Month: May 2010

14 May

May 14, 2010 – Southwest Texas

After a long day of travel from Wichita, KS to Midland, TX and mostly sunny skies, I was ready to do some storm chasing again.  SPC has Southwest Texas tagged as a slight risk for severe weather this day.  A stationary front was positioned across southern New Mexico and Central Texas and an outflow boundary was positioned from south central Texas back to the northwest where it intersected the stationary front near San Angelo.   Elevated storms were already firing in New Mexico, and more were expected to develop in an even more unstable air mass over southwestern Texas that was punctuated by CAPE values approaching 3,000 J/kg.

Read more
12 May

May 12, 2010 – Northern Oklahoma

I wasn’t sure what to think of this day.  It appeared that storm motion was going to be nearly parallel to the boundary that was supposed to trigger the storms in the evening.  That meant there wouldn’t be much of a window for isolated supercells to plod along.  Anyway, I decided to drop down from Wichita into Northern Oklahoma.  Left Wichita at around 12pm.  I was temporarily distracted by the minor storms that popped up southwest of Wichita shortly after I left town.  They popped up rather quickly, but died just as fast.  After I finished being distracted by shiny objects, I continued south into Oklahoma.

Read more
11 May

May 11, 2010 – Western Oklahoma

Figured the day before was as good as this trip was going to get.  They say the average chase success happens once every seven chases.  Today the initial chase target was Lawton, OK.  The forecast for the day had moist air advecting in quickly from the south bringing CAPE values in the area up to 4,000 J/Kg.  The big worry was the lack of lift from the dryline, but also a pretty stout capping inversion that might prevent storms from firing at all.  In hindsight, the warm front that was across the area was going to play further north than Lawton, providing the directional shear to fire up some nice supercells in the northwest part of the state.  Had I realized that earlier, I might have been in position for the Woodward storm later that day before it turned dark.

Read more
10 May

May 10, 2010 – Multi-vortex tornado near Wakita, OK

My chase vacation was originally scheduled to start May 6th, however for a couple of days everyone was talking about a huge severe weather outbreak at the beginning of the following week.  I decided to shift my vacation so I could jump right in on Monday the 10th.  I left Michigan on the 8th, spent the night in Iowa, then drove to Wichita, KS on the 9th.  My original chase target was Enid, OK, but I was tired of driving, wimped out and stayed in Wichita.

The 10th rolls around and the Storm Prediction Center had upgraded eastern Oklahoma to high risk.  Their outlook talked about strong, violent tornadoes being likely.  The weather in Wichita when I awoke was low 50s, the MCS from the night before left a cloud shield over much of the state and it was even foggy.  Concerned with the cloud cover hanging around leading to lower instability, I decided Wichita might be too far north, despite the SPC saying the clouds would clear rapidly and instability would skyrocket.

Read more