If A Little Farther
Supercell near Matador TX, and Other Storms
20 Apr 9
SHORT: Intercepted briefly sculpted supercell N of Matador TX, under anvil of another storm farther W that produced a tornado that we saw, but didn’t realize was such due to distance. Observed HP merger and evolution of resulting “Pac Man.” Drove back in great light show.
LONG:
After getting off shift and getting enough sleep to chase safely, I looked at a little data and called Rich, who was off and agreed to join me on what looked like a marginal shear/large CAPE setup. The target area was the outflow boundary from the morning MCS, sunny and cooking well on both sides, in NW TX. At last, the Two ChumpsTM were on the road again, brother, and ready to partake of the smorgasbord of atmospheric violence.
We left Norman shortly before 1330 CDT (1730Z) and took the I-44/US-62/US-183 zigzag to Vernon, through the cold, stratus-enshrouded outflow pool and past numerous flooded fields drainning with active runoff. [it was great to see SW OK so wet and green, for once!] While refueling with both gasoline and the usual regional snacks, a supercell already was apparent along the NW-ward curving segment of the boundary near Estelline, too distant to get to without interference from a newer storm going up to its SE.
Headed WSW out of vernon on US-70, we noticed the anvil from the southeastern “Dunlap” storm was getting rather robust, and the radar presentation looked decent with unimpeded inflow. It could have been a case where having onboard radar hurt us, in 20/20 hindsight. This was the “sucker storm” along the way to something better, and we fell for it. Naturally, had we known that, we wouldn’t have bothered.
We detoured N almost to Crowell then WSW toward Paducah to take a look, and while we measured low 70s temps in what had been its inflow region, the storm crapped out right as we got there. Hardly anything was left but fall streaks, beneath the thickening and spreading anvil of two newer supercells NW-W of Matador. The eastern of the two (Matador storm) was closer to us, very near the western segment of the old outflow boundary, all by itself (for a little while anyway) and crawling eastward very slowly in order to maximize its low level SRH on the hodograph. Sweet!
We roared W almost to Matador then NNE on FM-94 to get into the immediate inflow sector of the Matador storm. We could see it was under the thick anvil of yet another storm farther to our W, which was producing a copiously arching outflow boundary on reflectivity imagery. The western storm was the “Cedar Hill” tornado producer, despite all that outflow and unknown to us at that moment.
We saw a smooth-sided lowering from cloud base to apparent ground level way off to the WNW, under what seemed at the time to be either a very scuddy, ragged updraft base or rear-flank gust front with the “Cedar Hill” storm. We laughed at it, unable to see rotation at such distance (~15 miles), and knowing the storm was producing lots of outflow. Well, it also was producing a fat tornado, and that turned out to be one. Looking back at my phone and GPS logs, this perfectly matches one of the tornado report times.
This video capture, posted to Storm-Track by Matt Chatelain, shows what it looked like to us, but a little more distant, with some slight terrain rises and mesquite trees in the way — just enough to cast doubts. Our viewing angle and lighting were very nearly the same.
Of course, reviewing the facts post-mortem removed all doubts. Again, what’s that hindsight vision? We were driving up to the Matador storm and not taking photos of that feature far to the W, but had I bothered to stop, slap on the zoom lens quickly and shoot “just in case”, I would have had my first (very distant) tornado shot of the year.
The closer “Matador” storm beckoned, its base already visible with a bell-shaped structure above. We found a good parking spot and vantage at the entrance to the Stitch Ranch, soon joined by our forecasting colleague Jonathan Garner, then a few moments later, none other than the father of storm chasing himself, Dave Hoadley.
It was great to chat with Dave and Jon during our short time at the Stitch Ranch gates. We admired the nice structure above an elongated cyclonic shear zone at cloud base. Occasionally smaller areas of rotation would develop, but tornadogenesis never appeared imminent, despite being in an environment that didn’t seem appreciably different (except for having less outflow) than the “Cedar Hill” storm. Here’s a shot of the eastern side of the supercell, looking N up FM-94, showing the sinewy curvature of cloud banding with this storm.
Rich and I then cruised N a few miles to get closer to the occasional areas of cloud base rotation before the storm got E of FM-94 and into a gigantic road void. As we did, the bigger, faster-moving and more outflow-dominant “Cedar Hill” storm began to encroach upon and seed the hell out of the our supercell. That gave it more HP character, lowering light levels ominously, and turning it into a more prototypically North Texas MUN (mean, ugly, nasty) stormzilla. We bailed S to get back to US-70, taking one more look back through the turbulent and eerily colorful “whale’s mouth” and consigning the conjoining supercells to HP-from-hell status.
