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

 

 

 

 

Day 1b - Do you think that we'll see Tim..?

Tim was Rich’s seat mate on the flight to Oklahoma City and lived in Enid. As per this morning’s entry, tornado potential looks good in north west Oklahoma and south central Kansas so we’re off to Enid, north west of Oklahoma City. We go through the Wall-Mart/Starbucks routine and head north.

There’s a minor storm to our west, some light rain and some cloud to ground lightning. We end up in Meadowlake Park and eat our picnic. No sign of Tim. SPC has reassessed the 10% tornado area and split it into discrete north and south areas, so which one do we choose? After some deliberation we decide to head south west and retrace our steps.

We continue south down US81, west on 51, south at Canton down 58, 33 then on to US183. At around 15:00 we’re under a tornado watch. Initiation will hopefully be in an hour or two. We arrive at Clinton for a quick stop and review. No Trump supporters here…

We head south on US183 and storms are firing to our south west and they are heading north east by east at about 25mph. The cap has been breached and we are treated to some spectacular convection. This issue we have now is that we are on the wrong side of the storms and need to thread our way between them to try and get south and east in order to get in front of them. Easier said than done. We head south 54 on then east on 19. The road is slow and stair steps south east and we are hit by some blinding precipitation as we head through the scenic Wichita Mountains…a storm to our left and a storm to our right. The one to our south, the tale end Charlie is strengthening.

I ate my lucky apple pie (sticky yuk) and sure enough the storm becomes tornado warned. We head south into Lawton and reports come in of serious wind damage. Soon enough, travelling east on 7 we see a telegraph pole snapped in half. Reports had also come in of a couple of brief tornadoes from this storm and persistent funnels  which were invisible from our location. We continued east as the storm remained tornado warned; it briefly threatened to reorganise watched intently by the many converging chasers and worried locals alike.

Shortly after the day's heating is done and our storm fell apart; after a quick stop at Arby’s in Chickasha and some mammatus clouds at sunset we’re off back to the Wyndham Gardens in Oklahoma City where the day started this morning. That's one BIG circle. Rich dragged me into the bar...had something called DNS...turns out it stands for Do Not Resuscitate...ooops 10%... Tomorrow looks decent with another moderate day. Watch this space...

Total miles:  474

 

 

 

Day1a - under starter's orders...

There was a spectacularly photogenic tornado in Wray, north eastern Colorado yesterday evening with the world's supply of photos and videos posted including a very cool 360 degree video by Reed Timmer.  We were in our hotel in OKC resting up and getting ready to chase. The hotel was filling up with a pile of British "holiday" makers out on their first storm chasing trip. How things have changed in 10 years, glad I'm not on one of these commercial tours. Well, good to luck them, they've ponied up the money and looking to make some hay.

I'm still feeling dull headed (no really) but that should pass by tomorrow. I'm wide awake at 5a.m. so chuck a coffee down, check the SPC (Storm Prediction Centre) outlook, chuck something on facebook and fire up the laptop.

I read an interesting article about early May on the Plains being either feast or famine. If famine then not seeing (for good reasons) last night's tornado could prove irksome. Good thing it's looking like feast!

The SPC is showing enhanced risk today (central Kansas, NW Oklahoma), enhanced risk tomorrow (eastern Oklahoma, NE Texas, SW Missouri, western and central Arkansas) and severe for Wednesday (Missouri, western Illinois). Today has a 10% tornado risk (woohoo!) though there is some hand wringing about moisture levels and that a strong capping inversion may come into play...but come on, three severe days out of four at the start of the tour,  seriously you couldn't wish for better.

We'll be reviewing today's target shortly (after ingesting a whole pile of porcine products) , then no doubt we'll get a Starbucks and load up with lunch and van snacks at the ever fun Wall-Mart.

I did see something last night of predictions of very severe weather over the OKC metro area this evening. With a chaser convergence likely, loads of newbies out on tours and no doubt plenty of Yahoos "out for a look" the major risk today is traffic with El Reno from 2013 in the back of everyone's minds.

I got a first look at our pimped ride last night. A black 6.2 litre V8 Cadillac Esplanade ESV with bucket seats. That'll do nicely thanks Peter ;o)

Photos in order: Caddy, four day outlook, today's tornado risk, tomorrow's enhanced storm risk, Wednesday's severe outlook.

