Epilogue...

All these trips are different; you expect the unexpected, the disappointments and the moments of elation. There are so many aspects of storm chasing that you can only possibly experience a small subset on any given trip hence the compulsion to return again and again. Despite chasing only in Texas and Oklahoma we’ve spent nearly all that time in virgin territory, well for me anyway. If you thing the Plains are big then think again and add a nought or two; they are effectively endless.

It’s always fun to chase with buddy, it was great to have Rich along (not sure which one of us is Walter Matthau and which is Jack Lemmon), and to meet Valarie and Aiden. Great job by Peter and Malcolm in the front seats – part flight deck, part mission control. Fantastic craic throughout.

This trip kept delivering: 5 days of severe storms is at the very top of expectations including three days of being on tornado warned storms. You pays your money, you takes your chance. I’ll need to check but that’s probably the most productive trip so far. Coming here earlier in the season means that there’s more moisture around and the atmosphere recharges more quickly but the downside is more rain and faster moving storms.

Top moment? In the 5 previous trips I’d never seen proper giant hail so, by a small margin that has to be it -Day 2. That was also an exhilarating chase and we could easily have seen a tornado; dumb luck was against us, that is all.

It’s curious; the week has flown past in the blink of an eye but because we pack so much in individual events feel like they happened ages ago. So it is, make hay whether the sun shines or not.

Total miles this week: 3072

Grand total miles over all 6 trips: A lot TBC

See y’all next time.

Day 7 - Homeward bound...

I exited my room this morning and it’s positively cold, feels like 10c so an extra top has to be sourced quickly from the depths of the suitcase. No weather today so it’s back to the Wyndham Gardens in Oklahoma City and the flight home tomorrow lunchtime.

Breakfast this morning is at Dawson’s Family Restaurant which is fine. We set of from Childress and head west to Lubbock to visit the Buddy Holly Centre. The Centre is ok with a room full of memorabilia including his actual glasses recovered from the plane crash and a short tribumentary playing on a loop which is actually quite interesting. We’re then off east with undulatus asparatus clouds to our south. These clouds are so new…they didn’t even have a name a year or so ago. Seriously. Onwards we go on US82 towards Wichita Falls via Seymour where we stop for a Subway (tuna with all the “veggies”).

We stopped at the Saltgrass in Oklahoma City for a team steak tonight, unfortunately had to wait for 90 minutes as everywhere is full of students going through graduation. Beers in a second in the hotel.  I’ll go through the motions of what I call packing later. All being well we’ll be back home late Monday morning.

Total miles: 495

 

Day 6 - Going Underground...

I had a terrible night’s sleep last night. Lights out after 12 but kept awake by the air conditioning which sounded like a Soviet era combine harvester in its death throws. I had to turn it off then woke up shortly after and it was hotter than a Turkish bath in a Turkish prison. Next thing it was 6:50 and the alarm went off. Grrr…My series of four paranoid sweeps of the room yielded 2 pairs of socks drying on the towel rail. Paranoia vindicated.

We have a decent enough breakfast at Roxie’s Diner before heading south on US277 to the Sonora Caverns with The Jam playing on the iPhone including the title of today’s entry which was a coincidence. I had strawberry jam this morning which must have been the mental cue. We get there just after 10:15 and the next tour is at 12:00 so we’ve got time to kill/chill. There’s a peacock in the grounds and an elderly giant Pyrenees Mountain dog plus the cutest nest off three baby swallows being fed by their parents.

The caves are very impressive if a bit slippery, hot and very humid (98%) with a carbon dioxide level orders of magnitude higher than the surface so it was like being at 7000 feet altitude. Our group included half a dozen others including Dave who alluded to something about being in tunnels in SE Asia to go with a vets baseball cap. Dave made it out…just. You had to be there man…The trip lasted an hour and a half and the caves are very impressive with all manner of concretions: Stalagmites, stalagmites , things that looked like coral, skinny and fat alike and even a piece that looked just like a rasher of bacon, colours included. Well worth the trip.

