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I left Blair on the 8th around 3:30 in the afternoon, hoping the chase on the 9th would pay off and be worth one expensive trip. I also thought I could chase the 10th, maybe in central AR. So it seemed worth the cost. It wasn't. Such is chasing. At least I sat out a couple other chases before this that I would have either busted on, or not seen anything worth much(I would have missed the storm on the 7th had I left that morning....3rd wasn't very good). So I get to Alva Oklahoma around oh, 10 I guess. I really wanted to get a motel there as I was sure I was going to hit a deer if I kept going. Between Pratt and the Oklahoma border I had to hit the breaks 4 different times, due to deer on the shoulder standing there about to cross. I get to Alva and see lots of construction trucks at the first motel and sure enough, no vacancy. All through town the same story....ugg! A Tuesday at 10 and all the motels are booked solid. Yay. Drive another hour to Woodward. I made sure to dig up the Super 8 number there and reserve before I left Alva. I get my room, get online a bit, then take a shower. Why on Earth do they keep putting shower heads at chin level? I'm 5' 9" so not tall at all, just average. I have to hunch over to get my head in the stream. I've seen this at several motels now and never understand it. After that I try to sleep but can't. I fall asleep sometime around 2:30, but wake at 5:30. It wasn't a good sleep either, felt like I was half awake during all of it. This happens often the night before a good chase day. So I get up, take another "neck-down" shower, lol...and look things over. Still looked like I'd have to drop straight south to I20 in Texas, another 5 hour drive or so. 12-13 hour drive for one chase....one direction. Anymore for me to bother with these(since I can chase ALL year, any day) it has to look like a lock. If you count the drive back home and the driving during the chase itself, it's probably close to 30 hours(at $3.30/gallon). Nothing is a lock in weather. I should know not to do these anymore and just chase more days twice as close to home(makes a lot more sense). The first flag I tried to ignore was how freaking cold it was way down there. I can't think of many cool things I've seen when I've woken to such cold air so near a target. I think it was near 40 in Alva when I got there. As it would turn out, this cold was a pretty big hindrance to this day(IMO). Well the other big flag(probably bigger) was the forecasted precip area with a lead wave in the morning. Anyway, I leave around 7:30 a.m. and head south to Abilene. I reach Abilene around 12:30 I think. There I met up with Amos Magliocco, Scott Blair, and Rob Hall for a short bit. They soon went west to Sweetwater, and I stayed put for a bit. For whatever reason I don't care to be around to many others as the chase gets going. I want to be myself to blame and know I'll let other's thoughts affect mine(hell I'm stubborn enough to ignore good thoughts, lol...and I sure as hell don't want to do that). So I let them head west without me, just to look at things a bit more and make myself sure of where I want to be. The biggest thing at this point was the forecasted elevated dryline with that lead wave. It moved the low level jet a little east for a while. I wanted to be on the western edge of that low level jet where it intersected the warm front. CU were starting to go on satellite with one showing up on radar out where they were. I soon think I need to be where they are and head west, but cu ahead of that stops me. Sweetwater also had north winds, and that storm on radar out that way looked to be just behind the front. So I stop halfway between Abilene and Sweetwater, thinking I wouldn't be there long. I wound up there for quite a while. I wanted to let those guys know I wasn't being a "snob" by not driving further west, especially since I could see a couple more on spotter network with them now. I just wasn't sure that I wasn't going to need to go back east soon with the new storms trying to go south of me. And sure enough, I soon needed to go back east. I did so in a hurry, because things already seemed to be trucking along on radar loops.
I took FM-600 ne out of Abilene, but stopped part way up it as the storm looked to be turning more east than it was, which is to be expected as it roots better. The above is the storm of the day, the one that would hit Breckenridge in a while. See the lowering/scoop on the left side? That's a pretty good hint it's going to turn right, especially since it's early in its life. So I go back south and hop on a paved road east, which would take me to highway 351.
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I'm now somewhere near that highway 351, but not taking it quite yet. Strong contrast thanks to the sun lighting up the foreground ahead of the storm.
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Same location and it's now apparent the storm is pushing east hard now, as it took a big ol right turn. I was a little surprised just how fast it was moving east. I was like, this speed really sucks. Inflow winds began to rage now, and a big rfd notch cuts in. I thought it might just tornado already. Soon an intense area of dirt gets plowed up and shoved north. At the same time the storm above did have a brief sw-ne notch cutting back west into it north of the rfd notch. The problem was how cold the whole thing looked well north of this. I'm guessing it was just too cold on the north side of this front, and this was giving the storm hell. Otherwise the environment was NUTS. The low level jet was southerly at like 50 knots, with a southwest 500mb jet of 50-60 knots...and a 100 knots up at 300mb coming in from the sw. Then toss in backing surface winds along the front and very juicy air. And now you have a supercell trying to ride a warm front. It was just too cold right on the north side of it. Anyway, some of that dust action can be seen under the rfd cut in the above. There was more dirt, but I didn't get a still of it, just video.
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Around this time a new storm was going up just se of this one. It's best to try to chase the environment, not the storm. The environment wants a storm to go more east with the boundary, not so much northeast. That new storm was like, hey, look at me now...or at least in a bit. I drove south into its core, which contained some small hail already. This wasn't far at all, it's literally JUST left of the above picture.
