2009 OKWeatherWatch Storm Chase

Chase Days: 37

Total Miles: 13,471.9

June 27 – 11:53 a.m. (8 hours 51 minutes) (MA) 73366 (477.2) MAP / GALLERY for 20-27 June trip – new

Wouldn’t you know that the best lightning would be when we were almost home. Storms began forming along and behind a front that was pushing south through the Texas Panhandle and western Oklahoma while we were driving east on I-40. The first stop was with a cluster of storms near Wheeler, TX and other lightning captures were had west and northwest of Okarche. Trip total 3219.4 miles.

June 26 – 12:42 p.m. (7 hours 30 minutes) (MA) 73013 (362.7) MAP /

Once again, storms that produced good lightning were limited. We used the day to make a move toward home… leaving Alpine eastward by the San Francisco, Mangas, Gallo, Datil and Gallinas Mountains over to I-25. We ended the day in Santa Rosa with some convection west of the city.

June 25 – 1:00 p.m. (8 hours 42 minutes) (MA) 72725 (295.5) MAP /

One of the only days to hit the road and see storms almost immediately. We only had to go east from Benson to Willcox and then south to catch some storms that formed between Dos Cabezas and Paradise. These produced quite a bit of lightning but there were limited road options. We saw other storms south and east of Safford before making the drive north to Alpine. This drive up US Highway 191 was incredible. It’s about 90 miles long but takes several hours to drive due to the many areas where you can’t exceed about 15 MPH. Alpine is a very nice little town with a population that averages about 500 people.

June 24 – 11:41 a.m. (8 hours 53 minutes) (MA) 72265 (472.6) MAP /

We headed south out of Gallup and started working our way southwest toward southeast Arizona. We came across several storms near Eagar and Show Low… but these were producing limited lightning. Our route took us through Globe and Safford to get us to I-10 and we stopped in Benson for the night.

June 23 – 11:27 a.m. (8 hours 6 minutes) (MA) 71899 (376.5) MAP /

We went west out of Pagosa Springs and drove by Chimney Rock… almost making it to Durango before heading southeast toward storms that were producing lightning in northwest New Mexico. We played with storms near Navajo Lake and others south of Bloomfield before making our way to Gallup. We used highway 371 south of Farmington to get to I-40. This stretch of highway runs through some areas that don’t see much rain and it’s quite desolate.

June 22 – 12:15 p.m. (11 hours 51 minutes) (MA) 71485 (426.3) MAP /

This was a travel day that got us from Greeley to Pagosa Springs, Colorado. Our route took us by Royal Gorge and some pretty areas near Wolf Creek Pass in the San Juan Mountains. The most interesting part of the day was coming across an overturned tanker truck on winding US Highway 50.

June 21 – 10:51 a.m. (9 hours 38 minutes) (MA) 71076 (421.1) MAP /

We left Garden City and drove north through northwest Kansas… clipping the southwest corner of Nebraska and then heading west through northeast Colorado. There were some storms that formed near Longmont and we watched these move to the east of Kersey. Lightning was lacking… but we did see some small hail and a brilliant full rainbow.

June 20 – 12:18 p.m. (8 hours 55 minutes) (MA) 70699 (387.5) MAP /

The first day out of what will be the final chase trip of the 2009 season. We drove north into southern Kansas and observed a few low topped supercells in the Bucklin and Dodge City areas. There were a couple of storms that exhibited nice structure for a time and we saw a couple of funnel clouds with the storm north of Dodge City.

