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Storm Chase: May 07, 2008

Once again, we were presented with another marginal chase day with early morning convection (a.k.a. crapvection) and cloudiness. This seems to be the recurring theme this season. It was pouring rain in Oklahoma this morning, but around noon, Buckey and I mulled over chase potential in northeast Texas where skies were beginning to clear. In the meantime, because it was a Wednesday, we performed our weekly ritual of eating Indian Tacos served from the Flying Cow Cafe on the first floor of the NWC.

Today featured a shortwave trough with a closed low at 500 mb heading into the Texas panhandle at 12Z.

We had good 850 mb flow, but the moisture axis was displaced to the north with all the ongoing elevated convection in Oklahoma.

Modest dewpoints in the mid 60's were down in northeast Texas, but with back surface winds, shear was decent in that region with clearing skies.

FWD morning sounding showed a cap, but veering winds with height.

This setup was nothing to gawk at, but it was something marginally chaseable nonetheless. A rather rambunctious crowd had gathered in my office by the time Buckey and I finished our Indian Tacos. After much indecision, we decided to chase with two cars: Craig, Amanda, and David in mine; and Terra, Bryan Smith from the SPC, and Buckey in the second car, with Buckey at the wheel. We met briefly at my house, then took off south towards Ardmore.

By 16Z, the surface low was organizing to our west.

And by 17Z, the mesoanalysis shear continued to point us toward northeast Texas.

Dewpoints were in the mid 60's throughout the region.

The clearing on visible satellite was not too impressive, but it at least meant that the day wouldn't be completely shot due to the lack of daytime heating.

A tornado watch was issued at 1:35 pm CDT while we were sitting and waiting in a church parking lot situated on top of a hill west of Ardmore. We briefly went back north to pursue a cell that had formed to our west, but it did not do anything exciting at all. Heading back south, we cut in front of a squall line (that put on quite a shelf cloud show), turned east toward Madill, then south towards the only supercell of the day. We could see it from a distance, but it did not look too impressive, and its circulation on radar did not last very long. We made a last-ditch effort to chase what looked like new storms forming on radar, but they didn't amount to much. In fact, we could hardly get a visual on them. When we finally did, they turned out to be little showers with virga.

Today was a complete bust, but after calling it quits, we drove west through the weakening squall line and stopped for a moment to look at the turbulent back side of the shelf cloud as it passed overhead. Although not a supercell, it was still an impressive sight!

On our way back home, we passed by several small towns, one of which led us astray by its bad street signs, and we ended up in a park with baseball fields! We stopped for a hearty dinner at Pizza Hut (the usual post-bust dinner location as Buckey pointed out) in Gainesville, TX before heading back to Norman. Throughout the course of the evening, we passed by the mobile phased array, radar from UMass, and the DOW from Colorado. Everyone was down in Texas, yet nothing happened. As cosmic irony would have it, there were two tornado reports in Oklahoma City that day, and another one was reported (with damage) just a few miles south of Norman!! Granted, they were embedded within the cold-core circulation of the surface low, so they were difficult to forecast.