Back to the weather. Today the SPC had issued a marginal storm risk in our area with no tornado risk assigned. There was a 2% risk way north east of here and out of range for today. There is an isolated storm tracking north east to our north east. It’s worth a look so we head east on I20 then north on US83 to intercept. It fizzles out before we get there. SPC (from nowhere as far as I can see) has now issued a 2%  tornado risk in the Texas panhandle. These are the uncertainties of storm chasing. We’re too far away to get there for initiation but head north with some alacrity. We’re booked in to the Days Inn in Childress tonight. For the first time since we left Oklahoma City I’m heading for an area I’ve been to before (in 2012).

It’s a very different trip to last year (12 states); looks like we’ll max out at 2 this year, the lowest ever. We’ve criss crossed central Texas for 4 days now. Texas is so big it doesn’t all fit on my Texas roadmap; the Panhandle is AWOL. We head into Ballinger and stop at the Tres Amigos gas station for a quick break before pressing on north.

We pass through Abilne. Severe storms have fired up north of Childress about 100 miles to our north one of which has reported a rotating wall cloud. It’s 6 p.m., will good old US83 and it’s strictly adhered to 75mph limit get us there in time? The storms are tracking south east which helps us out.

Reports come in of multiple accidents on the I40 in the south of Oklahoma caused by hail so severe as to require the attention of a snow plough…

We…plough on…It’s now 6:40 and our storm has topped out at 50,000 feet. It’s still hot outside with the mercury at 90f. Come on!

We make it and see a severe warned storm with strong inflow on our backs, a wall cloud with inflow tail and some and some excellent outflow with laminar structure. We stop a couple of times then head east and watch the storm roll over us with some outstanding lightning. We head north on US6, grab a truck stop sandwich before heading back west on US287 to Childress where we book in to the Super 8. Excellent day with a bonus storm!

Total Miles: 577

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 5 - Marginal...

What a mere marginal day? Tornado risk is less than 2% everywhere so it’s a leisurely 10:00 meet. I woke up at 5:30 after struggling to get the blog done and incredibly last night’s blog photos had finally uploaded. When I first came over here Wi-Fi was fairly hopeless; it’s 2016, we expect better. I went back to sleep and was woken by the alarm at 9:00.

We have breakfast at the Switch Café in Cool and head south on US281 then  west on I20 towards Abilene where we’ll no doubt turn south at some point to San Angelo.  Things look remarkably different than they did last night when we were belting down here in torrential rain and mind boggling lightning.  Tomorrow looks like a slight day and we may visit the Sonora Caverns the and Buddy Holly Museum which is in Lubbock, Texas in the morning as it’s on the way to where storms may fire. When I gave Rich a quick storm chasing induction before we came over I surmised that we’d likely remain in the southern plains, Oklahoma and Texas which is typical for  this time of year. And so it has proved.

Yesterday I lost the thread on where we were on the maps which is slightly irritating. I always switch on the D800s aftermarket GPS when we’re chasing so I know where the photos were taken; our location and height above sea level appears in the EXIF. I’ll use that to trace out the map when I get home. I do like to know where I’ve been. The map is back out, today’s pen colour is pinkish.

We take a brake at Cisco. Can’t get any Wi-Fi which is ironic considering where we’ve stopped. If that’s too an obtuse reference then I’ll have to explain – it’s a joke and it’s a router!

One thing I forgot to mention is that you get SUV legs which is ironic (again) because you don’t actually use your legs for anything much when you’re travelling. However, after a long drive you have very strong sensation of having got off a ship which lasts until the next morning. We head south on Texas 206 including a rough bit under construction.

We arrive in San Angelo and the weather has a day off so we have a late leisurely lunch at the Cork and Pig. I have a nice pizza and a bottle of Fireman 4 blonde ale. We then check in at the Days Inn (proper Wi-Fi!) and go for a visit to the small historic quarter. Nice old shops and an interesting story about a bordello in one of the basements that was closed down by the Texas Rangers in 1946. Tonight we’re having dinner next door at the Texas Roadhouse and we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Only two days left.

Total Miles: 228

 

 

Day 4 - SPC slight risk? EF6 Guaranteed..!

