An Intense Texas Chase To End the Chasecation

DAY 14 MAY 15, 2009

I was enjoying my sleep when someone came knocking on my door. The knocking wouldn't stop, so I groggily got out of bed and opened the door with my eyes halfway opened and my hair a mess. I was expecting Ron, but it turned out to be one of the cleaning ladies. All she had to do was look at me and apologized and said she would be back later. I closed the door, rubbed my eyes and looked at the time. 10:30 am?! What are they doing knocking on our doors a half hour before checkout time? What if I was in the bathroom? Would she have walked right in and start cleaning right away? Yeeesh. Well, I figured since it was getting rather late in the morning, I decided to get dressed and turned on TWC to see what Vortex 2 was going to do today. Apparently they were heading to Kansas. I looked quickly at the RUC models for later today. Interesting. Tons of instability, helicity, convergence, a moisture pocket, southerly/southeasterly surface flow, a cold front and a dryline in the eastern Texas panhandle. There would be storms across OK and KS as well, but it looked to be more linear. I didn't like the surface winds there either. SPC outlined a moderate risk with 10% tornado for eastern Kansas and a slight with 5% tornado over the eastern Texas panhandle. The whole stretch was hatched for large hail as well. I was a bit puzzled as to why Vortex 2 was headed up to Kansas. Ah well, I ain't with them after all, and I wanted our last alley chase of the year to end with a bang.

We all went to Denny's for breakfast. I ordered the Pancake Puppies, which actually resembled 3 inch deep fried hailstones. Yum! We then headed northwest from Wichita Falls, towards Amarillo. The cold front was expected to move southeast through the late afternoon. Ron and I were hoping for an isolated supercell today. Actually, Ron was certain we would see something today.

A little while later sometime in the mid afternoon, we ended up a rest stop. We could see the boundary developing. A new storm had quickly gone up north of Pampa. While I was taking pictures of the distant cells, Jack called me over. He mentioned a tornado watch had gone up and we were on the western side of it. Perfect! So far everything seemed to make good timing. We continued on our way north. A new cell was developing just to our west. The newly devleoped anvil was nice and hard, but the base of the cell did not look very healthy. We stopped to get some pictures of the anvil's edge, then Ron wanted to take one of his shortcuts to get to the supercell near Pampa, which included a road basically made of peanut butter. Some of the ruts were a little deep but the van did quite well getting through it. Luckily it was not raining because this is one road that any chaser should avoid when it's wet. Some of it was so deep it was scraping underneath the van. Clay came up out the sides just like going through a puddle. Nothing like a little Texas clay off-roading adventure! After about 10 minutes, we worked our way to a main road again and headed off towards the storm.

Soon after, a tornado warning was issued for the storm. This supercell was starting to look like a beast on radar and it was moving slow in a southerly direction! As we got closer, we could make out some of the structure. I could see some banding along the flanking line and wrapping around the meso. All of a sudden, Ron said there was a funnel cloud off to the left under the rain free base! I zoomed in and took some pictures. What a nice funnel cloud (I later learned that another chaser was right near it and it was actually a tornado with only a funnel cloud visible and debris underneath)! Unfortunately there was moisture in the air which made the contrast very low. A few minutes later as we neared the meso, we stopped on the shoulder of the hiway to take some pictures of the great structure. As we stood in the inflow, a wall cloud could be seen inside behind the precipitation. It appeared our storm was going to be one mean HP beast. A few minutes later, I could feel the winds change to outflow and it was starting to rain. The storm was heading toward us. A couple seconds after everyone loaded back in the vans, I saw a powerful CG strike near us. CRRAAAAACCCK! Holy crap!!! Oddly enough, Jack, Pam and the three clients, who were in the other van, said they did not even hear thunder with that strike. It was highly possible it may have struck the van or right next to it. Yikes talk about timing to get back in the vans! Good thing I brought extra undies!

After that electrifying experience, we headed to the storm to get on the backside out of the path. We pulled on to hiway 273, just a few miles southeast of Pampa. It was starting to hail and the rain was blinding. We pulled on the shoulder to watch. Thunk! Thud! Wham! Tennis balls of ice were falling and bouncing on the ground. Not from straight down either... with the winds, they were hitting us almost sideways! Everyone put on safety glasses.

