Tuesday, June 2, 2015

May 30 2015

As expected today was a travel day back to Norman, Oklahoma for our flights home tomorrow.
We took our time to head back north passing through where we were exactly two years earlier as we documented the monstrous El Reno tornado that ripped through the area.
The evening was spent with the majority of our group enjoying our final night together as we shared drinks and stories from this seasons chases.
Tomorrow is a sad farewell as we go our separate ways until next season when many of us will reunite to once again chase natures fury.



May 29 2015

This was likely to be our final chase day of this season, and it was a marginal set up but finally it would be a chase that was to be out of Texas as we moved west into New Mexico.
Our target was just north o Tucamcari and when the storms fired they were quite picturesque for a time. This combined with an idyllic location made for nice photo ops.
The storms themselves never really organised and quickly became merged and linear. We let the core of the storm come over us and when it did so began to die very quickly.
We decided to start to head back NE back into Texas before ending the day in Amarillo.

May 28 2015

Moving south today to get onto another decent set up with the parameters virtually identical to yesterday with nice shear and CAPE values.
We soon intercepted a storm outside Childress that had beautiful structure and frequent lightning with a mesocyclone for a while. It struggled to organise properly though so we headed south further to let the core hit us around the town of Paducah.
The storm had a lot of greenage and produce some significant hail of 2 inch .
Eventually the cells began to line out and become very outflow dominant as they all became a HP mess. We decided to call off the chase and head for dinner, before finally relocating back in Abilene to position for tomorrows chase.



May 27 2015

We had high hopes for today as we headed north out of Abilene to chase a 5% tornado risk in the NE Texas panhandle region.
Storms began to fire around the early afternoon and we got onto a storm with great structure around the town of Canadian. This storm was the only show in town and was watched develop by a massive chaser convergence.
We saw the storm develop strong rotation and we decided to relocate slightly further east to gain greater visibility.

As we headed down the road we saw a tornado develop behind us and we jumped out to watch it intensify into a beautiful photogenic 'stove pipe' tornado. After a few minutes it began to rope out and we witnessed the decaying stage
We headed to a hilltop and watch the storm sit almost stationary close to the town for a few hours. During this time two more brief tornadoes touched down just SW of Canadian, before we decided to call off the chase and head to Shamrock for the night. We had steak to celebrate and then watched the storm produce a nice lightning show into the night.

Monday, June 1, 2015

May 26 2015


Again another 5% tornado risk today, with decent CAPE values of 2500. We headed out of Dallas and got onto a well organised storm just east of the town of Breckenridge TX.
It had beautiful structure which finally produced a rotating wall cloud which didn't quite tighten sufficiently to produce a tornado. We also saw a beautiful shear funnel as we viewed the storm from the roadside.
We then proceeded along the road to the town of Ivan where the storm became more electrified but the bases were not so low so tornado genesis would be more difficult.
The storm cells eventually began to merge and become very linear with a lot of precip, so we decided to call off the chase and head to Abilene for the night.




May 25 2015

Today we had a moderate risk for severe weather in our area. However the storm today would prove to be fast moving, Nevertheless we chased  east through Texas trying to get ahead of the bowing line of storms around Denton, to see if we had any good cells pop up in front of it, or see if it became deracho. It was just moving far too quickly to get a head of, so we eventually called it a day and spent the night in Richardson, but we did get to eat at Pappadeaux and got some beautiful mammatus at sunset.


Monday, May 25, 2015

May 24 2015

The SPC outlook showed that we had to head back north a ways to get into position for todays storms again a 5% tornado risk, with decent CAPE and shear we hoped that our long trek south yesterday would bring about some chase success.
We headed to Denton where we were pretty much in the bulls eye of where we needed to be and played the waiting game hoping for storms to fire. However the cap proved to be the winner today as the daytime heating was not sufficient to prevent todays chase from being a total bust.
Unbelievably storms fired in Kansas which was not even in the risk area for today, this supercell went onto produce a wedge tornado after dark which fortunately missed all residential
areas during it's life cycle.
What is it this year with storms firing outside the risk zones and storms not initiating where the models suggest they should?
We eventually headed to Shamrock for the night. Hopefully tomorrow will bring better luck for us.