The Disappointment That Comes With Success

Today started out a bit early, considering that I didn’t get done writing and adding photographs to my blog until 2 this morning. Basically, I ended up getting somewhere around 5 or 6 hours of sleep, which isn’t horrible, but chasing storms on the plains can take a lot out of you. Large amounts of mental and physical stress, fast food meals and multchuous amounts of frustration take up almost every bit of up to 15 hours of your day when you’re chasing on the plains. Days seem to bleed into one another, hours seem to sometimes pass quickly, while others drag on it seems, sometimes, endlessly. You swear you have just been through a town, because most smaller towns out here have usually just two, noticeable landmarks, a water tower and a large grain elevator. The scenery sometimes gets old very quickly, especially the last few days down here in the rural “stove pipe” region of Texas, which by the way to give you an idea on how big it really is down here, you can fit the entire state of Indiana in the stove pipe itself, honestly, just look at a map.

I woke up this morning, sometime a short bit before 8am, and struggled to roll off the stiff bed at our Best Western in Wichita Falls. Although my alarm was set for quarter till, I didn’t manage to begin showering until nearly quarter after 8, but that is alright, because we didn’t have or daily briefing until 9. The weather was looking bad from the get go. The main culprit inhibiting any kind of storm development today was a source of moisture. The dew points, or the point at which the moisture in air condenses and forms clouds and eventually, rain, were extremely low. The air temperature on the other hand was rather toasty for the majority of the Lone Star State. The closer the two numbers are to each other, the better your chances for clouds and possibly even storms, depending on a lot of other factors as well. For example, temperatures in the mid 80’s and a dew point in the mid 60’s would bring a good chance of thunderstorms. However, temperature in the mid 80’s with a dew point in the 40’s or even 50’s would not bring a great chance for organized or severe storm development. Today was appearing to be a bust at around noon when we rolled into the town of Plainview, or another town near there, I’m not positive. The dew points were in the 50’s and even into the 40’s I remember, and the temperature outside was very warm, in the mid to high 80’s, which as I have explained prior to be terrible conditions for storm chasing. Our decision, with limited options, was to just head to our original target location of Amarillo and make the call from there whether to continue or to end the chase early and head to our target are for tomorrow.

Right before we got to Amarillo, unfortunately not named armadillo, we monitored our radar and visible satellite on board Van 2, and spotted a small cell beginning to erupt a bit to the north and west of town. We entered chase mode at that point, because within a matter of just minutes, the storm was given a severe thunderstorm warning by the National Weather Service. We were making out way due north out of town, when we realized that we had not one route to the west to intercept the storm unless we would backtrack to Amarillo and catch one of the roads that headed west from there. That is indeed what we decided to do.

With the storm building into a large black mass in our rearview mirror, we got back to Amarillo and quickly began heading west towards New Mexico. The storm was producing 3 inch hail, as detected by Doppler radar, and even some shear. It had many characteristics of a high precipitation supercell, especially with the intense amounts of precipitation that were falling near the core. There were no other noticeable chasers in the area as we sped west down an old county road with the cell coming at us from the right, and or the north. We stopped in a field to monitor a lot of dust that was getting kicked up under a mesocyclone and our first wall cloud we spotted. The rain surprised us and hit us almost out of nowhere. The dust, we figured, was just caused by the gust front headed our way with intense straight line winds and heavy rain from the cell’s downdraft. We quickly sped west to avoid getting slammed by the core of the storm, which at the time was still capable of producing egg sized hail that could have easily destroyed our windshields. Unfortunately for us, we had no good southern routes to keep up with the storm for another 10 or 15 miles down the road. We took that route and witnessed our first clear view of a rear flank downdraft, which is an intense band of rain and hail forced downward one the back end of a severe thunderstorm. This is also common when you have a tornado nearby, but we didn’t have any visual of one.

The storm kept on course heading south, and we stopped on a country road to talk over plans. We did not have a good area to get back to the front of the storm to continue the chase, so after about twenty minutes or so, we decided we would head north for dinner and towards our destination for tomorrow. After stopping to eat in Canyon, Texas, we shot north into the skinny panhandle of Oklahoma, Guymon to be specific, and that is where I am writing this tonight. We have also had a bit of interesting news come our way tonight, via the Storm Prediction Center. Apparently, around 6:30 or so, a tornado touched down a mere 10 miles or so to our east, and we had no idea. We were picking up good radar signatures, but there was no safe way to approach, chase or view that part of the storm. When we learned that we had been just a stones throw away from our dreams of witnessing one of the most awe inspiring displays of mother nature’s fury, we were extremely disappointed. The mood went from success to extreme depression, but there was honestly nothing we could have done better.

In better news, however, we stopped in a gas station in Dumas, Texas and some of us got our attentions grabbed by the television that was on the Weather Channel inside. With a 10% chance of tornadoes bull’s-eye over western Kansas and eastern Colorado, the risk level could be the highest we have seen since leaving Muncie. Apparently, a big named man in the meteorology business, Greg Forbes, stated that we would be having a great chance for witnessing a tornado tomorrow in the plains, finally after weeks of no hope, and then progress, finally, we might be able to see the king of all land based weather events out here on the Great Plains. As for now, I will get a good night’s rest, because tomorrow is shaping up to be a very long and hopefully exciting day. As always, thank you for reading, comments are appreciated and can be sent to my email. (btmaushart@bsu.edu)