June 15 – 12:00 p.m. (11 hours 47 minutes) 70157 (412.8) MAP / GALLERY

I started the day in Dodge City and didn’t have to go far for the first action. I did have to wait about three hours for storms to get going….but once they did – they became impressive quick. My original target storm formed just west of Dodge City and tracked northeastward just passing the city to the north. It appeared that it was already capable of producing a tornado as it skirted along the Ford/Hodgeman County line. I saw a strongly rotating wall cloud that had several brief spinups under it for about 10 minutes. Surprisingly, the storm seemed less organized as it moved east toward Spearville. It was during this trip eastward that it seemed to take on more HP characteristics and also attract a LOT of chasers. Between the two… the storm became less interesting to me. I dropped the storm at Kinsley and headed south. It went on to produce a couple of large tornadoes closer to Belpre….but I’m not so sure that I could have seen these without putting myself in danger. My target changed to storms that were in the northeast Texas panhandle and I planned on picking them up in the eastern Oklahoma panhandle or extreme northwest Oklahoma. I was approaching a storm near Logan, Oklahoma that visually, looked organized enough to produce quarter size hail or bigger. Unfortunately, I miss-judged the potential and ended up getting a brief blast of much larger hail – over baseball size. The storm weakened as it passed to my east near Slapout….but still gave me some of the best structure of the day.

June 14 – 11:07 a.m. (9 hours 22 minutes) 69915 (248.5) MAP / GALLERY

An interesting day…. that started with a 2+ hour wait in Lamar after I got out of the motel. I drifted south toward Springfield and started watching storms near Pritchett. These low topped showers/storms produced a few funnel clouds before a storm blew up between Springfield and Walsh. This was the first serious storm of the day. I followed it northeast through the northeast part of Baca County where it split. The left split moved quickly north….but the right split shrunk up before reaching the Kansas line. Shortly after… a storm exploded in the northwest corner of Morton County and tracked northeastward toward Johnson. It made a right turn and travelled down highway 160 across Grant County. There were several areas where the storm seemed to develop nice supercell structure and good rotation. However, the only tornado I saw with the storm was tucked in the back associated with a strongly rotating occluded mesocyclone just east of the Grant/Haskell County line. I came very close to missing this event… almost continuing east and having the tornado form behind me. About the time I was going to make my move… a small funnel began developing. In the time it took me to get my camera out… it was clear it had already formed into a tornado. The tornado approached me for about three minutes before weakening just west.

June 13 – 11:11 a.m. ( 9 hours 57 minutes) 69619 (302.7) MAP / GALLERY

I left southbound out of Limon and expected storms to form off of the Raton Mesa. We did get storms… along with several others on the front range from south of Colorado Springs into northeast New Mexico. I managed to pick one of the weaker storms of the bunch and followed it all the way to just west of Lamar. It was about this time that I decided to give up on my current activity and shoot for some severe storms further south that were approaching Springfield. Just after heading that way… an isolated supercell storm formed a few miles west of Wiley and started moving very slowly to the north and northeast. This storm had great structure for a period and then seemed to be impacted by a strong region of outflow that surged in from the west. As the storm intensified and the RFD wrapped up as best as it could… a weak tornado was produced just to the northeast of Wiley. This tornado was only on the ground for about 30 seconds. Soon after… the storm began heading downhill with limited structure and a fairly high base. After getting a room in Lamar…. storms formed just west of the town that were excellent lightning producers. Viewing this only took a very short trip to the north edge of the city.

June 12 – 10:54 a.m. (9 hours 23 minutes) 69206 (415.2) MAP / GALLERY

The day didn’t end up being as productive as I thought it would be… but I did see another supercell and a lot of the Colorado countryside. Heading north out of Pritchett, you will get a good feel for just how wide open things are. I did manage to keep a good data signal and monitored things as I slowly went north. I stopped several times and enjoyed the view… shooting what looked like thousands of butterflies working in the roadside wildflowers. Eventually, a storm did form to the southeast of Elbert. I picked up a good view of it as it moved southeast by Simla. This storm had some supercell structure for several hours making it all the way into Kansas. With a limited amount of cloud to ground lightning to offer, I called off the chase near Wild Horse and landed in Limon for the night.

