4/26 - Day Of Frustration & Pics & Looking Ahead
First of all, I have to highlight a spectacular photo of Sunday's tornado in Roger Mills county. Breathtaking and certainly of cover quality for a magazine and calendar. It is simply stunning. Check out Dick McGowan's photo!!!
No tornadoes for me. That's the way it goes sometimes. What causes it to sting more though is that I was all over the storm that produced the spectacular Roger Mills tornadoes, but made a regrettable decision to pull off of it because of what seemed like a good idea at the time. Data outage issues combined with potentially getting trapped against the Canadian river valley with horrible road options strongly pursuaded me to drop back and let it go in favor of intensifying "tail end" storms coming out of Wheeler county. Looking at all of the fantastic video and images of what I easily could have witnessed is a twist of the proverbial knife. ;-) But, enough wallowing in my own self-pity. A hearty congratulations are in store for all those who scored big on this one.
I've always felt comfortable in cutting things close when I have reliable radar data and an escape route. I had neither of those when making the decision to hold up near Reydon. I had intended to head around the big road void of what is the Candian river valley to 283 up to Roll. But, the last radar image I mustered up looked like the storm was about to get munched by a small developing line segment. The risk of that when weighted with the time and distance to get to Roll wasn't worth it with newly developing and organizing cells to my west.
I eeked out one more radar image after shutting everything else off while sitting on top of a hill. The new cells were already showing some weak rotation couplets. With screaming surface winds and the fact we were under a "high risk"...AND the fact these cells would not be competing with anything else nearby to the south, I bet the farm that these would also go tornado warned soon. Instead, they were higher based, linear looking cells. Are you freaking kidding me? LOL!! I'd watch some organized rotation get going in the cloud base and then get undercut by strong outflow. This was totally ludicrous to me with SSE and SE flow of 35-45mph and gusty force feeding the updrafts.
So, I hung with them for awhile and eventually just got tired of wasting my time and gas. The frustration with that combined with a massive data outage for what seemed like hours ended up pushing my button to stand down. Yep, another "high risk" bust chase for me. I finally ended up north of Roll (STILL no data!!!) on 287 and County Road E0770 where I encountered some tornado damage. Trees were snapped and uprooted along with pink insulation hanging everywhere in the remaining trees and fence. Not good....my heart sank. Fortunately however, nobody was in the mobile home at the time it was destroyed. The only thing left was the frame trailer which was tossed about 200 feet on the other side of a hill.
The trailer home was sitting off frame just to the right of the image. The remaining frame (in the last pic below) is in the far left of the image.
While I'm posting pics, here are some from Saturday 4/25:
NOT a funnel cloud OR a tornado NW of Leedey, OK but rather an excellent scud look-alike. I'll be submitting this for spotter training material.
...and neither is this one...despite it being claimed as one.
Looking at tomorrow's setup now and am really intrigued with the possibilities up on the Caprock from SW of LBB up to Hereford. ALOT of variables still need to play out such as extent of cloudiness and precip. Any breaks in the clouds will certainly up the ante for tornadoes in my opinion. The other factor will be what is left of the current front south of LBB and how much of it is left and where it migrates to. Precip will play a role in keeping it sharp and well defined as well as it's position in the afternoon. Like I said, tons of variables that demand an analysis by late morning to see how things are coming together. I will be ready to chase after getting off work though...albeit I'm a bit pessimistic.
Wednesday looks pretty good however depending on the extent of precip. All other parameters look awesome with my favorate setup of westerly mid level flow perpendicular to the dryline orientation. The NAM is very persistent in keeping the action closer to Amarillo.
Thursday again holds some serious promise with continued westerly mid level flow across the dryline. However, the NAM wants to weaken the 500mb winds to below 30 knots. Any little increase behyond that though will setup another great scenario for some isolated supercells.
Beyond Thursday, things get muddy and may in fact shift things pretty far away. But, more on that as that time frame gets closer. I've got the next three days to keep me occupied. :-)
No tornadoes for me. That's the way it goes sometimes. What causes it to sting more though is that I was all over the storm that produced the spectacular Roger Mills tornadoes, but made a regrettable decision to pull off of it because of what seemed like a good idea at the time. Data outage issues combined with potentially getting trapped against the Canadian river valley with horrible road options strongly pursuaded me to drop back and let it go in favor of intensifying "tail end" storms coming out of Wheeler county. Looking at all of the fantastic video and images of what I easily could have witnessed is a twist of the proverbial knife. ;-) But, enough wallowing in my own self-pity. A hearty congratulations are in store for all those who scored big on this one.
I've always felt comfortable in cutting things close when I have reliable radar data and an escape route. I had neither of those when making the decision to hold up near Reydon. I had intended to head around the big road void of what is the Candian river valley to 283 up to Roll. But, the last radar image I mustered up looked like the storm was about to get munched by a small developing line segment. The risk of that when weighted with the time and distance to get to Roll wasn't worth it with newly developing and organizing cells to my west.
