Day 2 - Mites up, tights down…

After yesterday’s excitement we were ready for a good night’s sleep at a sort of chalet style Super 8 at Sonora, Texas which was mostly accomplished despite Rory’s bear like snoring. We are packed and ready to go by 9 and went for a nice, leisurely traditional breakfast at Lala’s Mexican Restaurant in Sonora…An English traditional breakfast of bacon and eggs. Small place, good service.

Although the SPC upgraded the forecast to a slight risk down the south west edge of Texas this morning there’s a less than 2% tornado risk and things in the near term look somewhat lean with an Omega blocking pattern. This is supposed to be a storm killer, but so was the one from a few weeks ago that still allowed for plenty of chase worthy storms. I’m sure it’s not as bad as it looks.

With some time to kill and a chase target still to coalesce we visited the Caverns of Sonora. This is the second time I’ve been (see 2016) but I still thoroughly enjoyed the nearly 2 hour guided tour despite the high humidity and poor air quality down there. Highly recommended though not cheap having a $56 price tag for the two of us.

Lunch was at a quaint little place hidden away in a back street residential area of Ozona, Destiny’s Grill. I couldn’t take the risk of refried beans so had the grilled chicken sandwich. Again, small place, nice service.

Today we are targeting an outflow boundary left over from yesterday’s storms that is sagging southwards meeting moist air from the south. A few small storms in the area appeared and fluffed out, perhaps with the heat of the day we’ll get something later; there is plenty of moisture about. We head north through Eldorado on the US277 in the direction of San Angelo where we will be staying tonight. In an attempt to stave off the tiredness after yesterday I chug a 5 hour energy drink. Rory sips his reasoning that each sip still had 2000% RDA of whatever. We'll do some touristy things in San Angelo and see what, if anything happens.

We arrive in San Angelo and have a wander round the historic quarter in 31c heat and a small park with lily ponds. A couple of storms to our east have gone severe warned but are too far away so we have a punt on one that has bubbled up 30 minutes to our south and head off on US67 and stop at Merzton to have a look at some mammatus and then south on Ranch Road 915 towards Eldorado where a cell has gone severe warned. By the time we get there the lack of any shear is evident as “up it went, down it went” and we punch through the "core" of some light rain. Time to do an about turn at Eldorado and head back north on US277 to San Angelo for a date with a steak at the Texas Roadhouse and hopefully our first beer of the trip. And just as we thought that was that there's a nice display of mammatus on the way.

The SPC talked about storms later this evening so we may get to watch some lightning from the hotel. The Texas Roadhouse New York Strip steak was excellent, the only beer on draught that I knew had "Lite" in the title so we got some Mexican lager. Port and storm. The mashed potato had skin in it, presumably from the potato. Wrong. We stopped off for some Shiner Bock (chasing must do) and checked into the Hawthorne Suites - great room, massive fridge, an American take on the Fez and a WW1 helmet and some reading material...cool.

Total miles: 256

Day 1 - U Snuff Em I Stuff Em…

We’re up early for a 07:30 departure with the prospect of a big day ahead.

We both had sufficient sleep balancing the clanking of the air conditioning with the need to stay cool. Rory’s new trick for the night was a couple of episodes of sleep walking involving the redistribution of his ear plugs around the room. As I got up I was convinced he’d disappeared and was half way down the road but I eventually found him wrapped up somewhere in the bedding. The MacBook has come back to life and has charged up, no problem. Go figure, wind generated electricity?

We had a decent breakfast at the Dawson’s Family Restaurant in Childress. Welcome to US breakfasts Rory, that pile of shaggy stuff are hash browns and the flat round things are sausages. The mugs we were drinking coffee from were sponsored by a local taxidermist…

Today’s forecast from the SPC looks promising with an extended enhanced risk (3 of 5) and a 5% tornado chance. As a reminder, this is a 5% chance of seeing a tornado within a 25 mile radius. Doesn’t sound much but as we’re mobile we can dramatically reign in those odds. There’s also a 30% hatched risk for hail 1” or larger. Summary is “…very large hail, severe gusts and a couple of tornadoes…”. Conditions are positive for discrete supercells with possible CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) of up to 4000 J/KG, which is high. El Reno in 2013 was 5500 by comparison. CAPE is the untapped energy available to a parcel of air to be lifted, including the lapse rate (the temperature gradient with height i.e. the rate the atmosphere cools, the faster the better) and the amount of moisture available. As a parcel of air is lifted it cools adiabatically as the pressure drops with height and gets to the point where it can no longer hold on to its moisture. This then condenses and gives out latent heat providing yet more lifting energy. The SPC talks about hail up to 3”, known as “gorilla hail” in some circles…Later in the evening there is potential for storms to aggregate and form a bow echo with potential for gusts in excess of 65 knots. Capping will be decently strong; warm air aloft advecting from the western High Plains acting as in inverted layer (warm above cool) forms a lid suppressing convection. When that is eroded by colder air above, and provided there is sufficient energy from below then the cap will break leading to explosive convection. BOOM!!!

