Today was another marginal chase day. During the morning briefing, we learned that we would be targeting the eastern Texas panhandle for the remote potential of supercells and even more remote possibility of a tornado. Personally, I felt that this day presented no real threat for even a supercell, since the previous day’s NAM suggested that no instability would form whatsoever. However, since I slept well last night, my mood today was slightly better than yesterday. Though I still thought the setup looked sub-marginal, I was slightly keener on chasing.
At any rate, we left Amarillo a bit after noon (after a brief stop at Wal-Mart and Best Buy). We arrived at our initial target of Clarendon, Texas a few minutes after 1 p.m. After eating a little ice cream at the local Dairy Queen, we ventured just outside of town to watch the clouds. After a little while, towering cumulus began to bubble to our southeast. The FC decided it was time to reposition. We targeted the town of Estelline, Texas.
Just north of Estelline, we watched several dust devils in nearby fields; a few of them were quite strong. At the same time, towering cumulus reached higher and higher into the sky. One of them in particular had a large base, and it began to produce light rain over us. This cell eventually took off, and it began to show the signs of becoming a supercell. For some reason, though, the cap began to “eat” the cell. The updraft became smaller in diameter, and the base began to take on a laminar appearance -- both signs of a weakening storm.We repositioned further east into (YAY!) Oklahoma. At Hollis, the FCs deliberated about whether or not to target another storm in Roger Mills County. The storm in question appeared to be tracking along an old outflow boundary. The main concerns were moving away from the original target area in the eastern Texas panhandle, and the potentially stable air east of the outflow boundary. For this reason, there was some disagreement among the principal investigators about which storm to target. Eventually, however, the PIs decided that we would target the Roger Mills storm. Personally, I was quite relieved, since I believed the target storm had better potential to produce a tornado (it seemed to be propagating on an outflow boundary). From a ways off, the storm looked quite impressive. New updraft towers fed the storm from the southwest. The presentation on the WSR-8D at Frederick continued to look better and better. At one point, I was actually beginning to think that the storm might produce a tornado – and that, before we got there! Well, when we arrived (near Rocky, Oklahoma), the storm definitely looked like a supercell: the updraft was striated, inflow bands came into the storm from the east, and a pronounced lowering was centered beneath it all. Just as we got in position, however, the same thing that happened to the previous target cell began to happen to the new cell. The base shrank as it became more laminar in appearance. Uh oh. And so it was, that at the very moment V2 seemed to have found a decent storm, it died on us. But never fear! A new storm started going crazy in the eastern Texas panhandle – our target area all along!
We began to race back to the northwest toward this new cell. I bet you can guess what happened next! Yup, you guessed right. We killed the storm – again. I guess V2 generates a lot of subsidence. *shrug*Near Sweetwater, Oklahoma, we spent some time taking pictures of a beautiful sunset. It was a fine consolation prize to an exciting but somewhat disappointing day.
Developing storm north of Childress, Texas.
Supercell near Sentinel, Oklahoma.