I eeked out one more radar image after shutting everything else off while sitting on top of a hill. The new cells were already showing some weak rotation couplets. With screaming surface winds and the fact we were under a "high risk"...AND the fact these cells would not be competing with anything else nearby to the south, I bet the farm that these would also go tornado warned soon. Instead, they were higher based, linear looking cells. Are you freaking kidding me? LOL!! I'd watch some organized rotation get going in the cloud base and then get undercut by strong outflow. This was totally ludicrous to me with SSE and SE flow of 35-45mph and gusty force feeding the updrafts.
So, I hung with them for awhile and eventually just got tired of wasting my time and gas. The frustration with that combined with a massive data outage for what seemed like hours ended up pushing my button to stand down. Yep, another "high risk" bust chase for me. I finally ended up north of Roll (STILL no data!!!) on 287 and County Road E0770 where I encountered some tornado damage. Trees were snapped and uprooted along with pink insulation hanging everywhere in the remaining trees and fence. Not good....my heart sank. Fortunately however, nobody was in the mobile home at the time it was destroyed. The only thing left was the frame trailer which was tossed about 200 feet on the other side of a hill.
The trailer home was sitting off frame just to the right of the image. The remaining frame (in the last pic below) is in the far left of the image.
While I'm posting pics, here are some from Saturday 4/25:
NOT a funnel cloud OR a tornado NW of Leedey, OK but rather an excellent scud look-alike. I'll be submitting this for spotter training material.
...and neither is this one...despite it being claimed as one.
Looking at tomorrow's setup now and am really intrigued with the possibilities up on the Caprock from SW of LBB up to Hereford. ALOT of variables still need to play out such as extent of cloudiness and precip. Any breaks in the clouds will certainly up the ante for tornadoes in my opinion. The other factor will be what is left of the current front south of LBB and how much of it is left and where it migrates to. Precip will play a role in keeping it sharp and well defined as well as it's position in the afternoon. Like I said, tons of variables that demand an analysis by late morning to see how things are coming together. I will be ready to chase after getting off work though...albeit I'm a bit pessimistic.
Wednesday looks pretty good however depending on the extent of precip. All other parameters look awesome with my favorate setup of westerly mid level flow perpendicular to the dryline orientation. The NAM is very persistent in keeping the action closer to Amarillo.
Thursday again holds some serious promise with continued westerly mid level flow across the dryline. However, the NAM wants to weaken the 500mb winds to below 30 knots. Any little increase behyond that though will setup another great scenario for some isolated supercells.
Beyond Thursday, things get muddy and may in fact shift things pretty far away. But, more on that as that time frame gets closer. I've got the next three days to keep me occupied. :-)
posted by Steve Miller TX at 4/27/2009 06:09:00 PM
7 Comments:
well someone posted that as a bonafide tornado on Stormtrack - could you maybe go and post your pictures there and perhaps educate him a bit? I posted a question but some dumbass moderator removed it.
We all came damn close to having a tornado north of Roll on saturday but it didnt drop so anybody who claims it did is lying or an idiot. The only tornado that dropped saturday went unreported and that was a short lived spinup east of Mobeetie,tx.
As for Sunday..sorry Steve but SCORE!!!!!! Some are saying 2 tornados or 3 but I counted 4 seperate tornados and have 3 on vieo.he other I was too busy repositioning to get a shot of but I hope Jeff did. NOw I have video to counter your Kent co. stuff you rub in on me. At least I had a real excuse of a broken rib!! lol.
Oh well we will both have chances this week.
Glenn,
I heard that a "spotter" had reported one in the field at the same time we were standing there with a clear view. I see the post on ST you mention...interesting. However, I'll pass since I don't have the time nor desire to get into it as well as opening the door to possibly creating a new fan club member. I have enough of those already. ;-)
Oh, and Jay, YOU SUCK!!! LOL!!
Definitely on par with the Kent County footage. We can have "dueling videos" at the next SDS party. :-) Seriously, congrats on the big time bag-a-nader. You were overdue. Now we gotta get you all modernized so you can start loading your video for the world to see!
We made the same mistake Steve. Instead of going north after Sweetwater we went west into TX for the cells behind the one that produced.
It started to get its act together at one point and I got some awesome wall cloud photos...but it just didnt happen.
Sorry you couldn't be there...I feel bad for you and others that weren't on it. :( It's hard to feel good or get excited when fellow chaser friends miss out. I'm sure you'll see something grand in the near future though.
I love that structure shot!
Great shots, Steve! Sorry you busted... I know how you feel. The Dewvoid single-handedly killed a high risk PDS when I chased...
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