A left-mover developed in situ to the SE of the combined “Pac-Man” supercell (shot from Jon Garner), then split in its own right, the continuing left member being drawn into the forward flank of the cyclonic HP monster as we hurtled E in a thread-the-needle maneuver between them. Meanwhile, the rotation in SRM imagery got very intense and tight somewhere out there in the mesquite brush to our N and NW as we headed back to Paducah, but good luck seeing anything in the deep, dark murk!
We tried to circumnavigate the growing area of elevated nocturnal convection by driving E to SPS then N through FSI, but hit heavy rain and a barrage of CGs around FSI anyway. It brought back memories of our many chases from the late 1980s down to NW TX, then back on I-44 through rain and lightning bombs. The crawler show on the N side was fantastic when they did erupt, but very sporadic and intermittent. I stopped just W of CHK for lightning photography, trying the 17 mm wide angle at slightly higher than usual F-stop. This was in effort to catch some of the insanely bright crawlers that would sparkle nearly overhead from the MCS to our SSE, then slam a CG miles behind us with a deep, long, window-rattling report of thunder. I missed the best crawlers between shots and while setting up, but did get a few more distant crawler+CG combos.
If we had left earlier, if we hadn’t gotten sidetracked with the “Dunlap” storm…well, we might have seen the tornado from closer with much more confidence and certainty…or hit some fat, stupid cow and ended the day upside down in a flooded ditch, slurping mud and crying for mommy. Who knows? As we’ve said before: “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, it would be Christmas every day.”
We got back to Norman fairly satisfied with the chase, tornado or not, having seen a sculpted storm and a fascinating morphology and interaction process. All in all, it was a worthwhile trip for such a distance, considering the constraints imposed by sleep rotation from evening shifts to overnights.
Three remarkable non-events happened on this chase that are absolutely amazing, if you know either of us:
1. Rich didn’t blow a head gasket and launch into a tirade the whole day!
2. I didn’t fill the car interior with buttgas even once, despite consuming two Allsups burritos!
3. We didn’t hit a single red light from Matador to my house in east Norman, including all the usual unsynchronized flytraps along Highway-9 around south Norman!
The odds of all three of those must be as low as the odds of seeing a fat tornado in a different county from NNE of Matador, and not believing it at the time.
A Gust Front, a Fire and 100 Hawks
Hennessey and Okeene OK areas
18 Apr 9
(by Elke Edwards)
Roger and I took a country drive into northern OK on Saturday, ostensibly looking for an April supercell out ahead of an occluded cold front squall. The latest round of I-35 construction (and inherent delays) encouraged an alternate two-lane route to get out of town. I don’t mind. It’s a choice that never fails to gift an unsuspecting traveler with serendipity. In comparison, Interstate travel lacks somewhat in significant happenstance.
We targeted a blip on the radar via iPhone, only to watch the storm weaken and vanish within our sight. Near Hennessey and not yet 5 p.m., we opted to hang out for a while in the sunshine at a crossroads west of town and await whatever else might form ahead of the slow-moving front. Roger drooled over what must have been a lovely classic supercell up in Woods County OK – out of reach for us except by radar. I reminded myself how to set the aperture of my Canon in manual mode, discovered the focusing ring on my favorite lens is starting to fail, and took several shots anyway of the verdant wheat surrounding us just for an experiment in compiling a panoramic.
After a time, we noticed a wisp of smoke rising on the moderate southeasterly breeze a mile or so north. A few minutes later we exclaimed at several large plumes billowing upward and decided to investigate – first the fire and then the squall line.
Many of the pastures we had passed earlier had recent fire signs, though they were already greening beautifully. Apparently the local landsman decided that with rain on the way, it was as good a time as any to burn another acre – a questionable decision given the wind, and it looked like it got rather out of hand; it jumped his plowed fire break, left the pasture and got in some trees. As we passed a couple of cedars went up like they do, i.e., Roman candles, beyond the black and smoking field.
I noticed 2 hawks standing quietly in the black near the road as we drove by – immature Swainson’s hawks, and 4 or 5 more hawks circling the smoke plume bright in the sun farther west. (It’s a habit to count raptors on our country drives – can’t help myself – I see hawks everywhere. It happens when your mother runs a wildlife rehab center that takes in some 500 raptors per year for the last 25 years.) I’d seen six of these harbingers of summer soaring on our way up, long admired them for their incredible bi-annual migration all the way from their wintering grounds in the Pampas of Argentina to the central through northern Great Plains for breeding in April — and then back again in September.