A few minutes later, radar detected a couplet and hook just ahead of us (we were facing east southeast). Through the rain streaked windows, a collar cloud with rotation could be seen right down the road. We saw a fat funnel cloud on the left and to the right, there was a much darker creature hidden in there. I took a picture of the funnel cloud when a CG actually made it in my shot. Cool another unintentional lightning shot! There was so much rain and hail, it was actually hard to see anything hidden in there. We pulled up a few feet and stopped again because the storm was moving away from us. Jack got on the radio and said a hailstone made a crack in the windshield. The winds increased. It was starting to look more and more intense. Ben and I huddled in the middle of the van trying to get away from the side windows when I felt my ears pop. Uh oh. Something's not right. My adrenaline kicked in. Next thing I knew, Rita yelled. The side window at the rear imploded all over her and the backseat. She crawled up to the middle seat and we checked out her back. She had a small scratch on her lower back which was nothing serious, but the stinging made it feel worse. We saw a truck drive past us and towards the possible large rain wrapped tornado. They continued down the road a bit before they realized they had to turn around. I said, "We gotta get outa here, we gotta get outa here".

We turned around to get out of the heaviest precipitation and pulled over on to some road in front of some homes. I was shaking from the adrenaline rush. Apparently the other van had all three side windows implode at the same time! I mean the entire windows. Frame included. None of us never heard a smashing sound when the windows blew in and there were no big stones in the back seats, which made it even more of a mystery on why they imploded at the same time. However, everyone in the van I was in felt a pressure change which caused the ear popping. Were we too close to a potentially strong tornado? Ron said according to the velocity scans, the tornadic winds must have been about 161 mph. Yowsa, that's enough to blow your socks off. The guys tried to find stuff to cover up the windows, including jackets and duck tape. I said to Sandra, "So does that mean the chase is over?" in a somewhat disappointed voice. Sandra chuckled. Unfortunately we could no longer chase because there were no windows to protect everyone from the rain.

We pulled into Pampa and found a sheltered area at Ranch House Motel. The owners of this run down place instantly came to assist us in what ever help we needed to get cleaned up. They handed us brooms and buckets, and said if we need anything to let them know. This is why I love it in the plains... the people here are very kind and they look out for each other. Mammatus was soon overhead and I took a couple pictures. Pam and Rita kept picking small chards of glass off of them.Ron booked some rooms for the night. When Rita got her room, she went to shower to remove any glass. The rooms were small, so I had to get a separate room. It was quite run down, but at least it appeared clean. The people here offered us help and I felt the least I could do in return was stay for a night. Once I threw my stuff in there, I grabbed a broom and started sweeping up the billions of pieces. Jack's van had a spiderweb pattern in the windshield on the driver's side. Rita went to grab her Monster energy drink, but it was mostly empty. It was never opened. What the? After looking at the can, there was a small puncture hole in it from the glass! Wow that's bizarre! Jack apparently had his laptop open at the time the windows imploded, so he ended up getting some tiny glass shards inside. A couple of emergency vehicles drove by headed east. The motel owners asked if they could call up the local media news, but we had to politely decline. After all, things needed to be cleaned up and we were a bunch of hungry storm chasers. Ron and I still wanted to chase, but the supercell was getting away and we would need new windows.

Ron said there was a report of someone getting glass (no not from our vans!) in their eye and there was damage east of Pampa. After most of the glass was swept and our lugguge in our rooms, we decided to head just west of town to look for the damage. There was a large tree knocked over and it looks like it hit part of the house. The family seemed fine and the kids were playing on the trunk. Since it was getting dark, Ron decided to drop Pam, Rita, Sandra and myself off to eat dinner at Granny's Home Cookin', which offered great tasting food and wonderful service, then we called it a night.

I said I was hoping our chasecation would end with a bang, but I didn't expect it would be that gnarly! Be careful what you wish for LOL. The next day we looked for more damage, talked to a few kind folks and headed on our long journey home. Talk about timing too... the infamous death ridge would be showing its ugly face for a while in the plains according to models.

The NWS surveyed the area and rated a half mile wide multi vortex tornado as EF-2 near the area where we were when the windows imploded. There were other tornado reports, including the funnel/tornado we saw earlier on the storm which was rated EF-0.

A Texas riot

DAY 13 MAY 14, 2009

Shortly after 10 am, we headed to Will Rogers Airport to say goodbye to our new France friend David. His tour drew to a close and needed to fly back home. He was a pleasure to have along and he wants to come back next year.

