05.12.05 Floyd Co., TX Supercell
Storm reports encountered on the chase:
Chase Account
Kenny Tapp, Ben Baranowski, Aaron Kennedy and other graduate students from the OU School of Meteorology departed Norman at noon to head northwest toward our target area of Woodward, OK. I was with Ben and Kenny, in Kenny's gold Blazer. After a wifi check in Watonga, we quickly realized the clouds were socked in and we'd have to head back south to I-40 and toward Shamrock, TX to readjust. Once in Shamrock around 4pm we checked wifi once again at the infamous Best Western from the chaser convergence party from May 7th. We saw that the massive supercell east of Plainview, TX with a tornadic history was still going strong and there was clearing and nicely backed winds near its environment so we packed back into the caravan and jetted south on HW 83 toward Childress, TX.
The massive windmill farm in Weatherford, OK on the way west to Shamrock (3:08 pm)
Once in Childress, Aaron nabbed a radar image on his cell phone and I received a nowcast from my good friend from Creighton, Bill Taylor. I was hoping some of his luck would rub off on us and he saw two tornadoes on May 10th with the western IA supercell. We headed northwest on HW 287 to Estilline and west from there on HW 86 where we began to encounter some impressive mammatus from the supercell's anvil to the southwest.
Mammatus from the anvil as we neared Parnell, TX (5:49 pm)
As we neared Turkey, TX, the towers down in Lubbock that eventually dropped 6 to 10 tornadoes after dark near Ralls, TX were just breaking through the tropopause providing some beautiful photos looking off to the southwest as they took on their spaceship appearance.
(6:09 pm) (6:11 pm)
After receiving another nowcast from Bill we realized that the supercell to the west was accelerating and merging with the one to the east, creating a massive HP monster supercell that was warned for a tornado on the ground 9 miles east of Plainview, TX at 5:41 pm. Once in Turkey we headed south on HW 70, unknowing that the next tornado it dropped was on the ground northwest of White Plains at 6:17pm (NOAA Weather Radio is non-existant in this area of TX -- maybe they should do something about that!). South of Turkey we headed west on HW 97 to get to the promised land of the storm...turning on a dirt road around 6:35 pm to creep north toward the RFB. By 6:40 pm we had pulled over and found a decent wall cloud, but soon headed further east to get ahead of the storm and find better mesocyclone structure. Thanks to Kenny's brand new DeLorme GPS we were able to make it back to the paved HW 97 where we encountered the large group of chasers and researchers out on the storm. Here at 7pm we were able to watch in awe as the wall cloud passed over the Caprock!
The pictures taken around 7pm at the Caprock...2nd photo adjust for contrast, definitely would have been amazing to see one drop at this time
We then headed further east and north to catch up with the meso as the storm began to accelerate off to the northeast.
Nice rising motion evident in the scud but not quite a tornado (7:12 pm)
This is when things got interesting on the chase. Kenny's Delorme GPS was finding us great dirt roads to keep up with the storm due to the horrible road network. Unfortunately, after three or four great dirt roads, our next selection to head east turned out to be an overgrown 3 foot grassland area on the outskirts of a farmer's field. We weaved around and saw a bobcat (good thing we didn't stop to take video/photos there!), watched Aaron's little Saturn plow through the grass and prayed the road didn't dead end. After finally coming to a better dirt road we realized Kenny's right-rear tire was flat after nailing something, but there were four separate wall clouds lined up. According to my friend Eric Holthaus who was with Howie Bluestein's W-band radar, Josh Wurman said over the radio, "Wall clouds, all quadrants!". I had particular interest in some strong rising motions in one of the wall clouds and actually got a nice funnel cloud that can be made out in the photo below for 30 seconds. Visibility was getting worse at this time so the quality isn't the best, but it nearly dropped another tornado at these times (photos adjusted for contrast).
(7:28 pm) (7:36 pm)
After watching the wall clouds dissipate, we learned of new rotation near Turkey, but unfortunately Kenny's tire wouldn't allow us to go much further. After limping back to HW 97 we spent the next 20 minutes jacking up and changing the tire on his car. While doing this another wall cloud formed just to our north. The RFD sent cows mooing and running off just 100 yards from us, and the rising motions in it were impressive, but the backbuilding cell wouldn't produce anything substantial and pushed off to the east.
Kenny hunched down changing the tire on his Blazer (7:45 pm)
After completing the tire change shortly after 8pm we headed east to HW 70 to try to punch north to the circulation. After six miles and a large thump of a hailstone and howling RFD winds we realized we were heading straight into an impressive hail core, so we turned around and pretty much called it a night for tornado chasing as we went back south to Matador, TX. On the drive back northeast toward Childress for dinner, we were treated to one of the most amazing lightning shows ever as endless CG's and cloud flashes lit up the entire sky. We got into Childress around 9:30pm for a quick McDonald's dinner and headed back to Norman. We raced the KOCO chase SUV back to the Norman metro area on I-44 and returned into town around 1:30am to find that the OU parking nazis had towed my car. After Kenny graciously took me to the OUPD and dropped me off it was time to catch up on some sleep and prepare for Friday's action.
Overall it was a good chase, we did as well as could be expected after leaving Norman around noon. If we wouldn't have misjudged and gone north initially its possible we could've gotten onto the tornadoes. However, that may have been a blessing in disguise and numerous chasers had busted out windshields from the baseballs being tossed in the wrap-around of the monster tornado east of Plainview. Not to mention, this was our 2nd 14 hour chase day in a row, hopefully we can play a home game again soon haha.