June 11 – 5:57 p.m. (6 hours 46 minutes) 68883 (322.5) MAP / GALLERY

I left Okarche late and drove up into southwest Kansas. I didn’t expect to see significant storms… but kept my eye on several supercells that were moving east through southeast Colorado. One of the storms was quite impressive and I made arrangements to overnight somewhere that both the storm and myself would get to about the same time. I decided on Ulysses and this didn’t turn out to be a bad decision. Around midnight, the storm rolled into Grant County and I found a place to observe it north of Hickok. Given the intense amount of lightning, it was easy to see the supercell structure with the storm even though it was well dark. I watched it as long as I could… then slid out of the way letting the monster ice producer go by. Falling in behind it… I was able to find a several mile wide stretch of hail on the ground with the largest stone measured at 2.07 inches. Later at the motel, another supercell storm blew up west of me and moved across Ulysses. I watched golfball size hail pound the parking lot from the comfort of the room and called it a night.

June 9 – 11:12 a.m. (11 hours 51 minutes) 68850 (560.3) MAP / GALLERY

This turned out to be a great day. I rolled the dice and came up lucky. My initial target was in south central Kansas and I started that way late morning. However, for the previous 24 hours… I had been keeping an eye on southwest Kansas for supercell potential. I might have stayed with my initial plan…but the thought of chasing through the Wichita area with hundreds of other chasers made me start drifting westward. There was an axis of fairly high instability that extended through the Dodge City and Garden City area and I just hoped that a storm or two would be able to pop. I went all the way to Bucklin and sat for only about 15 minutes when a storm did indeed begin forming just southwest of Dodge City. It showed me enough on radar that I continued west… watching it organize from the west and south sides of Dodge City. The storm split and then rapidly organized into an impressive supercell as it tracked across the city. I maintained a good viewing position for the next hour as the storm moved ESE toward Greensburg. Rapid rotation was evident in the updraft… and there may have been more than a couple of times that the storm came close to producing a tornado. I didn’t see evidence that suggested a tornadic circulation…. but I didn’t need one. The storm itself was reward enough.

June 4 – 10:38 a.m. (17 hours 0 minutes) (LE,GP,PS) (day 8) (881.8) MAP / GALLERY

Knowing this was our last chase day together… we sold out for a long drive to get whatever we could. Mid level flow over west Texas and eastern New Mexico was better than it had been in several weeks. There were solid model signals that severe storms would form in northeast New Mexico and move southeastward. We headed out I-40 and first echoes on radar were forming west of Dalhart, TX by the time we reached Amarillo. The storms were high based – as expected – but did quickly become severe. One storm produced a land spout tornado near Dalhart that we think we saw from a distance….but were too far away to tell. Our trip took us into New Mexico and then as far south as Plainview, TX where we saw a great sunset and some nice lightning after dark. It was a fitting end to the chase season for us as a group. The weather pattern never did get active for us. We had a lot of fun with great company… saw a lot of places we had not seen before… just came up short on a lot of our weather goals. To add insult to injury… several tornadoes were occurring in the plains the following day – while Lorraine, Gareth and Peter were on a plane back to England.

June 2 – 10:16 a.m. (10 hours 55 minutes) (LE,GP,PS) (day 7) (447.0) MAP / GALLERY

A marginal day for supercells with a broad target range from Kansas to southwest Texas. We drove southwest from Topeka and decided to play the Kansas side of things where supercells under a tight mid-level vort max formed. We stayed generally northeast of Pratt and found ourselves on a tornado warned storm near the town of Sylvia. This storm actually had some of the better structure we had seen in weeks and for a time had us believing that a tornado might very well occur. We watched very low cloud bases in the inflow region that were highly sheared… it was just having trouble tightening up. Our interesting period lasted about 10 minutes before a strong surge of outflow began racing southward. We did get a decent core dump of 1.25 inch hail about four miles west of Sylvia.

