPORTS: OK/KS/TX

Dwain, Jo, and myself intercepted our first storm near Ringling, OK. That was a dud. Moved west on US70 and intercepted cell #2 about 10 miles west of Ringling. Dud. Finally decided to give up on isolated development and drove across the border a few miles to greet the advancing gustfront/line. Took some cool video of the gustfront running us over, but it wasn't near as cool as yesterday.
 
I started the day in Wichita, and targeted Wichita Falls. About halfway between Wichita Falls and Lawton, I ran into some quarter-sized hail. That was amusing enough. The highlight of my day was breaking through some kind of very sharp boundary. Everyone on the highway's windows totally fogged over almost instantly (the fog was on the outside of our windows). Some dude in a pickup almost ran right into my rear quarter panel. It made yet another good case for mounting an extra horn pointed backwards on the ol' Element...but I digress. Perhaps somebody can explain to me exactly what that boundary was. I'm inclined to think it was a cold front, but could a dryline do that? I'm not exactly sure, having never seen it before. After that fiasco, I broke out ahead of the mess between Wichita Falls and Abilene, and all I saw was gust front as far as the eye could see in both directions. It was impressive in it's own right, but that wasn't exactly is what I traveled from KS for. So I ran towards Abilene, hoping for something on the bottom (WX Worx indicated tail-end Charlie was in effect), but all I saw was rain and some lightning when I got there. That was enough to call it a day.

On my way to find lodging, I was pulled over by Texas HP so I could demo my touch screen installation, and give the guy the web address where he could get one. Comedy.
 
matt biddle, mark svendold and i chased today starting in norman at 11am. we made it to burkburnett (just north of wichita falls) about 1245pm. looked at the radar and decided it was going to be an HP bomb, training, linear, outflow dominant blah blah around our target so we decided to follow the squall east and watched a nice shelf cloud for about an hour. we ended in gainsville and ate at the tim vasquez recommended barbeque place there (from his book) and really enjoyed it. Props to the recommendation Tim. Anyway, here are some pics of the shelf cloud as it progressed east toward the 35 corridor.

[Broken External Image]:http://toni.ou.edu/website/shelf2.jpg

[Broken External Image]:http://toni.ou.edu/website/shelf3.jpg

[Broken External Image]:http://toni.ou.edu/website/shelf4.jpg
 
By pure dumb luck and a good breakfast at Kathy's Cafe in South Haven, Kansas, I passed the first cell east of Enid when it showed the slightest lowering and tried to wrap up before the front came along and smacked it. This was approximately 11:30 AM.

Same story with a cell southwest of Oklahoma City about an hour later--I have pics of these marginally interesting lowerings that occured while the cells were semi-discrete and pulling fair inflow. However, same story as north: undercut rapidly. I weaved back and forth through the line on my way down 44 and then 81 towards Duncan, and crossed the Red River into my home state of Texas punching the core of a severe thunderstorm, definitely my coolest entrance. 8)

Met up with the gang from Weathervine here in Denton, Texas, and watched Chris Collura assemble the coolest weather station in all chasing in their motel room a moment ago. Now I have my feet propped up on the desk, and I'm thinking about the full eight hours of sleep I'll get tonight, and the 500 miles I DON"T have to drive tomorrow.
 
I and my partners headed for wichita falls as a primary target but storms initiated before we got there so we had to change plans. It was forming a broken line with the best cells to the south so we broke south from Vernon and headed towards Throckmorton (ofcourse). We set up about 2 miles NE of Throckmorton as a new cell had developed just west of Throckmorton ahead of the line. We werent really paying alot of attention to the storm itself at the time (we were looking at radar on my partners WXWorks) when we heard the sirens going off in Throckmorton so We started looking west and noticed a nice cone funnel most of the way to the ground. We scrambled for our camerasand I was able to shoot about 45 second of this cone. It was about 7-8 miles west of us so I couldnt tell if it was all the way on the ground but givin its size I hope so. The contrast was very poor so I am hoping I can get a video capture of it. This was about 2:35-2:40 pm. After that it joined into the line to the north and became outflow dominate. we headed east for a bit and then dropped south to try and work our way through a break in the line. we took shelter in Woodson and let the line pass and then headed to Wichita Falls for dinner before heading back to amarillo. I see there are no reports of a tornado west of Throckmorton so im interested if anybody else caught this and was close enough to see if it was on the ground or just a large funnel.
 