We headed to Chickasha, OK to have a hearty buffet for lunch at Western Sizzlin Steakhouse. Okay so it has steakhouse in the name, what great plains restaurant doesn't? After that Ron checked out the models. The air was unstable so he was hoping for a nighttime storm to pop up somewhere near the Oklahoma/Texas border. However, the sky was overcast and I never did like overcast days.

We headed southwest on I44, made a quick stop in Lawton, then continued west on hwy 62 towards Altus. Along the way, Ron saw something unusual. An old armchair was near the road. So what does a chaser do waiting for the cap to break? Ron checked out the chair for any little critters and snakes, grabbed an old storm chaser handbook, his coffee and a roll of toilet paper and sat down in the chair looking pretty relaxed. We took some pics of him with the Witchita Mountains in behind. We then continued towards Altus and made another stop near the Altus Air Force Base to get some shots of the jets flying in.

We crossed the Texas border and stopped so that David, Louise and Michelle could get their picture taken by the state sign, while the rest of us took pictures of beautiful Texas wildflowers and little critters. We headed to Vernon and stopped by the train tracks because Jack enjoys trains, aside from storms. Sandra almost stepped in a fire ant mound. These buggers were almost everywhere, so I went back to the van since I was paranoid about getting a "love bite" LOL. After, we headed to Wichita Falls and booked our rooms. We then went to the Olive Garden for dinner. I helped myself to some stuffed mushrooms and a glass of wine. Before long, ice cubes started flying past me. Leave it up to Pam to stir up a riot! Soon, Sandra and Rita started throwing ice cubes. One made it down Sandra's shirt. Is this another hail simulation exercise? I know we need some wicked storms, but I didn't think the SDS was this bad! LOL! I decided to toss one at Pam and it somehow made it down her shirt. Bullseye! Luckily, the manager and server were in good spirits. Afterall, cleaning up ice is much easier than cleaning up messy food. Just thank goodness we were practically the only customers around. We headed back to the motel to wait for any storms to develop along a boundary. Unfortunately it was getting late, and nothing ever did fire up in the area.

Kay County, Oklahoma supercell

DAY 12 MAY 13, 2009

The crew got to sleep in a little bit this morning, and then went for breakfast at a Sonic. When we were leaving the motel, I saw another motel's sign with an LCD display saying "Welcome Hunters" which was referring to the Vortex 2 guys. I didn't see any of the vehicles this morning, which told me they were already on the road. At 1 pm, we took off for north central Oklahoma. The SPC had outlined a moderate risk for most of Oklahoma stretching to the northeast including Missouri. There was a 10% hatched area for tornadoes over Missouri and a 5% covered Oklahoma. A cold front was going to be moving southeastward ahead of a very unstable airmass. Once the cap breaks, storms were expected to rapidly develop and then become a linear MCS later in the evening as it moves east.

At about 3:30 pm, we stopped for some ice cream at Dairy Queen in Clinton, OK then headed towards Alva, where we had another bathroom break at 5:30. We were keeping our eyes on a boundary which was starting to grow some turkey towers. It was six o'clock magic hour and the cap was finally breaking! We could visually see the towers getting taller by the minute.

We worked out way to an area just west of Ponca City to meet up with the tornado warned supercell. We saw a wall cloud as we neared the storm. Ron pointed out to us that there was a large white funnel (possibly a tornado) ahead of us just to the right of the road. It was somewhat hard to see due to poor contrast from our vantage point. I quickly grabbed the camera and took a picture through the windshield. After that, it dissipated.

We encountered gusty winds kicking up dust from the rear flank downdraft and noticed the clear slot was starting to occlude around the wall cloud. It appeared the storm was a high-precipation type. We headed south for a little bit because of the storm's direction. Another wall cloud was starting to form. We took a back road and stopped to get some pictures. Everything was getting wrapped in rain. This wall cloud almost looked promising for a couple minutes, but it fell apart. We continued up the dirt road, and the rain mixed with some hail began to intensify. The dirt road was becoming rather difficult to drive on. Jack was driving the other van, while Sandra took the wheel in the van I was in. I must say it pays to be a Canadian with good winter driving practice. Sandra did a fine job controlling the vehicle in this mess. Shortly after, Ron looked at the Baron and mentioned there was another rotation couplet up the road 1 mile from us, but unfortunately, we couldn't see anything because of the core. In fact, I have never seen such a dense core like this before!