First off the Wi-Fi in the Day's Inn in Mineral Wells, Tx is a fecking disgrace...Grrr...And don't ask me why the font size is all over the shop either...

Last night was a complete pain. Blog paranoia became overwhelming and the bloody thing needed seriously bringing up to date. Photos took an eternity to upload over Wi-Fi; deciding not to bring a LAN cable has proved time expensive as a LAN port was winking and laughing at me all last night.The Wi-Fi was poor in an otherwise decent hotel.

Last night the SPC issued an enhanced risk which by this morning had been downgraded to slight. With the likely target not far west of here we have a sightseeing tour of Mineral Wells starting at the currently derelict but fantastic (Rich!) Baker Hotel which was built in the 1920’s as a hotel for visitors to the spa; Mineral Wells – the clue’s in the name.

After climbing through (more like round to be fair) a fence a SWAT team turn up. I think we might get told off. Fortunately the erm.. .security guards are friendly and tell us about some of the history of thr hotel. Bits of it were open for various things including a doctors but it’s been empty for a while. They were hopeful that a $55m project would save the building – I do to, it would be a crying shame to let it crumble away. I can empathise being from a town that has knocked down most of its Victorian heritage thanks to the negligence and arrogance of those in power over the years. That’s not progress. The hotel is boarded up and clearly in a state inside. Many of the windows on the upper floors are open and some smashed. The pool is full of rain water. We take lots of photos.

We had a look round an “antique” shop selling all sorts of memorabilia – you’d call it a junk shop in the UK which is not meant to be not endearing (terrible English Adam) in a building that was from the 1890’s; it was older than all the stock. I pass on the WWII German helmet no doubt brought back from Europe by a veteran as a souvenier. The friendly proprietors let me take some photos inside. We also drop into another shop. No idea what you’d call it, make your own mind up from the photos. I took a pile of photos including Rich with his new band. Taking photos is requiring some care as my D800 has uncharacteristically been prone to underexposure since day 1. Not sure why; I’ve been bracketing a bit and checking the histogram more than usual. ALWAYS shoot RAW as you can correct a whole heap of issues on the computer without much, if any penalty.

We head off to a park to eat our freshly acquired Walmart lunch…salad…I have the photos…Not at $7 entrance fee each we won’t. Peter vents his ire by leaving some “constructive feedback” on Trip Adviser. We head off to another free park and lay out the picnic. It is that point that the EF6 (reader alert: there is no such thing) guarantee comes to the fore. Sitting under a tree is a bad idea during lightning storms as they have a tendency to explode which has the potential to ruin your day. The same is true when sitting under a tree where a pterodactyl with the dynoshits is nesting. Well you can guess what happened next. In many “cultures” this is a sign of good luck…EF6? EF7+ more like (yes I know blah blah). A Frisbee appears and we help the moisture numbers with some freestyling. It is 93f which is warm vs 52 back home. I’ll take the former.

We head west on US180. If we get anything today (supercells are possible) it will be somewhere west later on.

We stop at Breckenridge for fuel and I get the ritual Hershey Bar and a cold vanilla coffee drink. The key to this kind of diet is not to look at the ingredients particularly the bit about calories. Gas is 30 odd cents a gallon cheaper than down the road which is a bit wierd. I got a text from the wife who had “gone out for an onion”; hopefully the regulars at Dr Phil’s Real Ale House like the blog, apparently my giant stones were all the talk at cricket…I’m good and phone home at roaming rates as I’m Wi-Fi bereft.

We continue west on US180 and across Hubbard Creek Dam. A severe warned tower has appeared in the distance and is already at 37,000 feet. Nice.  We drive through the sad, semi abandoned town of Lueders and our storm has a TVS marker for a while showing some rotation. The anvil is clearly visible with the welcoming sight of a bit of mammatus. A quick stop at Stanford and the big button on the Esplanade that says “Chase Mode” is pressed. The storm has hail to 2”, tops out at 45,000 feet and we can see lighting. There’s clear separation of the updraft and downdraft; dust is being sucked into the precipitation free base and bits of scud are dancing around. We’ve even got a bit of a lowering. 3 and quarter inch hail is now showing.  The TVS marker is just about back showing 33 kts. Not much in the way of low level winds at the moment so not much shear, but things could go supercellular later this afternoon/evening. Time check: 14:50 so plenty of the day is left.

