The Prairie Sky is Wide & High

Deep in the heart of Texas!  Another Lone Star state chase and this time, we may have actually gotten something.  And by something, no I don't mean data or an intercept with pods, but an actual storm with winds, hail, clouds, lightning, funnels...the works.  It's been way too long since we've had any exciting weather so needless to say even the wimpy little storms we had yesterday were pretty amazing.  Two days ago we took a ferry day and traveled to Dodge City, KS which unfortunately was under SE winds during our entire stay causing a wonderfully repugnant odor of feedlot and slaughterhouse to settle into the motel rooms.  But we traded the putrid stench for the enticing taste of a cute little coffee shop the next morning...yes, REAL coffee...not hotel mud water.  That was a definite highlight of the last few days.  Not so exciting I know but when you drive all day, get very little sleep, and drink hot, brown water for "coffee" in the mornings; well, you get the idea.

But enough about coffee; I'm here to talk weather.  So yesterday we traveled down to the also delightfully stinky town of Hereford, TX where we were cautiously optimistic about any sort of super cell development.  But a little patience payed off and we soon had about four discrete cells threatening to merge into an MCS which we quickly closed the gap on near Morton, TX.  We stayed on the storms for about an hour but nothing looked promising on radar in terms of rotation so Josh and the CSWR team decided to call end of mission and head up to our hotel in Amarillo.  Tim Marshall and his driver Tim2 decided to stay on the cell a little longer because while the DOW wasn't showing much, GR3 was consistently showing a tight couplet.  Marcus asked Josh if Scout 1 could stay on the storm as well for awhile because there was some incredible lightning (the kind that streaks across the entire sky...which in Texas is HUGE).

So we were given permission to "go rogue" as long as we avoided core punching.  It was my second real test having to navigate and keep an eye on the radar simultaneously (Carlsbad, NM lightning adventure was the first) so I felt totally in my element.  And it paid off.  About twenty minutes after the team pulled away, our storm went tornado warned.  We saw multiple funnels and according to the Tims, there may have even been a brief touchdown of the rain wrapped circulation. We also got caught by some wild outflow, over 50mph!

On the way back to Amarillo, we got pretty lucky again.  Off in the distance to the NW, we could make out the Dora, NM tornado warned supercell.  In the intermittent lightning streaks we could make out this large cone funnel.  Overall, it was by far one of the best chases of the season.

Today we are evaluating a dryline setup with pretty weak upper level flow.  The options are to either chase or split the team off and send half to Boulder/half to either North Platte, NE or Hays, KS.  It looks like they may extend the season by a few days as well for the first big trough of the season (finally) early next week.  So glad I haven't booked a flight home yet...