February 24, 2000

Date: 2/24/00
Partners: Danny Cheresnick(driver), Ilene Cooper and April Strout
Miles: 359.5 miles
Summary: A Moderate risk day where storms didn't fire until late. We could have gone after the lightning, but decided not too since storms were moving fast away from us and we all had some homework we should be working on.
The Chase: There was a moderate risk over W OK and N TX. Our target area was either north, somewhere east of Amarillo, Texas near the OK/TX border or south between Altus and Childress. Earlier in the day, I had defended the northward route, but I was in the minority. So, trusting SPC and many other more experienced meteorologists I went south. We left Botie's acroos from Sarkey's at 1:53PM. At 2:18 I left the other two cars we were following because I wanted to go down I-44 as opposed to east on I-40 and then south. At 3:53PM a PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) Tornado Watch was issued from roughly Abilene, Texas to Gage, Oklahoma. Well, we arrived at Altus, Oklahoma at 4:15PM and stopped at the McDonald's there. They have TV's with the weather channel, so we stopped for a bit. After eating my McNuggets and having an ice cream cone and seeing no good news on the weather channel except them repeating the PDS watch we decided to call back to the map room. I talked with Bill Martin. I quickly lost faith in this chase, but we waited still since we were in as good of a spot as anyone really. I liked our location, the weather just wasn't cooperating. Another call to Bill at 5:45PM was the first we heard about the initition or storms up E of Amarillo. We quickly left Altus at 5:56PM and headed northward on 283. The storm was fairly new, and getting strong quickly according to Bill. Hovever, with only about 45 minutes left where we could possibly see the storm, we didn't have much hope, especially since the storm motion was to the NNE. We arrived at Sayre, Oklahoma on I-40 and called Bill one final time. The storms were in a bit of a line from Pampa, Texas to Shattuck, Oklahoma moving NNE again. We then called it a night since we had some homework still to do. We stopped at Elk City, Okalhoam for food on the way back at 7:25 PM. I got back to my apartment at 10:29 PM.

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