Our storm has a bit of organisation to it and we can feel the inflow on our backs. It has a lovely shelf cloud on it and soon we’re all employing the iPhone panorama camera mode. We keep retreating to stay ahead. This thing is a right mover and tracking south east by east; we’ve got a road that almost perfectly parallels it and can keep this “photo and go” routine  up for a while. There’ll shortly be some wind to help with shear so we crack on to get in a better position much further down the road.

Then sods law strikes; the National Weather Service mobile phone warning goes off on Valerie’s phone – our storm is apparently now tornado warned. Almost in the next breath a chaser right in the heart of the storm reports a tornado, however this was the only chaser to call it in, nobody else appears to have seen it.

We stop in a small town by the football stadium (Bulldogs?) and catch some nice mammatus and some lightning. We move on and it’s apparent that our cell is on collision course with two others and sure enough they merge and we lose the tornado warning. We head south and by this time the light is fading.

We have a Sonic Burger at Early. You need a pHd in burgerology to order it and when it does turn up the cheque is mixed up. I’m now with the Rat on this – it’s not great. We’re booked back in to the Days Inn at Mineral Wells and have a couple of storms to pique our interest on the way there, hopefully with some good lightning. A big CG flashes in front of us as we track east on US 377.

We turn onto the I20 and Rich is on the left of the van which will get the best view. I wait for the first “fantastic”. There are zillions of flashes, I’m happy that Rich has a good view. You can’t appreciate how often (every couple of seconds) and how relentless (hours) the lightning is. It’s stunning.  I crack on with this blog and start sorting photos so I’m not arsing about when we get to the hotel. We’ll have had 8 hours of actual chasing from 3 p.m. never mind the trip to target.  We won’t be in until well after 12.

Four straight days of top storm chasing, including tornado warned cells on three days including today. They’re rubbish these 2% days aren’t they? ;o)

Total Miles: 432                              

                                  

Day 3 - EVERYTHING is bigger in Texas...

I’m 3 minutes late for the morning departure and get the bird. Four paranoid checks of the room and I still feel like I’ve left something behind.

After yesterday’s epic day I wake up in the Days Inn in Paris, Texas. The power flash of last night knocked out the electricity in Paris and did for the internet.  That’s wrecked Skype, Facebook and more importantly this blog. I’m well and truly off the grid and behind schedule.

The weather…can’t complain at all. Last week would have been depressingly desolate, so far this week we are 2 for 2 being on tornado warned storms. Today we have a long drive south and west via Dallas with a staging target of Brady where we’ll have a review which is yet more virgin territory for me. SPC has issued a 2% tornado risk which is not to be sniffed at with large hail being a major risk. Nice, that’ll do and the rest of the week has some potential. Looks like me a Rich picked the right week.

We head out to Nancy’s Café which has 4 and a half starts on Trip Adviser. My bacon and eggs are decent. Coffee is the order of the day as I can no longer be bothered to play the tea game.

The joy of being in Texas Is that they are pragmatic about getting around and 75MPH speed limits are a welcoming sight. We head south on US24 then south west towards Dallas. Another visit to Dealey Plaza might be on the cards. A virgin Haliwag brand Texas road map makes an appearance and today’s low tech trip tracking highlighter pen colour is orange.

The silver lining on a long trip on straight roads is an opportunity to catch up on the housekeeping. Bashing out this blog in the Caddy’s bucket seats is like doing it at a desk. Lots of typing to do, many photos to sort out for a decent blog selection ready for pasting into Blogspot when we strike Wi-FI.

Malcolm keeps us entertained with his time as a Quantas pilot, flying the Airbus double deck A380 prototype around France and being in charge of the inaugural flight from Australia to Los Angeles. He recounts a story of a very near miss with a Lufthansa plane in the 70’s over Tehran caused by a major air traffic control fubar.