We’re heading south on the US83 one of the great roads of the USA which extends from the Texas coast all the way to the Canadian border. Familiar territory, flat topography and little in the way of trees; good for chasing. We head through Paducah towards the southern area of the risk where there is more potential. Dew points (indicative of moisture) are in the high 60’s Fahrenheit (good) and wind shear is decent too. We head into Aspermont for a pit stop and to get some 5 hour energy drinks replete with 20833% of your RDA of vitamin B12. No, seriously. There’s also a pile of other stimulants available that we’re not sure would be legal in the UK; we’ll work our way up slowly…

We turn off south west onto Highway 610 where we’ll pick up the I20 interstate towards Midland which will be new territory for me. We pass through Rotan with the usual cool, old buildings with an ancient cinema that’s looks ready to premier Gone with the Wind. A crop duster flies overhead and the sun is out. We head towards Snyder and I’ve now broken out the Hallwag 1:1000,000 map; this turns out is from a previous trip and is covered with highlighter pen which I always use to record where we went; or I could rely on the Street Atlas on Peter’s laptop. But nah, it’s tradition.

At this point I’m going to attempt to upload this morning’s part of the blog from the Suburban as we travel with the rest later. Blimey it worked! The rest to follow.

We continue south west onto the I20 passing various gun shops and ranges. Mile long trains appear as do cacti as the ground becomes more arid and nodding donkeys are everywhere, slowly sucking oil out of the ground; they suck until the hole is dry then wait until oil oozes back and start sucking again. More substantial oil wells and refineries appear. 

We stop at Stanton for a a footlong Subway club with three weeks RDA of meat. To our north is Tarzan named after…Tarzan for no other reason than the postmaster read the books in the 1920’s and needed to call the town something. It’s now 13:00 and we are under a tornado watch; a severe warned storm has popped up way to our south west heading inexorably towards Crane which is today’s target, south of Odessa named after Odesa in the Ukraine as the local landscape apparently resembles the Steppe.

The storm has gone tornado warned at 13:20 and we are heading south from Odessa to intercept. We need to get south of it and it will be close; we are committed and it’s game on…chase mode engaged!

We pass through Crane heading south. This storm now has a distinct hook and inflow notch, and a tornado has been reported with baseball sized hail, however it is no longer moving north east but has swung round 90 degrees and is now heading south east and away from us. A quick stop at McCamey (home to the Badgers) to discuss options. We take the south route on Highway 305 trying to get ahead of this thing. Our San Angelo hotel for tonight is binned in favour of the Super 8 at Sonora. After losing its tornado warning a new one is issued and Rory spots numerous CGs. Heading to Sheffield with a 3.25” hail marker on radar. A huge well defined anvil is overhead. It’s 14:30…bloody hell half the day is left…

We stop near Iraan for a couple of photos. This is a monster storm with a massive sharply defined anvil and numerous CGs all around us. Time to go. We scoot east on the I10 then drop south on Highway 349 onto the Stockton Plateau and are rewarded with stunningly rugged topography with craggy hills and a rolling valley beneath us. I eventually remember to turn on the location marker on the RadarScope app. D'oh!

It’s our first time out the vehicle as we watch this storm roll towards us, plenty of photos taken with CG lightning and a low hanging wall cloud. Is that a white low contrast tornado? Perhaps not. It’s bug spray time so we both get a liberal covering. Eventually there is a new circulation to the west so we move on, have another stop and yet more photos. There are several other chasers on the scene.

We head south to Sanderson for fuel which is only 20 miles or so from Mexico and are soon on our way south east…or are we…a cell has popped up to our south which is crossing the road blocking our path We get up close to it and the rain is torrential, followed by a twang of hail on the roof. And wow...the brightest rainbow I've ever seen and it looks like you could reach out and touch it. Time to retreat back to Sanderson accompanied by some more substantial twanging.

We retrace our steps yet again heading east of Sanderson past the shop selling eclectic metal "artwork". We get closer to the storm which is now hugging the road ahead almost perfectly. We're close to Mexico now and pass a parked up Border Patrol vehicle. A quick stop at the side of the road to grab some large hail just as another giant rainbow straddles the road. Wow. Then more wow...the storm in front of goes tornado warned and it's now the main show. Our phones are constantly getting warning alarms from the National Weather Service as we pass through Dryden. We're now crawling along behind this storm as it belligerently tracks along the road ahead of us...and there is a tornado on the ground in there somewhere with tennis ball size hail!