Well, we went on, drove west a ways to get under the anvil canopy and get a better look at the line of thunderstorms heading toward us. The storms were not much to write of, but we were treated to the sight of a large raft of white pelicans climbing the sky on the current of warm air being displaced by storm outflow. We decided to turn around, and I mentioned I would like to look at that scorched field once more to see if the hawks were still there.
We approached driving slowly and were surprised and delighted to find 30 hawks now standing in the half acre plot, alert to any sign of movement in the black. They were very visible in the dark field. Then, looking up, we were astonished to see several dozen more hawks circling and trying to land, occasional squabbles ensuing, the birds calling, some with territorial screams. Wow! How often do any of us get to see so many marvelous hawks all in one place? I knew them all for Swainson’s hawks just by this behavior. We had a some minutes to enjoy the experience and then the gust front came through, reigniting the fire – there were some impressive flames roaring in the partially burned woods that backed the field and quickly blowing smoke at us. All the hawks took flight, some kiting on the wind above the field, others soaring.
On our drive home I explained to Roger that the spectacle we had witnessed was a rarity here in North America. The birds migrate together in large groups and then quickly disperse in pairs to nest all across the Plains. But I had heard stories that once hundreds of hawks gathered for few days before they leave for the winter. The sight is more common for Pampas farmers because these birds stay in large groups there, following locust swarms, in the wake of harvesters – and wild fires. In Argentina they are called Locust Hawks.
Serendipity — the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, especially while looking for something else entirely. Such was ours today.
…EE…
Easter Sunday Supercell along US-82
Wichita Falls to Gainesville TX
12 Apr 9
SHORT: Supercell intercepted from near SPS to Gainesville, severe hail measured, large evolutionary variations in storm character along with great structure witnessed and photographed.
LONG: I had been watching the next “cold-core” chase potential rather casually for a few days in advance, aware that it could be close at hand, but distracted by assorted diversions of life. Nonetheless, I had mentioned to Elke and my two teen-age kids that there could be some chase potential Sunday, and to be ready to head out with me, if desired. The kids do love to chase, and don’t get to do it much thanks to school, so they were hoping.
After Easter services, we went home, and I liked the narrow slot of clearing and heating that was occurring in VIS imagery, with only upper 50s to low 60s F surface temps needed to uncap the boundary layer, given such cold air and steep lapse rates aloft. Something loosely resembling an occluded front laid out near the Red River, arching NW across SW OK and into the SE part of the TX panhandle. Near and NE of that boundary, winds were backed; and to its W, surface winds were veered with very little SRH for most reasonable storm motions. A storm that formed in the clear slot would have to interact with that boundary to get happy and spin for a good while. We just needed a storm, and a favorable boundary-relative storm motion. Dew point depressions where there was decent heating and instability seemed a tad high for my taste; but when you’re off, it’s spring, and there’s a shot at a supercell nearby, then…go!
The storms probably wouldn’t be tornadic, but one could get lucky. At worst, with no meaningful storms, this would be a country Sunday drive and some family time, probably with some time hanging out in the Wichita Mountains. Given the very conditional nature of the event, to allow more room in the car, and because she had some work to do, Elke stayed home. I think she mildly regretted doing so after we (David, Donna and I) got back with some great chase stories and photos. 😉
We didn’t get to the Wichitas.
Breaking out of the grunge, mist and slop just N of FSI, we exited for gas and I dialed up satellite and radar on my I-Phone. Meanwhile, David and Donna helped a handicapped old man who was parked near us look for his lost car keys. His keys were found, and so was a necklace of reflectivity pearls on the radar scope, from near CDS ESE across the SPS area. While the cells SW of FDR would be closer and more convenient to intercept, the tail-end storm developing WSW of SPS would
1. Remain in the most unstable boundary layer air mass the longest,
2. Have unimpeded inflow, at least for awhile,
3. Remain closest to the larger gradient flows and stronger deep-layer shear vectors aloft (farther from the center of the vortex aloft), and
4. Have a great chance to interact with the boundary after maturity.
Such meteorological reasoning made the decision easy. We zoomed down I-44 through SPS, getting a visual on Tail-end Charlie by the time we got clear of the FSI area. From then on, I never needed the I-Phone radar app, but it helped in the early strategic decision, and I used it occasionally out of curiosity during stops, as time permitted.
While still in OK, the storm was visible from a long distance (>40 miles), with a high but robust cloud base, intermittent wall cloud-like lowerings next to or behind the translucent precip core, and a sharp anvil (sorry, no photos…driving on an interstate). We got through the SPS area and set up along FM-1954, 2 SE of Lakeside City, as the high-based storm (initially to our W over US-82) became somewhat more elongated, with a verticaly tilted base. This was the first of a few occasions when I thought the storm was losing organization, and that dinner might be imminent!