A stop at Starbucks beckons and a sniff of Wi-Fi. The soil turns from the bright red of Oklahoma to the black of Texas. We hit roadworks and are in a jam. Some idiot tries to pull out into traffic aiming for a Darwin Award. We do indeed stop near Rockwall but the Wi-Fi conspiracy continues as I’m not paying to get connected for a 5 minute gulp of internet. I decline a coffee purchase in protest.

My God! A passenger bus! That’s the first none school bus I’ve seen in 6 trips and by coincidence has a huge tornado on the side. Rich, PHOTO!!!

We drive through Ray Hubbard Lake, at least on a road that bisects it and head into Dealey Plaza. Doesn’t feel like 2 years since I was here. Rich obliges with a comical blog moment as a gust of wind removes both his hat and sunglasses and they disappear down the street with Rich in hot pursuit, no doubt having a “bloody marvellous” moment. So enamoured has Rich been with the trip so far he’s (now somewhat self-consciously) uttering “Fantastic” at every opportunity. He will from now on be known as “Rich Fantastic Idle”; that’s not a bad moniker, its real origins will remain secret to you and me.

We take the usual photos, the grassy knoll, the Book Repository and the “X” that marks the spot. See 2014 entry for the full experience. I hadn’t realised that there was a second “X” nearer the Repository where the first shot was taken (near point blank range), the second being where the head shot impacted. We continue west and a have a Subway before heading south on US 281.

CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) by the dryline is up to 4500 JoulesKG^-1 and dew points at 74f. I can’t ever remember seeing parameters like that when I’ve been over here. El Reno had CAPE at 5500 according to Peter. There is a tremendous amount of energy in the atmosphere; unsurprising that the main threat today is giant hail and general precipitation.

We take a break at Comanche and visit Dairy Queen. A small chocolate shake has 540 kcal and a large 940. I have a medium which is unspecified…550? And guess what? No Wi-Fi. Grrr…

Looking to the west there are some turkey towers going up but no sign of sustained updrafts. We press on south. A storm has popped up north of Brady (good call) and we’re under a severe thunderstorm watch. We’re about to engage chase mode, it’s just after 3 and we hit some precip.

A number of severe warned cells form moving north east. We track them and are treated to some CG lightning and associated thunder claps. Our nearest storm is now at 41,000 feet and we keep stopping to avoid the hail core. There’s 2” hail in there somewhere, we get hit by some small stuff enough to make a characteristic ping when it hits the Caddy. We end up back in Comanche which looks a bit different that it did a couple of hours ago with the through road flowing like a river.

We’ve been retracing our steps for some time now, driving through incessant rain. The temperature has dropped from 96f to 67f. It’s a bit different from yesterday. Some light at the end of the tunnel; a cell to our south is right moving and has a 78 kt TVS marker i.e. some rotation. We’ll try and get in front of it.

We get to the intersection of US84 and let our storm roll over us. There’s some really good CGs, but we’re done and retrace our steps north through yet more heavy rain and up to to Hico for dinner at the internetless  Koffee Kup which is under mammatus clouds. The chicken nachos proved a meal too far. We continue north to Mineral Wells accompanied by spectacular lightning to stay in Peter’s favourite chasing hotel , the Days Inn. Hopefully it’ll have some Wi-Fi…and we do! Hours of work to get up to date :o(

Total miles:  535

Photos to follow

 

 

 

Day 2 - Another moderate day...

After a somewhat uncertain initial forecast the SPC has updated as follow:

All the ingredients are there for discrete supercells and tornadoes. Let's see how mother nature does the cooking...we're clearly heading south west.

So we’re up and running and heading west on the I40 and will head south at some point. There’s an area that wasn’t stirred up by yesterday’s storms and it’s progged for moist warm air later today. Initiation will hopefully be during late afternoon.

A quick visit to Walmart for supplies and I try and take advantage of the McDonalds Wi-Fi to Skype home. The stereotype of the pictures of the burgers not matching up to actuality (Falling Down anyone?) is mimicked by the Wi-Fi: promises much and doesn’t deliver. The visit to Starbucks this morning helped with yesterday’s 10% day. 10% DNL (Do Not Resuscitate) beer that is…Starbucks Wi-Fi is immaculate and a quick call to a hassled wife trying to get kids to cricket ensues. Welcome to my world…

As we set off we get a reminder of where we are as a B1 heavy bomber soars above us followed by a KC-135 radar plane; impressive pieces of kit.