We progress a little as the rain gets more intense, then there's a ping of hail on the roof. We stop and wait. Then repeat multiple times driving through incessant torrential rain accompanied by regular bouts of cloud to ground lighting. The tornado warning polygon stops at the Mexican border, the NWS takes no responsibility for those south of the border and as it happens that's where the tornado has gone. The tornado warning is lifted but the previous cell now to our north east has regained its warning. We are going to have to thread our way through these storms to our hotel which, on a good day is over two hours drive away. We approach Langtry of Judge Roy Bean fame surrounded by constant booming thunder which is only half a mile or do from the border. We stop...again...then wow again...mammatus clouds to our left. Stunning. A train passes by to our left, over a mile in length.

Rory finally tries a Hershey Bar which has been sat in his bag since yesterday. Yep, he finds it reassuringly revolting so I opened a bad of Skittles, took a large mouthful and went to give him some. Yikes I'd accidentally bought the sour version. That's one each then.

We eventually get to Cornstock and head north to Sonora navigating huge lakes on the road and literally dozens of small deer, racoons and armadillos whose entire purpose in life appeared to be a desire to transition to road kill...The lightning display tonight has been immense and continued all the way home.

We arrived at the hotel and for various reasons needed to upgrade our room from one king bed to one with two beds. Thankfully, and after the receptionist had woken up the manager it was sorted out.

We are knackered, 16 hours on the road. A stunning chase day. And I still have to download and sort the camera photos, all these so far are from the iPhone. 

Total miles: 639

Day 0 - No biscuits, gravy or bacon…

Contrary to popular opinion, I did not interrupt Rory’s deep slumber by snoring, in fact the reverse was true with a couple of episodes of “sleep talking” including …”yes I think we can do that today” waking me with a jolt.

Slept ok apart from that and was awake at 06:00 with the morning habit: a) Where am I and b) What’s the latest Storm Prediction Centre Outlook? The former is Oklahoma City and the latter looks decent initially, then less certain thereafter.

Today has a slight risk over north west Texas. We’re slightly behind the curve ball (this is a bonus day after all) as we need to pick up Jo Ann from the airport, sort the drivers insurance and then get on the road with a compromised initial target of Wichita Falls which is a couple of hours to our south west. We will head in that direction and see how we get on, in fact the updated tornado risk has drifted north east which helps our cause though the 5% tornado risk is out of reach, we'll play with the 2% north easterly area.

We’ll chill until 13:00 and hopefully will by then have digested the three item breakfast. Rory had cereal (probably a good choice), the OJ was missing in action and the plastic cutlery (complementing the paper plates) had to be prised from a special dispenser. So links sausage, scrambled egg and potatoes had to do.

Friday (tomorrow) and Saturday are spoken for as there will likely be severe weather in a similar area. Friday looks the best with a 5% tornado risk already in place (later upgraded from a slight to enhanced risk with a 30% hatched hail risk), Saturday looks probable too although the SPC has declined to put out a severe warning at this time due to some uncertainty. After that things look quiet synoptically but then so did last week which had repeated storm days. The last three or four days of the tour are slated to be active but that remains to be seen.

We check out and head off to Chili’s for a nice chicken salad then to the airport to pick up Jo Ann. We’ve got the usual Chevy Suburban which had 15 miles on the clock 30 days ago…times that now by 1000. 

It’s 14:30 and we’re on the road heading south west (I44) through Chichasha and on to Lawton. We head west on US62 to Altus and a large military airbase with serious numbers of C17 Globemasters, tankers and other hardware. No wonder they don’t have free healthcare quips Rory (defence of the Free World not withstanding). There’s also a pile of cool 50’s cold war missiles and air defence systems on display as well as the City of Altus, a B47 Stratojet strategic bomber. 

There’s lots of convection with early storms churning up the atmosphere which doesn’t augur well for daytime heating for later and stronger afternoon and evening storms. We have our first pit stop of the tour, head east towards Childress. It’s raining and Rory spots a couple of CGs. We go through Duke which has some big murals painted on the sides of buildings.

As we pass through Hollis there’s some interesting old buildings including the Busy Corner gas station. Having given up on storms it was off to Wheat’s Artisan Bakery for pizza and onward to the Super 8 for an early night. There’s a gas station across the street so perhaps a couple of beers before bed.

Rather irritatingly the MacBook Air which charged to 100% before we left home steadfastly refuses to charge with USA made electricity perhaps baulking at the whiff of coal. It’s currently on 64%. Hopefully a Walmart cheapo charger will fix the problem (we’ll see tomorrow) otherwise this blog will have to be done on the iPhone, shorter with phone cam pics only. This would be irritating in the extreme.

Total miles: 208