High Plains Drifter

March 2nd was my first chase of the 2008 storm chase season.  I wasn’t planning to chase this day, given the fact that for awhile it looked like the best setup for supercells would be too far south.  After awaking early in the morning Sunday, and upon looking at some initial data concerning the day’s severe weather threat, the focus had really shifted to the north where a pronounced warm ridge in the low levels would advance northward into southwestern Oklahoma.  Mid 50s dewpoints were to be expected to the west and northwest of this warm nose, providing about 1000 to 1500 J/kg of surface-based CAPE.  Since it appeared there was a reasonable chance at supercells within 4 hours of Dodge City, I decided to make it a chase, and left around 8:30 for a target around the Mangum, OK area in the southwestern part of the state. 

I arrived in Sayre, OK early in the afternoon to clearing skies with bubbling cumulus to my south.  It was warming well into the 70s to my immediate south with a few lower 80s around Childress, TX.  I decided to hang out there in Sayre until things started to develop.  Between 1:30 and 2:00pm, the incipient storms were developing just to my north.  It was tough to decided what to do — whether to go after the first "blips" on radar, or just meander east and wait for more stuff to develop down the line, which I expected.  There was uniform instability/shear pretty much across all of western Oklahoma, which made picking a storm largely a guessing game, or whatever the most interesting echo was that was the easiest intercept.  I knew that anything developing north of me would be extremely difficult to intercept given the northeast storm motion of 35-45 mph.  I headed north out of Sayre then east towards Elk City.  Some of the updrafts to the north caught my attention but they were already 15-20 miles north of me and rapidly moving away.  I drifted east a little bit on I-40, stopping occasionally to figure things out.  There were numerous small cells — storms of little organization.  It was a mess to try and sort through. 

By 3:15, I made it as far east as Clinton, and decided to head south down Hwy 183.  I made it all the way to Rocky, south-southwest of Cordell, and finally off to my west was some pretty decent updraft structure with one of the storms closest to me.  I followed this storm, stopping occassionally for photos, from 3:45 to 4:30 when I reached a location about 11 miles east of Rocky.  The storm attained some rotation and had fairly decent updraft structure including a rear-flank downdraft.  As the storm was heading northeast, I decided to continue following it north on Hwy 54.  A tornado warning was issued for the storm between 4:45 and 5:00 for strong radar circulation to my northwest.  There was indeed broad rotation at cloud base with pretty impressive clear slot/rear flank downdraft structure, but I could never discern what I would consider rapid rotation.  I continued east on Hwy 152 to Eakly to stay ahead of the storm and put myself in position to intercept the next storm (which was also tornado-warned) immediately to the south.  Instead, after looking back again to the northwest and seeing a very ominous looking "mass" of cloud near the ground wrapped up behind the rear-flank downdraft, I decided to head north on Hwy 58 at Eakly.  What followed was a very interesting mass of cloud that very much resembled a large funnel cloud or even multiple funnels protruding to the surface in the proper location for tornado development behind the clear slot.  I was too far away and driving while this was happening (trying to get closer), so it was very difficult to ascertain what was going on.  Briefly, it certainly looked like a laminar "cigar" shaped funnel developed, descending quite low from cloud base.  It was changing shape quite a bit though.  It really appeared that tornadogenesis was really trying hard here, probably somewhere between Weatherford and Colony.  Eventually, this feature waned and the storm croaked as I headed north back towards the I-40. 

This would be the extent of the day’s chase pretty much.  Since it was still fairly early (only 5:30pm or so), I decided to head east to get ahead of the line in hopes of getting decent shelf cloud images.  I continued chasing until about 6:45 or so, awaiting the line of storms just outside of Minco.  The shelf cloud structure was less than inspiring, unfortunately, and it was also too dark for much photography.  Most of the lightning was embedded in the core of the storms, so there wasn’t much opportunity for lightning photography either.  The chase was done and headed to Clinton to stay the night.  I didn’t feel like driving for 3 hours back home in the dark against a 40-50mph head wind.