GoBoB Chasing

Tuesday’s chase was more of a get out and do something rather than a refined target chase. It is hard to be in a tornado watch box and simply do nothing. Steve Miller (OK) and I had arranged to leave work at 2:00 PM and decided to go get the best we could. Oklahoma really fell apart as the day progressed. I noted the dark overcast skies as I went to work in the morning and said to myself “no good can come of this.” The storms started firing early and were mostly linear by the time we were out. We headed to Cleveland, OK and then up to Osage county. Radar indicated we were relatively close to circulation but we were so socked in with rain that we could not see anything. Nothing quite like being in the core for an hour with bucket loads of rain. After disengaging in Hominy, OK we head east to Skiatook to meet up with Aaron Cunningham who had taken the direct route via 75. Aaron managed to grab video of some kind of lowering. We analyzed radar and computer models for about 30 minutes and determine there is no discernable threat nor was a secondary storm in the thrashed out air likely. We decide it is time for some BBQ and a couple of stiff drinks. I forgot to reset the odometer, but GPS reconstruction puts the trip at 104 miles.

It is interesting that while many parties thought Tuesday would be a significant weather event the Tulsa National Weather Service Forecast Office never really bit on the dire solutions. Unfortunately the Texas-Mexico border was not quite so lucky. (Need to add a note about domain knowledge)

This was a tough chase day, between pre-positioning on Friday and then shifting targets we ended up with 1100.6 Miles on the odometer and set a new personal longest chase day. Thanks to chase partners Robert Hall for driving those long mile, and Karen Hall for being the first to see the initial rope funnel that turned into the first tornado. In all we saw 3 separate distinct tornadoes from the same meso and I’m pretty sure we had another large rain wrapped one that I won’t count as I‘m not completely sure.

It was a series of changing chase parameters that led to the ever evolving chase target yesterday. First Lubbock, then Plainview, then Amarillo, then Dumas, then Dalhart, and lastly back to Dumas, Texas.

Special thanks to Steve Miller (OK) for teaching me that sometimes you have to wait for the storms to come to you (this is hard) when you know you have the best air and very fast storm motions. Additional thanks to Tim Vasquez and the Chase Hotline for once again providing incredible intercept guidance.

Below are three links to video, my server doesn’t stream well so best bet is to right click on them save them to your computer and then click open. These are low resolution clips of High Definition Video that is available for licensing or for free for educational or research purposes (leave a comment if interested). All content copyright 2007 Bob Hall

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

Video was shot about 3-½ miles East of Dumas, TX looking west between 7:25 and 7:27 CDT. Notice the enormous size in comparison with the Water tower. This was shot zoomed all the way in.

I started liking an Amarillo-Lubbock-Midland TX event several days ago as the individual forecast offices started using some of the enhanced wording that gets me excited. Currently sitting in Wichita Falls, TX looking at model data and trying to resolve the best chase targets. I’m within 4-5 hours of all my desirable destinations.

It has been a long time since I chased down here and I’m looking forward to hopefully see some of my Friends from Texas.

Nice wording in the Forecast Discussions. Will be interesting to see if SPC pulls High Risk trigger on the 1:00 AM 0600Z. It would not really surprise me to even see a Particularly Dangerous Situation tomorrow.

Waiting…

Friday looked to be a reasonable chase opportunity and I pulled the trigger for a (PTO) Paid Time Off day on Monday afternoon. The models vacillated and confounded in their solutions. I had the day off and really wanted to chase, but had two entirely different plausible chase plans. I loaded up the chase vehicle this morning and had not settled on a chase target; then went to pick up my chase partners Robert and Karen Hall (Dad & Mom to me). I loaded the vehicle in a cold rain under intense thunder claps in Tulsa. We left Tulsa at 10:00 AM and I remarked to my parents that I have never been able to make one of these day two situations turn out good.

Truer words were never spoken!

713 tough chase miles today.

Tim Vasquez took an unprecedented step and posted his professional recommendation to the stormtrack web site (with hand analysis and scanned graphics). This may have been a bit of professional bravado, or an effort to support his clients. Tim’s professional consulting services start Friday and he generally can’t publically share his great skills as people such as myself have engaged him as the ultimate consultant.

I had to get this report in so I can start a 4-21-07 slug.

Looks to be an interesting day and pretty much everything is contingent on the convection tonight and the resulting stratus clouds that will act to keep temperatures down. With a very impressive low and relatively intense 3 km shear it would be a real shame if we don?t see some sunshine to get temps up to 70 or so which would yield CAPE values of 2000 J/kg. We won?t know much until tomorrow morning and I?m going to stop fretting over model solutions. Nice graphic out of Fort Worth FO

Looks to be an interesting day and pretty much everything is contingent on the convection tonight and the resulting stratus clouds that will act to keep temperatures down. With a very impressive low and relatively intense 3 km shear it would be a real shame if we don?t see some sunshine to get temps up to 70 or so which would yield CAPE values of 2000 J/kg. We won?t know much until tomorrow morning and I?m going to stop fretting over model solutions. Nice graphic out of Fort Worth FO.

Looks to be an interesting day and pretty much everything is contingent on the convection tonight and the resulting stratus clouds that will act to keep temperatures down. With a very impressive low and relatively intense 3 km shear it would be a real shame if we don’t see some sunshine to get temps up to 70 or so which would yield CAPE values of 2000 J/kg. We won’t know much until tomorrow morning and I’m going to stop fretting over model solutions. Nice graphic out of Fort Worth Forecast Office.

If you are a regular visitor of this web site, you will see that what looked to be a major tornado outbreak has transitioned into a snow event for Tulsa, OK. I utilize the very same models to forecast tornadoes that the climate scientists use to predict broad climate change. These models routinely fail on a 48 hour, 24 hour, 12 hour, six hour, two hour, and twenty minute time scale. They are the most useful prognosticative tools we have and yet they aren’t that good at predicting non-linear (severe) events.

I’m not standing here saying that the climate isn’t potentially changing, but to say that the models that routinely fail on a 48 hour, 24 hour, 12 hour, six hour, two hour, and twenty minute time scale should be trusted  to model 10 years, 25 years, or 50 years is absolutely ludicrous.

The Earth has been getting warmer every day since the retreat of the last major continental glaciers in North America 10,000 years ago.

I really hope to get some feedback on this post as I have watched the models fail with spectacular ineptitude the last 84 hours. The simple truth is we don’t understand potential climate change and crying wolf will bring in LOTS of research dollars. Conservative and realistic estimates aren’t very exciting, exploitable, politically useful, career enhancing, fear mongering, or TV documentary worthy.

The latest model runs took this whole thing south and as Mark Plate stated snow is currently more likely than tornadoes in Oklahoma at this point. I really don’t fancy a chase in the almost the unchaseable nether regions of Texas or the jungle of Oklahoma. Oh, and it will probably be after dark.