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Another great setup in NW Texas. Being May 3, we thought this day had
a name to live up to, so we expected a lot to happen. There was a
stratus deck covering most of the area, as usual. However, areas of NW
Texas were starting to clear. I'm not really sure what time things
happened, so this is just a quickie log.
Target: Childress, TX
| Chase Partners: |
Kyle Mozley, Aaron Kennedy |
| Location: |
NW Texas
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Miles Travelled:
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658
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Total Time:
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12 Hours
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We left Norman and headed SW on the H.E. Bailey Spur for I-44. We
headed SW for Lawton. Once in Lawton, I contacted Aaron to see if we
could meet somewhere (he had left before us). We headed east on US-62
towards Altus and caught up with Aaron. We continued east, then south
to Childress, TX. Once in Childress, we filled up with gas and checked
out some data with some other chasers. Two supercells had developed.
Storm-A was exploding south of us towards Lubbock. It was already a
massive storm...more about it later. Storm-B was rapidly developing
just to the SW of Paducah. Great forecast target. So, we left and
continued towards Paducah.
About 5:30pm, we approached town and began
receiving rain and some decent hail. It was coming down at a pretty
good clip. We continued to head south of town, and eventually came out
of the rain.  The storm had a very weak meso and appeared to be cycling
and trying to backbuild. We headed back north towards Paducah, then
east. After looking at road options, we pulled a U-turn and went onto
some back road....don't ask me where. This is where things got fun.
The road was originally gravel...then dirt...then mud. Oh great.
There was now way to stop and turn around. If we did that, we'd get
stuck. It was probably the funnest "Bob's Road" I've ever been down. You can see Aaron fishtailing in front of me and me swerving
as I fight to keep control of my car. This video is at 4x speed (3.7 MB).
After 10 minutes of this road, we finally reached
our highway. We continued east and decided to keep with the storm with
faint hopes that it might recycle and re-strengthen. I checked with my
nowcaster and learned that most of the action was pretty crappy.
However, about 60 miles to our south, a MONSTER of a supercell had
developed. A well-defined BWER had been present on radar for quite
some time. Aaron decided not to try and play it, but Kyle and I did.
We dropped south towards Aspermont. Our hope was
to intercept the storm somewhere near the Lake Stamford area, if we
could find a road. Once in Aspermont, we turned east towards Haskell.
The storm picked up speed and beat us to the lake, and we could find no
roads to get us on the backside of the storm without core punching. At
this time, we hear on the radio multiple confirmed reports of weak
tornadoes on the ground at Lake Stamford. Woe is me. We sped east
hoping to drop south in front of the storm, tehn west on it's south
wide somewhere near Throckmorton, TX. We arrived with plenty of time
and made our move. However, the dryline stalled, and the sun went
down. The storm continued to move away from the dryline and the axis
of instability. Thus, the stomr died. It was a very impressive visual
collapse. Too bad we never had a place where we could stop to take
some video.
Anyway, it was about 7:45pm at this point, so we
headed north and ate dinner at our favorite Sonic in all of Texas. The
Sonic at Seymour. Then, we continued hom and got back to Norman
sometime late. The dryline stalled somewhere just west of the OKC
Metro. The stage was set for a potentially significant severe weather
day in eastern Kansas and eastern Oklahoma.
SUMMARY:
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FYI, when chasing in the Paducah, TX, area, listen to 146.520 MHz, it's
the unofficial "chaser" simplex frequency. Great communication and
coordination among the spotters/chasers in the area. Anyway, not a bad
chase overall. Once we found a tornado storm, we targeted our spot
perfectly. We just couldn't get the roads to get there. Story of the
season. Oh well, sometimes that's the way things go.
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