As the storm impinged upon our position, I headed E to the spillway area of Lake Arrowhead to watch it approach once more. The scene was beautiful, but the storm was very high based, with a skinny, shelf cloud-like appearance to the updraft region. We collected some dead mesquite (for my grill at home) and admired a long-abandoned trailer and boat (decal dated 1966!) while letting the storm go by to our N, across the SPS area and eastward toward Henrietta. As it was passing to our NNE, the E part of that elongated base broadened and thickened some, followed soon thereafter by a more HP supercell appearance. The storm did a small but intense core dump, complete with classical downburst rain foot, to our NE near Henrietta.
I followed the storm toward Henrietta, and after seeing the core get more translucent (looking ENE from 6 WSW of town), decided to penetrate it and maybe get some interesting late-day lighting under the other side of the base and shelf cloud. I asked the kids if they wanted to get into some hail (they have before, several times) and told them we might find some going through the “thin” core, since it was so cold aloft. Did we ever…
As we drove E into the precip (on US-82) it seemed to thicken considerably, as if another core dump was taking place. I expected lots of small hail, and maybe some technical-severe cheese, but this hail was nearly significant. A large amount of hailstones around an inch diameter pounded us as I pulled over right alongside the Montague County line sign, at its border with Clay County. David reached out and brought in several of the biggest stones, lumpy oblate spheroids that uniformly measured 1-3/8 inch on their long axes. I called this report in to WFO OUN, but it didn’t show up in the rough logs. [Estimates of larger sized hail came from nearby.]
The hail continued for a few miles past Ringgold and thinned near Belcherville…and man, did it ever get dark in that core for something that looked so benign when we were west of it. After we popped out the other side and pulled over, 3 W of Nocona, we saw why. Once again, it had reorganized, this time into a MUN (mean, ugly, nasty) monster, looking much like the prototypical north Texas HP Stormzilla, with a wall of scud roaring up the leading edge of the the outflow surge. And we had just gotten out before it became really intense. Whew!
Cows, placidly oblivious to the impending experience of hail bouncing off their skulls, grazed in the field as the supercell clawed onward toward us. We cruised E through Nocona, finally seeing a couple of chase vehicles (one belonging to a chaser that the kids and I know, Scott Peake, with whom we briefly spoke). I was mildly but pleasantly surprised at how few chasers were out there, especially considering I was on a major U.S. highway just ahead of what had become the only supercell in the region.
The road took a right turn more to the SE, and so did the storm — right into a hilly and more forested area of the Western Crosstimbers habitat, where good views would be hard to find. Fortunately, I stumbled upon a great westerly vantage about 3 NW of Saint Jo, at a roadside picnic area set atop a hill. We watched the storm from there for awhile (wide angle view). It actually shed some of its densely HP visual characteristics, acquiring more sculpted structure aloft and maintaining a convergent, slowly rotating wall cloud under the main updraft area. At no point did I see any cloud base accelerations that suggested imminent tornadogenesis, despite having a good view through zoom lenses; nonetheless, we observed it with keen vigilance for any rapid uptick in angular motion.
The storm then became somewhat less organized (wide angle view while lying in bluebonnets), but we stayed just ahead of it, aiming now for dinner in Gainesville and a ride home up I-35. With the ongoing loss of diurnal heating, I figured this would be the storm’s last hurrah. Still, it treated us to some spectacular twisting and banding (horizontal and vertical shots at 17 mm full-frame) between Saint Jo and Muenster. The last shot was deja-vu, in that it reminded me a lot of a wondrous scene that Elke and I witnessed a few years back outside of Hyannis NE — similar vertical banding, but without the residual supercell updraft at its southern root.
We ate dinner in Gainesville while the dying storm moved overhead, spitting a little lightning and rain, but not much else.
This was a fun, interesting and at times quite scenic intercept of a long-lived, non-tornadic “cold core” supercell in north TX. [Yes, I know there’s a tornado report by a local fire department in the rough log. I have seen no confirming evidence as yet. We had excellent views of the storm throughout that phase, and there were lots of hangy-downy scud foolers under the wall cloud at times. So I await unambiguous photos or video before believing the report.]
It was the best storm observing trip of the year yet, with hopes for many more! It also was a great dad-kids time. Last but not least, I ought to mention that Al Moller came to mind while I was belly-down in the bluebonnets, and those who know Al know why: It’s exactly the sort of scene he has specialized in shooting with amazing skill for a long time; but he’s got far better shots than that one in his slide collection.