We'll see what happens. Stay tuned.

Day 0 - Well we got here in the end...

It's a long and tiring journey to Oklahoma City. With the overnight stop in Manchester the door to door time was around 32 hours. Well we're here now and Day 1 looks like a corker, more on that later.

My worries about Rich not providing sufficient comical blog material have thankfully proved to have been unfounded. Things started predictably enough; a stop in McDonalds for some junk, an uneventful check in and a few pints of Guinness before bed.

The fun starts the next day as Rich leaves filling out the overly complex car parking form to the last minute, finds out he's parked in the completely wrong place and then can't find his wallet. Panic! Meanwhile the queue for the courtesy bus is swelled by dozens of people off to the Invictus Games in Orlando. Eventually we get to the airport, get checked in (despite Rich's carry on bag being taken away for "special treatment" for 20 minutes) and the flight is on time.

Arriving in Atlanta (neither of us could sleep despite some Blue Sapphire and red wine - not together, that would be just wrong)) and things go fairly smoothly (quite unlike last time I was there) apart from the humongous queue to get through passport control. Having been Stateside before I get in the "fast track" ESTA queue while Rich is left to fend for himself with the masses.

I wait and wait at baggage reclaim then wait some more. A feeling of disquiet descends and my mind is filled with disconcerting images of Rich and long black rubber gloves...Finally, 75 minutes after landing Rich eventually turns up and his gait appears uncompromised by latex...Apparently a Chinese lady keeled over right in from of him and proceedings were held up until she was carted off. Predictably, Rich fails to get through the carry on bag screening and gets yet more "special treatment". My new Albatross moniker for Rich goes down like a lead balloon and sadly my superior seasoned traveller persona is fatally damaged as I yomp confidently down an up escalator. Do'h!

An uneventful flight to Oklahoma City followed (helped by a few pints of exceedingly expensive Samuel Adams Lager) and I get chatting to a nice young lady called Hillary who turns out to be a chase partner of TV storm chaser Gabe Garfield. Small world.

We meet up with Peter and Malcolm (the tick incident gets another outing) and after a couple or three bottles of Shiner Bock it's off to bed. Rich follows, not before he's persuaded the shuttle bus to take him to McDonalds...

Predictably I'm wide awake at 5:00 as my body thinks it's more like 11. Up showered and sorted it's time to review the internet. Top of the list is the final game of the football (soccer...) season in the Championship. Middlesbrough must not lose to Brighton at the Riverside to get promoted to the Premier League and an extra £170m in TV money. Rich and I arrive at breakfast with 15 minutes to go and the score at 1-1 with Brighton down to ten men. They hold on and they're up! A quick call home finds that Skype has dramatically improved from previous years

During the course of today the SPC outlook has been updated. Today (Saturday) has a 5% tornado risk in the north east of Colorado. Bearing in mind everyone's tired, the ladies (Valerie and Aiden) have yet to arrive and that would be a fair drive, thoughts of a cheeky extra shakedown chase day are shelved.

Back to tomorrow and things are looking very promising, though as usual there's the caveat of "it might not pan out". A couple of Tuesday's ago a massive day ended up as a big, messy squall line.

Rich and I get ready to go for a Subway, avoiding the temptation of Sonic Burger. As we do the SPC upgrade tomorrow's outlook from "Enhanced" to "Moderate" which is the second highest rating, and a 45% chance of severe weather within a 25 mile radius of the bulls eye being western Oklahoma and central Kansas. Sweet!

The risk includes supercells capable of producing very large hail (2" plus) and a few tornadoes. Pretty much all you could have asked for on day 1 of a storm chasing vacation :o)

We'll be off for dinner somewhere local at 7:30. Stay posted!

 

10 years on and still going strong...

I never imagined when I was planning my first trip in 2006 as a total newbie that I would be coming back for my 6th tour 10 years on. Negotiations are underway to make this an annual undertaking rather than the biennial junket that it is at the moment. Suffice to say negotiations are not going well "incompatible with domestic bliss"...

This year I'm back again with Peter Wharton and Stormgroupchasers, the website is here:

http://www.stormgroupchasers.com

The ethos of this group suits me. Just the 6 of us doing what we like best; storm chasing, eating nice food, photographing and seeing interesting Americana, often off the beaten track. No being herded with 20 odd newbies. Don't get me wrong I've met some great people on "commercial" tours but also a few deeply strange individuals; if you get stuck with one of those it can put a real downer on proceedings. Liam Smith had a corker a few years ago.

