Sorry to shit on this project, even though I think it has the potential to be one of the greater resources available to the storm chasing community, but I think it can be so much better than it currently is. My biggest complaint is that it reads as if it was written for NatGeo or CNN, i.e., too cursory to be useful to a serious chaser who may not already be intimately familiar with a given region's terrain and road network. You could glean most of this information from a 30 second glance at a road atlas for a given state or a look at the NWS website.
I'll explain this better using the example of the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles section.
Terrain said:
Terrain
There is just about a little of everything in the panhandles in terms of terrain. The western Texas panhandle and most of the Oklahoma panhandle are relatively flat plains. There are a few hills and patchy areas of trees mixed in. Elevation also increases, gradually, with westward extent.
The central and eastern Texas panhandle is a little bit more diverse. Hills and rivers tend to be the dominant terrain feature north and east of Amarillo. The Canadian River cuts through the area, featuring some forested areas along its path to make storm chasing a little bit more difficult. To the southeast of Amarillo, the Caprock region begins, featuring a challenging array of hills, thickly forested areas and canyons.
This description is not inaccurate, but it misses the mark. Easily the two most influential terrain features in this region are the Caprock and the Canadian River valley, which should be the very first two things mentioned. What makes the Canadian River valley so special is that it features a very wide terrain gorge spanning a solid 30 miles across almost its entire west-east traverse across the panhandle, and the road network within that gorge is pretty awful even compared to the rest of the Panhandles region.
You missed mentioning that the Caprock is a favored area to chase due to the terrain gradient helping to force CI on dryline days, which is the staple feature of this region.
Road Network said:
Road network
The road network across the Texas panhandle is not the most favorable for storm chasing. Most roads tend to follow curved, irregular paths. There are gaps in the road network as well, especially north and east of the greater Amarillo area. The road network in the southeastern portion of the Texas panhandle, near the Caprock, can be frustrating as well. Often, there is only one paved road that will lead you to a storm here. This frequently results in storm chaser bottlenecks (traffic) during severe thunderstorm events. The Oklahoma panhandle has more of a grid-type road layout, but even in that area, there are often multi-mile gaps between stretches of roads.
Interstate-40 is the main freeway that will take you east or west across the Texas panhandle. I-27 will bring one south from Amarillo toward the Lubbock area. I-27 comes to an abrupt end in Amarillo, so if you need to continue north, consider taking the TX-335 loop or some other deviation around to bypass the downtown area.
This section is dreadfully lacking in specifics. It only takes looking at Google maps of this region at a zoomed out level for 60 seconds to ascertain this information. This section should contain the golden nuggets that people who haven't chased here wouldn't think of until it happens to them. Here are the specifics for this region:
-Roberts County (with Miami) has horrid terrain...the major paved road going through is in a narrow valley most of the way, severely restricting visibility much of the time.
-More broadly than Roberts County, the section of land bordered by state highways 152, 136, 207, 51, and US Highways 83 and 60 (broadly enclosed by Canadian, Pampa, Stinnett, and Spearman...roughly 2,000 sq mi. in size) is a total no man's land. That entire section has only one highway that completely crosses it, and if you split this region by that highway, there is a piece of real estate between Stinnett and TX-70 that covers pretty much exactly 1,000 sq mi. that has
zero accessibility for chasers. "Heh...don't try to chase along 152 east of Stinnett!"
-PALO DURO CANYON: if you're trying to chase to the immediate southeast of Amarillo and along the Caprock ledge, you need to plan your chase routes much further in advance than you would in other areas of the Plains (similar to the "Roberts County Gap") described above. TX-207 is a critical highway, as it is the only path through the canyon between Amarillo proper and the Clarendon-Turkey corridor, which itself is a risky 40-mile gap. Related: the drive from Childress to Silverton is pretty desolate, too. Hope you don't run out of gas or get caught by a storm in that stretch, because local traffic is about as thin as it gets there.
To me, these are the real positives about doing something like this - give those who don't already know these things the heads up before it is too late for them. While I didn't read many other sections, I would guess the rest are also lacking in those detailed spots as well.
If you need help with this, I would certainly be willing to offer some of my own experience as assistance. I'm sure you have covered as much territory as I have, so you are also probably pretty familiar with a lot of these tidbits.
www.quincyvagell.com
