February 8th, 2001

Date: 2/8/01
Parthers: Myself(driver), Keith Brown and Kevin Scharfenberg
Miles: 520
Summary: First potential day of 2001. We went SW to start, and wandered a bit from there.
The Chase: First 60+ dewpoints of the year along with a strong system coming through made for a nice potential chase day. Although expectations weren't the highest, we had the time, so it was worth a trip. Basically we went from Norman to Chickasha, Lawton, Wichita Falls, Vernon, Paducah, Childress, Memphis, Hollis, Altus, Lawton, Chickasha, to Norman. Storms fired up in eastern NM, but had very little eastward progression to them. We pretty much hung out in Western North Texas hoping the system would come around and force the convection eastward. It soon became apparent this wouldn't happen until after dark, so we stopped at Childress at K-Bob's steakhouse for dinner. That was a good point, we had never been to a K-Bob's before, and it was good. Good food, not expensive, we learned something on this trip. A quick call to Norman told us there was a cell near Clarendon. We headed towards it hoping for some nice lightning. When we got to Memphis, we saw a strong northerly wind, we had just crossed the cold front. We then decided to head back eastward into Oklahoma, and untimately Norman. Just east of Memphis we did catch a couple lightning flashes to our north from the elevated storms. . After stopping to see those for a couple minutes, we continuesd back. The other highlight occured then. As we crossed back into the warm sector, all the windows on the car instantly fogged over. It took a second to realize what had happened, since it startled us at first. That was very cool. A quick stop at McDonald's in Altus for ice cream and radar showed us we were too far north for the best storms, so we decided to get back at a reasonable hour. WE arrived back in Norman with 10 minutes of the frontal passage, and then we got to watch the storms from home. There were some gusts in the 40-50mph range, and heavy rain. Overall, it was a fun little chase to start the year with, nice to have a test run for the real season later on.


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