Rich and I are in the back seats of the Esplanade today. They’re not much roomier than a Suburban but sufficiently so to make a difference. Sure enough we head south on US 270 east. I spend time sorting through a few of yesterday’s photos to find some better ones for the Day 1 blog entry.

We head to Ada for a stop then continue south to Durant where we have our picnic lunch in what goes for a park. It’s now 3 o’clock and we’re now under a tornado watch; the coolness of the park has now been replaced by moist warm air. We sit and wait, looks like towers are starting to form in the distance to our west.

And that’s as far as the blog got today as the fun really started at that point so what follows is my recollection from the next day and there’s lots to remember; hopefully I’ll not miss anything out

Update: This took until the end of day 5 to write up as there’s been so much happening.

The storm to our west becomes severe warned towering to 46,000 feet;  we moved to an overpass on the US70 which gave us a great vantage point – perfect timing as it was now tornado warned. Watching the storm Valerie and Aiden’s hair suddenly started to stand on end…our “canaries” gave us as a fright and we all piled into the Esplanade and the safety of its Faraday cage. Being struck by lightning is my no. 1 scary thought. The storm now had an ominous structure.  We get news that a storm 90 minutes to our north west had randomly sucked in an outflow boundary and exploded putting down a tornado that we later found had sadly caused a fatality.

The National Weather Service automatically sends messages to mobile phones in warned areas. All our phones are constantly going off as tornado and flash flood warnings come in. They make you jump.

We left our vantage point and dropped south on SR78 towards Albany. The excitement in the SUV was palpable. We were on an A list chase – stop, photograph, move, repeat, the huge Esplanade occasionally twitching on the wet roads.  We headed towards Bokchito and passed a serious car crash with emergency services in attendance, presumably weather related. As we approached Bokchito hailstones were apparent on the roadside getting larger as we advanced until they were tennis ball sized. The damage they had done was obvious, trees battered, a hole in the roof of a house now covered by a tarpaulin and the windscreens of several parked trucks smashed. We stop and collect some for photos. No one told me I had horrendous “hat hair” as I posed for a quick photo; I can’t but help taking a particularly big example as a souvenier.  Someone must have nicked it as it was nowhere to be seen in the morning…

There was a line of about 5 tornado warned storms. We had to keep stopping to wait for hail cores to pass in front of us not wishing to end up with a chase ending smashed vehicle.  Our storm was weakening; we stopped momentarily by a tornado siren, the sheer noise and context makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. We moved off to get one of the other tornado warned storms factoring in the Red River Texas boundary which separated us from the most southerly storm; you need a bridge for that. We stopped at an ultra grotty truck stop selling all manner of second hand junk including, ironically, an anvil. I won’t get that on my carry-on luggage…

We headed south through rain down SR109 before catching the sunset. The skies were full of mammatus and at this time in the evening there is hardly a more impressive sight. The 16-35mm lens comes into its own. I know I have a pile of “keepers”.

We head towards Paris, Texas and reports of more funnels and a tornado come in. We see green power flashes as some beast in the darkness puts paid to power lines.

Finally we reach Paris, Texas and try to check into the Days Inn. The power flashes had knocked out all the electricity and the hotel’s systems had not yet recovered making check in a non-starter so we trudged off to Dairy Queen which is just about open. The roads are torrents of water and these temporary rivers look like they’ll flow forever there’s been so much rain. A smidgeon of Wi-Fi allows for a quick Facebook update

We eventually get checked in to the hotel but the internet is down.  My room is humongous. The various camera, phone and laptop batteries get charged and the photos get dumped onto my portable hard drive. The lack of Wi-Fi is actually a Godsend as my indenture to the blog gets some relief; I’m shattered, it’s nearly midnight and we’re leaving for south west Texas at 7 a.m. tomorrow. I’ll right it up in the Caddy which didn’t happen. FANTASTIC DAY.  Bed.

Total miles: 331