After a little while, we finally found a decent paved road (I think it was hiway 177). As we were heading south, the rain cleared up a bit more and we could see the sun setting in the west, and a rainbow formed. Since the storm was lining out and moving away, we headed to Stillwater to have dinner at Perkins. I tried getting some lightning shots from the parking lot but there was too much light pollution ruining my photos.

After dinner, on the way to Oklahoma City, I saw some lightning light up a roll cloud. We pulled over so I could attempt at getting some pictures. The key word here is attempt. Unfortunately since the lightning was too far away, I was not able to capture the scene without it being too dark. As we neared OKC, Ron spotted what looked like a funnel or tornado going down towards the ground diagonally off in the distance when lightning flashed. There seemed to be some scud around it, but the funnel part looked quite smooth, which soon seemed to rope out. I have no idea if this was a true tornado or not, but it was quite interesting.

We stayed at the Comfort Inn tonight.

Briscoe County, Texas supercell

DAY 11 MAY 12, 2009

When I woke up this morning, I found Ron putting new tires on one of the vans, and then we left the motel by 11 am. Apparently this morning, there was golf ball sized hail reported in Norman, OK from some storms that went through the area. We decided to stop for breakfast at Ihop in Plainview and Ron updated himself on the setup for today. A warm front was supposed to be move through Oklahoma by the evening, and we were hoping that the morning system would leave outflow boundaries for later. The RUC showed the highest instability to be around the Childress, TX area. Jack heard that Vortex 2 was also in west Texas to play today's setup... if anything would develop, it would be their first storm.

We made a stop at an Allsups in Quitaque, TX for a little bit to wait around. We saw some of the Vortex 2 vehicles drive by. I continued the chaser tradition of enjoying an Allsups burrito, and took readings of the temperature and dewpoint with my Kestrel. It's a good thing there was heat and moisture, and the surface winds were slightly picking up. We took off towards the west, where we noticed a boundary building over Hale county moving northeast. We were in a very scenic area, near the Palo Duro Canyon so we decided to stop and get some pictures. The boundary was showing some punchy tcu's, and behind the boundary was a storm developing. Ahead of this boundary, there was a lone turkey tower and underneath it, a textbook shear funnel appeared under the base. It lasted for a few minutes before the tcu vanished into pretty much nothing. The tcu's along the boundary were only getting bigger so we took off towards Briscoe county to get closer to the storm.

At first the storm looked like it was becoming a classic supercell. On the north end, there were classic inflow feeder bands, which led into the core, where to the south of the core a wall cloud was developing. The rear flank downdraft soon kicked in and whipped up several gustnadoes. As we continued up the road, we saw some of the Vortex 2 guys parked on the shoulder taking their readings. Several minutes later up the road, the rear flank was really kicking up a lot of dust. By now the storm looked like it would become a haboob. Some of us needed a quick bathroom break and as we pulled into Allsups in some small town, we saw the rest of the Vortex 2 crew as they were pulling out. The field command vehicle was still parked however, along with some members of the media. From what I could see from the parking lot, the storm was starting to remind me of the haboob we saw back in 2006. Craptacular! I always wanted an outflow dominant storm! Of course I ain't serious when I say that.

We pulled out and continued towards the storm. The winds were really picking up and dust was everywhere. We pulled onto some back road to stop and get pictures. Surprisingly enough, I thought I would have been more sandblasted than I was. Since there was not much else to see in this area of the storm, I mentioned to Ron that we should get ahead of it again and see if there was a decent shelf cloud. As we blasted eastward, it seemed the storm was beginning to pick up in intensity. It was entering the target area, with the highest instability. I saw a very skinny narrow hailshaft, which fooled me for a second thinking it was a landspout. Off to our left, we noticed some lowerings starting to form. When we neared the Palo Duro Canyon, we stopped on the shoulder. It appeared the storm was becoming more supercellular finally. We continued on where we intercepted the core, with some hail and heavy rain. After that, we took a very scenic route through the Palo Duro Canyon... what a sight to behold! We finally got into some flat country again, where we spotted rotation just ahead of us. We stopped again and noticed rotation in the base of the storm, showing twisting action in the clouds. Soon a white funnel cloud formed in front of the downburst on the left. There was another core to the right as well. Now that's what I'm talking about! It was quite a scene, with the downburst appearing as a solid wall of precip which included a rainfoot and the almost cinnamon bun-like swirl in the cloud base.