June 1 – 11:09 a.m. (11 hours 44 minutes) (LE,GP,PS) (day 6) (289.0) MAP / GALLERY

As has been the case for much of this season… conditions were far from perfect for supercells. Still – we thought there might be enough of a chance to get us to play around in northwest Missouri/southwest Iowa and southeast Nebraska. We left Topeka and drove north to Falls City, Nebraska where we spent a good part of the afternoon. When storms started forming, they formed everywhere – quickly. In short, we had a mess on our hands and it was over almost as quick as it got started. We picked out some of the more intense cores in hope that one might be able to take over and become a dominant supercell… landing on one that did for just a brief time. This was near the town of Oregon, Missouri. The storm was very much HP and obscured when we were playing it and it didn’t take long for it to become just another part of the big mess. After working our way southwest, we landed near Holton, Kansas to shoot some lightning. One of the more interesting items here was taking our pictures from the farm of Russ Riederer, a retired strength and conditioning coach who was with the Chicago Bears for 13 years. It was fun talking to him about some of the OU greats that he had coached through the years and yet another example of some of the things/people you run into while chasing.

May 31 – 2:05 p.m. (7 hours 43 minutes) (LE,GP,PS) (day 5) (389.0) MAP

We took a bit of a long route getting to Topeka… but made it to get in position for June 1st. Our initial plan was to go into western Kansas today and drop into west Texas on Monday… but we changed our target on Monday to northwest Missouri/southwest Iowa/southeast Nebraska.

May 29 – 11:00 a.m. (13 hours 22 minutes) (LE,GP,PS) (day 4) (559.3) MAP

This was a travel day from Fort Stockton back to Okarche.

May 28 – 1:53 p.m. (7 hours 18 minutes) (LE,GP,PS) (day 3) (241.4) MAP / GALLERY

We expected storms to be similar to the previous day – and that’s about exactly what we got. Enough moisture and lift was able to generate storms in the mountains of southwest Texas… some of the storms became severe and produced hail and gusty winds. Our day would have ended up below our expectations… but as we were rolling in toward Fort Stockton near sunset, we were treated to a great lightning display that everyone was able to take advantage of. The display easily pushed the day over to a good one. The only other interesting part of the day was Gareth getting introduced to a Texas State Trooper near Alpine. The meeting wasn’t a bad one and he was let off with a friendly warning and some advice to watch his speed.

May 27 – 11:13 a.m. (11 hours 17 minutes) (LE,GP,PS) (day 2) (371.6) MAP / GALLERY

Our day started out on a sour note – having a flat tire on I-20 and the rental not having the tools to change a tire. After a wait of almost an hour for AAA, we got rolling again toward far southwest Texas. We discussed heading into very remote areas without a spare tire and decided that it was best if we stopped in Odessa and have our flat fixed. After all the delays were taken care of… we finally got rolling toward Fort Stockton and eventually, Alpine. The day ended up on a high note with some nice lightning and a great sunset just south of Alpine. Despite the lack of organized severe storms… we were happy to once again get into some areas that were new to us and have several photo ops. Truth be known, this area of Texas is actually very pretty.

May 26 – 3:02 p.m. (8 hours 58 minutes) (LE,GP,PS) (day 1) (334.1) MAP / GALLERY

We got a bit of a late start due to delays with the rental vehicle. Storms were already severe west of the DFW area… but these were never a target/goal for the day anyway. We had planned on using the day as a travel day to end up in Abilene, TX. We stopped south of Seymour to shoot some pictures and video of the supercells that were well east of us when another group of storms got organized to our west and northwest. One storm moving southeastward through Knox County developed supercell characteristics for a period and had nearly continuous lightning. While we didn’t think that a tornado was likely… it did become interesting for a few minutes when the storm interacted with outflow from approaching storms from the southwest. We were happy that a day which was expected to be one of the least interesting in the trip, became the most interesting so far.

May 24 – 11:15 a.m. (9 hours 0 minutes) (PS) (day 4) 67598 (432.7) MAP / GALLERY

This was a travel day from Goodland, KS back to Okarche. We passed several areas of storms that were high based and lacked eventful structure… but still managed to find some things to point the cameras at.

