Oh how tired I am. I didn’t get home til about 4 am Thursday morning. This was the first time I have been home since Sunday evening and over 3000 miles on the road since then! I am still exhausted even after sleeping half the day. I am a bit happy we are going to have some Chamber of Commerce weather for a week or so. I need some down time!
Yesterday was mostly a flop. Yes, another one. The upper support didn’t arrive until well after dark, so the only thing that could get going was the elevated crap well north of the front, and a couple of supercells right along the front. The first one went on to produce a tornado that damaged parts of Breckenridge, TX. We were not in position to intercept it, but waited for the later convection in the warm sector.
Finally later in the day, another one erupted along the front and we decided to go after it. Those that were watching the LIVE ChaseCam saw the foggy mess we were in as there was a cold air pool about 500 feet deep north of the front, and while we were right under the updaft base according to the radar, we couldn’t see a darn thing. That was quite unnerving, so we decided no point in staying with that one.
After a bite to eat the dryline blew up all at once, and we decided to get in front of an intense part of it and take some shelter in Sterling City, TX and see what it would bring. Showed a pretty good hail core on it, even though we never saw any, but did sport some winds in the severe catagory. We hoped for some good lightning for photos after it passed, but nothing much to work with.
This squall line went on to become a derecho event that did quite a bit of damage across north Texas during the early morning hours.
All I can say is I will be glad when the May storms get here.
Positives that came from it, we did the first live intro for KCBD that I chase for locally, that went very well, and we had some viewers from livenewscameras.com that were able to chase along with us via the video feed. Sometimes I forget that stuff we take for granted out here (high winds, cloud to ground lightning) isn’t as common as other parts of the world. Mother nature didn’t disappoint with not one but two close CG strikes right in front of the camera!
So welcome all you new folks from livenewscameras.com Hopefully as the season progresses, we will have MUCH more interesting things to show you on the live feed!
Time to rest up and get caught up on some work now!
Was watching you quite abit on the streaming video. That was the most exciting fog video I’ve seen. j/k! LOL!! I picked Big Spring as a target and would have been right there with ya. I was convinced that something was going to erupt around Midland by late afternoon. What a strange setup.
What was amazing to me is just how shallow the cold air really was. The VWP and VAD profilers from LBB and Jayton indicated that even up there it was less than a 1000 feet deep. Had a weak surface wave not have developed along the front around Abilene (which coincided with the big tornadic supercell), I’m thinking the front would have sprung back north to Lubbock at least.
Here’s to May!
Hey, David! This is my first time to your site. It seems as though no one was in position to intercept the Breckenridge tornado. My chase partner and I stopped for a data update and watched that cell from the side of the road, but we just didn’t think it would do anything special. Low and behold, we finally give up on data and go after it and ended up being about 15-20 minutes too late. Such is life as a chaser!
Anyway, great account! I will definitely be bookmarking your site and linking to it from my Chase Blog. I have a full account of our day with a few pictures up on my blog, here, if you are interested:
http://sirken.wordpress.com
Here’s to better luck in May and June!
Sorry for the late reply, I have been taking a much needed break…
That was definitely a tough day. Often days like that a great deal of luck is involved with catching anything significant.