Texas Tailblogger: 6/17 Report and Pics

Another day of cratering dewpoints and screwed up parameters. I was completely stunned in how much the dewpoints dropped across the Red River Valley and our source region in North Texas. There also seemed to be some sort of upper level dynamics in play working against us as well. Storms seemed to sputter of southern OK as they reached the I-35 corridor. I'll venture to guess that perhaps a left entrance jet region existed here creating subsidence. Either that or the impulse that fired up the SW OK storms early created some subsidence in it's wake. Or maybe it's just the '06 evil curse. LOL!!

I started off the day in Lawton crunching data. It was an "unorthadox" setup with everything from the surface to 250mb.The models struggled with various solutions with the 15Z RUC having the best handle on it in retrospect (although it had it's quirkiness too). Everything said that Lawton vicinity and S Central OK had good potential for a chase and perhaps a brief tornado along the OFB. I also liked far N OK and S KS, as I posted yesterday, because of proximity to upper low. They got two naders up there before the end of the day.

After meeting up with J.R. Henley for lunch at the Cracker Barrel, we put our two brains together to compute a solution. When we finished and got to the parking lot, towers were erupting all around us to the south, west and north. Surface analysis showed a small but pronounced dryline punch coming into our area...southwest gusty winds with dewpoints in the upper 50's punching into S and SE surface winds with dewpoint in the upper 60's and even 70. Confidence was high at this point with the W-E instability axis along and north of the Red River. The winds were already shifting to the SW there in Lawton and we could see towers rapidly building to our east along the convergence, so we headed east to get out ahead of it.

Cells started going severe and the leading storm along the "dryline" started showing some weak rotation on GR3 and a nice developing wall cloud that visually presented some evidence of cyclonic rotation starting up. Everything seemed to be going our way until about an hour later when the storm got linear and high based then split with the right splitter fizzling. I looked around to see if Rod Sterling (the old Twilight Zone host for you young 'uns out there) was going to step out from behind a tree and reveal that this was some sort of sick, twisted and demented psychological nightmare. :-) I saw Shane, Mickey and Chad on the side of the road, so I and J.R. stopped and jokingly accused them of messing with my storm. ;-) We unanimously cursed the storm and '06 in general and proceeded eastward. I think they all headed to the northern storms still going on and I made a vector southward towards home hoping to catch a few good cells along the way. I was tired of high based linear crap with dewpoint spreads of 30F or more.

A strong storm got going just west of Ringling and started looking pretty good. Some stronger easterly winds were feeding into it and I thought this might be the magic missing ingredient since surface winds literally died ahead of the earlier storms. I glanced up along the leading edge and saw a nice shear funnel snaking out of the edge of the shelf cloud. Before I could get the camera, it started dissipating, but managed to catch a couple of shots. It started peaking just around Lone Grove, but it too quickly fizzled as it got to I-35.

I noticed some good storms erupting across NW TX and a couple of cells firing up in Palo Pinto county, TX. I remembered the models progging a nice jet on the backside of the trough diving down into that area with a pronounced left exit region, so I figured I could get some good lightning opportunities and who knows what else. As I got about 20 miles south of the Red River, I saw the tornado warning go up for a spotter confirmed tornado near Mineral Wells. Dammit. (I remembered seeing a nice OFB laying out there from satellite analysis earlier...and this storm latched on it).

I ended the evening with some pretty good lighting shots over Denton County. I retired back at home with a couple of Shiner Bocks.

Getting ready for some rotation. This as good as it ever looked.

I end up drawing an audience with a gang of overly-curious punk bovine (dig those cool green ear tags).

I farted and they ran for their lives. LOL!! Actually, I was downwind of them at first. As soon as the winds shifted and they caught my scent, they bolted.