Following my "constructive feedback" from last time out (or whinging from the back seat as it's now been characterised), Peter has rented a Cadillac Escalade ESV. This thing looks HUGE, about 19 feet long and propelled by a 6.2 litre V8. I'm impressed and a whinge free trip looks on the cards!

This year I'm bringing an old mate of mine, Mr Richard "Rich/Ritchie" Idle. Rich finally broke his 30 year flying phobia last summer with a trip Down Under. It's not the flying it's the crashing you have to be worried about...I'm under orders from my 2010 travelling companion, Mark "Ratty" Hetherington to torture poor Rich in this blog as I may have done 6 years ago...I'm somehow doubting I'll have anywhere near as much material as back then.

Packing wise I've reduced the amount of "stuff" and have purchased a smaller suitcase but will still be taking 2 DSLRS. Always take a 2nd camera on these trips; changing lenses in stormy weather is fraught with peril and if your sole camera packs in (I know a chaser this happened to) the whole photography vibe goes out of the window as does any chance of adorning your house with humongous tornado prints. This years kit:

• Main camera: Nikon D800 (does everything brilliantly and never lets me down)
• Sigma 24-105 f4 "Art" lens (superb quality but lacks weather sealing. Hmmm...)
• Nikon 16-35 f4 (Supercell friendly wide zoom)
• Samyang 14mm superwide or Nikon 20 f1.8 (if I can fit it in)
• Nikon D610 & 70-200 f4 zoom plus 1.4 TC (back up camera and a "reach" option
• iPhone 6s (brilliant camera, Facebook friendly)
• Panasonic fz1000 - mainly for it's excellent 4k video capability
• Manfrotto 4 section carbon fibre tripod and Kirk BH3 ball head

Having said "never again" to Atlanta Hartsfield, sadly flights to Oklahoma City via Chicago didn't suit so it's back to the Deep South, hopefully without the random chaos of last time. We'll overnight in Manchester and fly out in the morning. I wonder if we'll have enough gas left in the tank for a cheeky visit to the Cowboy Club next door to the hotel in OKC? We shall see.

Well it was in there somewhere: TORNADO!

Ok, let me take you back to Day 1 of this tour, Sunday 11th May. The Big Day (pretty much the only day!), 10% tornado risk issued by the Storm Prediction Centre and everything firing as hoped apart from one thing: this set up produced HP supercells with any tornadoes rain wrapped in rain and out of view unless you have a tank or are bordering on the reckless.

In 2010 a tornado (no. 5) only became apparent later that evening when it was spotted on a photograph, a pale white affair that went unnoticed at the time. With all the excitement at the time there was no need for an inquest as to how we'd missed it, heck we'd already seen some amazing tornadoes that day, so what?

On this occasion there was much disappointment; if we'd been chasing a classic supercell it's highly likely we'd have seen 3 or 4 tornadoes up to EF3 and apparently a mile and a half across. At the time there was much "can you see anything?", "what's that?", "I thought I saw something" and so on. The frustrating thing was that you knew exactly where the tornado should be, there was a classic hook on radar and the "bolder" chasers had already called it in travelling north east by east. We looked and could't make out anything with any certainty.  We all agreed to scan through our many photos at some point to see if anything showed up, more in hope than expectation.

Eventually, I scan through all my photos. One by one, blow them up to 100%, add an exaggerated "S" curve to boost contrast and then onto the next.

The shot of the radar shows a very impressive hook. We're the circle to the south east of the hook, so we were all looking to the north west where we knew a tornado would be. The second photo is taken two and a half minutes later looking north west.

When looking into the murk we clearly weren't  thinking big enough. The number of times I've read chase accounts where the tornado was so big it just looked like a big storm or cloud. In this case the same must have been true, as dead centre, as clear as day is a dirty great WEDGE TORNADO!!! Also apparent is a large horizontal suction vortice on the eastern edge. In our feeble defence the image was fleeting as by the next frame the tornado had once again been absorbed into the curtains of rain.

Rather annoyingly this is is the only photo in the series which is not in sharp focus which is a pain, so no large prints can be made. Still there it is, tornado no. 6 on my all time list. Can't complain.