We intercepted another core and after that, we saw the TIV and some other chasers following the TIV. Oh crap! Chaser convoy! Sure enough they turned onto the road we were on and somehow managed to get ahead of us, leaving us stuck behind this convergence. There must have been about 6 other chasers behind the TIV. We all continued through some town. We wanted to get ahead of these guys and fortunately, the TIV had finally pulled off onto the shoulder and traffic seemed to be moving quicker again. We stopped again on the shoulder and I took some pics of the ragged leading edge of the storm from behind, with scud fingers hanging down and sucking in inflow. After that, we zipped past the TIV crew and continued down the hiway. The sun was now starting to set, casting beautiful orange hues behind the storm. A pretty full arched rainbow appeared. Off to our left we saw either a massive scud bomb or a developing wall cloud.

Ron wanted to pull over and get some twilight lightning shots. Unfortunately it was starting to rain, so I had to attempt my shots without using the tripod. Ron managed to get a nice shot of a CG, whereas I was not so successfull. Instead I managed to get one of in cloud lightning. As it got darker out, there was another core to the south. We intercepted it and encountered a bit of hail. This cell was becoming very electric and I saw one CG that turned out to be beaded lightning. We stopped to grab some lightning pictures since the strikes seemed so frequent and powerful and it was dark out. Afterwards, Ron wanted to book our rooms in Childress. As we pulled into one motel, there was no vacancy left. Vortex 2 was in town as well... I saw some of the vehicles parking along the front of one motel. We finally managed to find a motel that had enough rooms for us and grabbed a hot meal at Kettle, where a few of the Vortex 2 guys were. Apparently this restaurant already fed half of the Vortex 2 crew and I could tell that the employees just wanted to call it a night.

Dusty and a Run for the Border

DAY 10 MAY 11, 2009

This morning I decided to hang out in the lobby to check Tuesday's forecast and watch The Weather Channel. Vortex 2 has a live news feed every day on TWC and today was another no go. I was getting very frustrated with the model runs... they kept changing! In the late morning, the crew went to the Big Texan for a breakfast buffet and then made a visit to Cadillac Ranch, just south of town since David (France) wanted to see it. It was still cool and cloudy out. I expect this weather back at home, but not down here! Ah well, we were going to go find us some warmth anyway.

The target today was southwest Texas near Odessa. Hopefully that area would be good to us again (we saw a tornado there in 2007). Close to 1 pm, we stopped in Happy and then continued south to Lubbock around 2:30. The temperatures were starting to improve finally, and at around close to 5 pm, we made it in the Midland area. Once we got past Odessa, we saw development just north of the Mexico border. The skies were clear and it was hot out. I could see the anvil from the distant storm to our south. Ron lead us through some back dusty roads. And when I say dusty I mean dusty. Okay that was an understatement. It was more like off-roading in the outback of Australia. Ron's van was quite ahead of our's and they would kick up a large thick plume of dust which would obscure our view of them. We ended up coming to a dead end, with Ron nowhere to be seen. Ummm okay where is he? I didn't know he could perform magic tricks! Jack eventually called Pam's phone (again I say she is smart for bringing her Blackberry!) and we finally met up with them.

We turned left and then David (France) asked what was off to the right. I looked and thought "Holy crap!". There was a massive dust devil in a field off in the distance! I mean massive! One that could pass as a F1 or F2 tornado! It was the biggest I have ever seen. We all jumped out to take pictures of it. It lasted for a couple minutes before dispersing into thin air. It was no storm but an incredible thing to see. It must have been wider than the road and was very tall. The pictures I took really put in scale.

As we got closer to the storm, I noticed the anvil was starting to soften. Oh dear, are we the storm killers now instead of storm chasers? Ron then noticed that the storm was making a run for the border back into Mexico. Well I guess that's all folks. Give me my stamp collection book.

After enjoying some authentic Mexican dinner at On the Border, we stayed at a Super 8 in Lubbock tonight and were planning to head north east tomorrow for a much more promising set up. It was still not a perfect set up, but there was a much higher chance of actually seeing something. Hopefully there is something before my stamp book gets too full.