May 23 – 12:52 p.m. (9 hours 21 minutes) (PS) (day 3) 67216 (372.3) MAP / GALLERY

Again… the weather pattern left a lot to be desired. We planned on being able to play storms in southwest Nebraska… but we were not going to allow them to keep us away from a pass by several geographic features near Bridgeport. We spent several hours around Courthouse and Jail Rocks/Chimney Rock before heading southeastward to check out storms that had formed near Imperial. We were a bit surprised by the lack of lightning associated with these and called it a day early in the evening. Shortly after getting to the motel in Goodland… nearby storms started flashing enough to draw us back out for a short trip to the west and north.

May 22 – 11:56 a.m. (10 hours 11 minutes) (PS) (day 2) 66855 (371.3) MAP / GALLERY

Our original target was the Nebraska panhandle area around Sidney. We left Goodland and worked our way northwest… finding a considerable amount of mid level clouds and light precipitation. This led us to be drawn toward storms that formed during the afternoon in northeast Colorado. ANY storms were better than NO storms we figured. Given the pathetic conditions (weak shear and limited instability) – it was no surprise that the storms lacked defined structure and had a minimal amount of lightning. We found a couple of places to pull out the cameras between Sterling and Akron… but the day was generally uneventful.

May 21 – 12:33 p.m. (11 hours 4 minutes) (PS) (day 1) 66440 (427.7) MAP / GALLERY

Peter and I hit the ground running after picking him up at the airport the evening before. The weather pattern didn’t give us anything to cheer about… so we used the first day as a travel day and landscape shoot day. We spent almost three hours at Monument Rocks – located between Oakley and Scott City, Kansas. This little “off the beaten path” gem not only made for some excellent photo ops… but we also got to enjoy it almost entirely by ourselves. During the three hours – one family of four stopped for about 10 minutes and one farmer drove by. We saw a little bit of distant lightning with a small supercell storm that formed in extreme northwest Kansas just after dark… just enough to say that we didn’t thunderstorm bust on the day.

May 15 – 6:26 p.m. (2 hours 44 minutes) (MA) 66016 (91.0) MAP / GALLERY

More tech issues caused a late departure on what turned out to be a fairly low end severe day. By the time we left Okarche… storms had turned quite linear from Kansas to the Texas panhandle. The best looking supercell was well out of reach in Texas. We drove north meeting the line of storms and strong outflow just west of Hennessey. The most impressive aspect of the storms was the rolling and boil associated with the clouds at the leading edge of the outflow. We stayed just ahead of the storms as they moved back toward Okarche – finding a couple of photo ops.

May 13 – 5:25 p.m. (5 hours 14 minutes) (DS) 65779 (160.0) MAP / GALLERY

Well… my forecast was pretty bad… but otherwise, it was a great day. Doug Speheger rode with me and we left northbound to Hennessey. Storms were already underway to our north and west at that time and we sat outside for a good period, keeping ants off our feet while I tried and failed to get the lightning trigger to work. I had a chance at a couple of pretty good shots. As the storms started moving south – so did we – driving through Okarche and west to 8 mile road. It would have been a long hard ride to get south to I-40 in time for the storm crossing from Blaine to Caddo counties. We sat and watched a smaller storm just to our northwest that had some decent structure for a time before it shriveled up. We started driving back to Okarche with little to do when the storm entering northern Logan County became organized and we kept driving through the town down Waterloo Road. We stopped near the north edge of Piedmont and took a few sunset/cloud/storm pictures and then continued over to Lake Guthrie in hope of finding some good lightning ops. Too wet or not enough CG lightning was the result and we returned back to Okarche stopping first at the IU for a quick pizza. The OKC storm got organized as we were leaving the IU and we spent the next half hour helping/advising our various friends that might be impacted by it.