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I stop at the Clyde exit I think, and Amos shows up again. That is now the southern storm, continuing to get deeper into the boundary layer. It was also hauling east like the other...sigh. We weren't here long before flying east. With fast storms it's always about when to be ahead of them, and when to be southeast of them playing catch up again. We were doing great so far. |
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We went east to Baird and north. I slow up some since I'm sick of the cold structure. I lose Amos in the process. The above was taken north of Moran, as I'm still in position to keep ahead of things. All I had to do here was keep going north and jump east for a nice long stretch. But I don't, I decide to let the storm go, because it kept looking too cold. I also lost data and feared missing something better back to the southwest later. I could have very easily beat it to Breckenridge from this point. But no, I have to blow it because if it is tornadic, or will be, I'm sure to blow it. So it was destiny. So the storm was struggling all the time to this point. I stop and let it overtake me and film it before heading back south. The rfd notch is about to move over me, while you could see an e-w notch going west to the north. At the intersection back in there you could see some interesting movements. I did not think much of it though, because the rfd with this thing trailed southwest forever and just looked too linear down there to let it cut in good up here and do much. |
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The wet rfd is now blasting me. The storm is now getting primed to head into Breckenridge and do whatever it did there. The motions in the rain bands aloft, in this rfd were a lot spooky. They were just very energetic. This passes and I drop south. I get data again, and see this storm now going nuts on radar. I'm 12 hours from home, all over the storm of the day from its birth.....and I just let it go....likely 5-10 minutes before it starts producing the tornado that hits Breckenridge. I am good! So I sat on I20, in the hot sun, wishing I had a gun(I get really upset....but at the same time have enough sense of humor to laugh at myself...even though after gas and motels it cost around $400 for this one trip) . The combination of it looking like ass all day, and not having data at this point to know if I was missing something else or not....lead to my choice to let it go. It just gets so laughable WHEN the choice is made and what happens RIGHT after that.
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I quickly let go of the idea of chasing in AR the next day(thank god, since nothing worth a darn happened anyway). I just wanted to be back home. Nothing was firing worth a crap out west either. One was trying, but it was north of the front in really cold air....screw that. So I start the drive towards Wichita Falls. I get into rain, and learn 277 into Wichita Falls is trucker heaven. Couldn't see the lines on the road, and semi after semi coming at me got old fast. I was like screw driving further north to have hope of chasing ne KS the next day early. I'm just going to get a room in Wichita Falls, and maybe do some lightning shots. I get into town and see a Days Inn. I'm like, that will work. That won't be expensive. I walk inside and see marble all over, a big round staircase, with an elevator next to it....and HD tv's on the walls, lol. I think to myself, whatever, I really don't care at this point what it costs. She says the price, but it's not like I can understand her as she rambles things out so fast. I hand her my card not even knowing at that point what it costs, lol. It was $90, but at least it was a really nice $90, unlike a few other $90s I've spent on rooms. So anyway, the above photo was taken the next day to show how I got the lightning. I had to extend my tripod legs, but keep them together, and lean the camera on the window in the upper left. The rest of the window was just very much covered in rain. The brick at the top left a little bit of clear view up there.
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The lightning with these storms....SUCKED. There weren't many flashes, and there were even fewer cloud to ground bolts. Since I had radio towers out there, I was stubborn and was going to try just incase there was one good bolt. I try for over 2 hours, till like 2:30 a.m.(this after tons of driving, 3 hours of sleep the night before....and tons of driving coming the next day). There were literally only 3 cg's in view that whole time. 2 of them were great! This above was the first one. I didn't see it as I walked to my laptop. All I saw was the room light up followed by booom.
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Here is a full sized crop from it. The window will cause ghosting of things, so that secondary bolt tracing the main bolt is just a reflection. What is cool as hell is that upward leader to right of those, coming off a power pole by the looks of it. It looks like the main bolt is hitting someone's tree. It's certainly not the tallest object around! Not with that radio tower that close by. Too bad I don't know who lives there. Bet it'd be cool to see a picture of your tree being hit.
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This is why I was bothering! I've always wanted a reverse lightning bolt off a tower. These actually go UP off the towers. I've seen them happen a couple times, but always well off in the distance. They love to happen behind lines of storms, under a well developed back-sheared anvil. I've seen them under very dead storms, with little but sprinkles left. You'll see no lighting for 10 minutes, then in an amazing display the whole sky will sort of discharge, and often you'll get one of these going up from a tower. I saw this on the LCD and realized I'd actually gotten one. I fell back on the bed in celebration, saying "yes" about 30 times and throwing punches, lol.
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Closer crop of it.
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Anyway, I'm glad I at least got the lightning. Here's a shot of the lovely motel room. HD tv in the room! Leather computer chair, a couch...the bathroom was huge. Most importantly, the shower head was a shower head.....not a shower chin.
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I'm going to make this short as I'm really tired of typing now. I rushed home for hopes of the surface low in northeast KS on the 10th. I meet up with Randy Chamberlain in Nebraska City, both of us figuring it was a lost cause since things looked like crap. We joke about a storm doing something after we leave if we left, then notice a storm finally getting going to our south. It was well south, but had crazy scud motions going round and round under it, with a darker shading right under it near the ground. We head it off to the east into Iowa and watch it approach. It was pretty much right at the deep surface low.
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It had a really big rfd cut go into it, but it was quite cold looking. It cut around and blew it to hell fast.
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It was at least interesting for a short bit.
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