Late Winter SE TX Panhandle/SW Oklahoma Chase 03/18/2012

The WXtreme Chase Team together with Jason Caster, Brendon Lindsey, Sarah Manners and Ashley Mills staged initially in Shamrock, TX for some potential dry-line action.  After spending some time in McLean hoping storms would fire to our W or SW we eventually decided to head toward some development to our S.  After watching a small, strongly rotating tower continue to struggle with the cap NW of Wellington we made the decision to intercept the storms already in progress moving NE from the Childress area.  Although the radar returns looked pretty messy at this point our view of the back-shear on the south-western most storm gave us the impression that this might be the storm of the day.  (Two storms further south in TX had gone tornado warned, but had yet to produce anything more than funnel clouds.)

View of the developing storm near Childress at 5:15 CDT:

Video of Alden and Ft. Cobb, OK Tornadoes 11/07/2011

Close approach to the Alden tornado:



Video clip of Ft. Cobb Tornado:



Chase Data:

SW to C Oklahoma Autumn Tornadoes 11/07/2011

Eric Sipes and I left Cordell at approximately 9:30 am for Will Rogers Airport to pick up Ben McMillan who was flying in to join with us on the chase.  Our morning target was the Vernon, TX to Altus, OK to Snyder, OK triangle, a target that verified even though we didn't end up there.

After picking Ben up we blasted down I-44 toward Lawton with the intention of heading W from there.  However, after checking data on the way, we felt it might be better to head for a more northern target (around Hobart) with the option of heading south toward our original planned target.  As we approached Hobart a storm went tornado warned near the TX border to the WSW of Hobart and a couple more had developed near Altus moving NE so we felt our target had verified although we kept an eye on the storm just S of the Red River on radar.  After aborting an intercept of the western storm which was rapidly weakening we noted some rotation on the storm just W of Hobart.  We pulled off and observed this funnel cloud with weak, intermittent ground circulation at 3:03-3:05 Pm CST.

Fall Chase in SW Kansas 10/07/2011

Set out from Cordell about 1 pm for my initial target near Liberal, KS.  As I neared Liberal shortly before 5pm CDT an agitated cu field was evident SW of Turpin, OK.  I filled up with fuel in Liberal  and headed N on US 83 a few miles and pulled off on a county road intersection to observe.  Before long a storm began to form, although it took awhile.  I eventually set up at the US 83/160 junction.

Highly-sheared developing storm at 5:30 pm CDT