I have updated my site to include chases from 5/11-13/04. They are not anything in the way of such greatness as Kenneth McCallister :wink: but they were chases nonetheless with some decent pics. They include
5/11/04: King county marginal severe storm with very nice sunset.
5/12/04: Western North Texas high based marginal severe storms from Knox county & Wilbarger county.
5/13/04: Severe line from Wichita Falls to Breckenridge Texas.
I waited a long time for the ridge to break down from early May & all I have to say about this week is.....I SHOULD HAVE WENT TO KANSAS! :cry:
OH WELL. Still more May & June to come but doesnt look to promising for OK or TX for about a week! :(

http://www.texhomastormchasers.com

BTW this weeks pics are on the 2004 page
 
Nice pictures. I wish I had seen some storms today but thanks to the north Texas curse, no luck in that happening. I did get an outflow boundry that still had winds near 48 miles per hour down here. It was quite a distance to the storms but I only measured .02 at Glen Rose, Tx. And that was real late and had nothing to do with the outflow. As check out the report of winds:
2240 397 CISCO EASTLAND TX 3238 9898 (FTW)

Must be a typo, huh? 397 mph winds...hehe
 
05/13/2004 0600 PM

Pasadena, Harris County.

Blizzard, reported by law enforcement.


Funnel cloud sited at beltway 8 and Hwy 225.



Knew the weather was wild yesterday, but a cop reported blizzard? :shock:
 
Bill Tabor and I were on the southern storm that stayed west of Mason (central Texas) most of the afternoon.

The storm was tornado-warned for 2 to 3 hours, but there was definitely no tornado. It went through about
a dozen cycles of strengthening and gusting out, but the inflow velocities suggested by the cloud tags were
phenomenal and there was excellent large- and medium-scale rotation of the cloud base. We gave up at
dusk as the storms started looking more linear, and had dinner at a brewpub in the German-themed
tourist town of Fredericksburg.

The photo below was at about 7 pm and is characteristic of the disorganized, rotating updraft
base that was common at times with this storm.
[Broken External Image]:http://www.stormtrack.org/may13.jpg
 
After only 2 hours sleep from the previous chase, I decided to head west once again. After a couple stops to check data, I decided that this just wasn't going to be worth another marathon trip. (based on that decision, I'm surprised it didn't turnout to be the outbreak of the year :wink: ). As soon as I made it to the edge of the outflow, I stopped and took some pics of the shelf cloud near Okemah. I then turned around and headed east on I40 back to AR. A tornado warning was issued north of me at Tulsa and I thought about jumping on the turnpike and heading north. But there were reports of major flooding and hail and I was just too tired to fight that mess. That turned out to be a good decision because I believe that cell was radar warned and there were no actual funnels or tornadoes reported.

I rode the boundry all the way home (sucker was moving fast). It provided some excellent scenary for entire drive.

Here's a pic near Okemah:

[Broken External Image]:http://www.visibleimagery.com/photos/20040513_OK_Okemah.jpg
 
Here's a link to my page showing the storm action down by Mason, Tx that Tim alluded to. I've thrown up a few shots from my cheapo Fuji Finepix 2 megapixel. Some shots of the wildflowers on the side of the road too. This is just a quick update on it, and I may grab some stills from the video cams or maybe even a short clip showing the tags flowing in on the Beaver Tail which was pretty cool to watch. No tornadoes, but a great chase with a mixed variety of flavors.

http://www.tornadoxtreme.com/2004_Chases/M...h/may_13th.html

Click to zoom on images.
 
Originally posted by Donna Sweeney
That storm was some lightning show though. :shock:
Click to expand...

Absolutely! As we were leaving the brew pub and headed back to Austin there were lots of brilliant blasts of light from this show!
 
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