Storm Chase 2013, Day 3 - around Vidor and playing golf...

Still in a holding pattern, waiting to head out of Vidor on Monday morning to drive into the Plains for the first shot of thunderstorms on Tuesday afternoon. So in the mean-time with another nice day in store, plenty of sunshine and a cool breeze, we chilled out around my parents house in the morning (nursing a small hangover), before heading out to play some golf at the golf course where my brother is the pro. (the first picture is of the first cumulus clouds we've seen since we have been in Texas, ha)

The golf was followed by a lovely mix of cajun food cooked up by my dad...

(last pic is me with one of my bros, Daryl and my niece and nephew)...

Finally it was time for bed to get some rest for a mammoth driving day to Amarillo on Monday morning - and enter Phase 2 the weather part of the trip...(but never fear, I'm sure we'll find more food too).

Storm Chase 2013, Day 2 - around Vidor and Beaumont Texas

A chill-out day was in store to get over the jet-lag, unfortunately, I woke up at 4am feeling like it was almost midday, and was up the rest of the day.

We went and saw my niece's soccer game in the morning, and it was an absolutely beautiful morning in southeast Texas, cool with a nice breeze and not a cloud in the sky (not the best of weather for a storm chase, but a good chance to relax)...

After that we ate with my parents at "Fuzzy Taco" in Beaumont, my second straight day to devour some Tex Mex...woohoo.

We then went back to the house and chilled out with one of my brothers and played some pool and somehow 1 beer turned into about 10-12 each...oops!

Sleeping in was in store for the next morning...

Storm Chase 2013, Day 1 - LHR to IAH

Travel day...while I'm not a huge fan of being stuck in a small seat in a metal tube for 10 hours about 7 miles above the Earth, I don't mind flying that much, especially if I have a window seat. As a meteorologist it's hard not to look out the window try to work out what's causing all the cloud formations and turbulence you see and feel.  I always have a look at the forecast before I fly and try to see if what I am looking at matches up with what the forecast was. Geek moment over.

Anyway, the day started off on the wrong foot with me checking my emails at 5am British time only to realise our flight had been delayed for 3 hours (because apparently some dude at Houston airport shot himself, subsequently delaying flights). We decided to still get to the airport early, and we were rewarded by United with a free breakfast voucher/coupon, so that was a result. Therefore, this happened:

The flight was fortunately uneventful and relatively smooth, but it did offer up one gem out of the window...Either a 747 or an A380 was "overtaking us" over the Atlantic and producing the most beautiful contrail contrast with the dark skies above and the cloud below:

After landing and going through customs (Chris S bust'n up in Texas)...

We ate at our traditional post-landing spot, Pappasito's mexican restuarant, and I was not on my game and forgot to get pictures of the place and our food, so here are some shots ripped off from the internet: Either way, Chris S defeated quite a large plate of food, an impressive first show...(is he quietly preparing for the 72 oz Big Texan steak in Amarillo??? Only he knows, stay tuned...)

Finally arrived in Vidor long enough to have a drink, chill for a few mins and go to bed.

Weather-wise, we are still on course to head westwards early next week. Hopefully a few isolated storms somewhere in the TX panhandle / w OK or w KS on Tuesday, and then the weather appears to become more active for a few day after that!

Storm Chase 2013, Day 0 - It's that time of year again!

Day 0 - So here we are, me and Chris Steele at a Heathrow Airport hotel, for a night's rest before catching a flight from London to Houston tomorrow.

Look forward to seeing the family, eating tex-mex and drinking some sweet iced tea tomorrow...

Weather-wise we arrive into something that resembles more of a late winter pattern than mid-spring in SE Texas, where they are expecting much colder than average temps, in the 40s F for the first few nights after our arrival. Typical - bringing the weather with us.

As far as the storm chasing prospects - there won't be many until at least the middle of the coming week, but the pattern does appear to be a little more favourable for storms to develop across parts of west-central Texas by Wed the 8th, with the pattern looking slightly more active for a few days after that date. No large scale severe weather pattern is showing up in the models during the chase period, but hopefully there will be few things to go after from the 8th onward.

Don't expect much from a cloud/weather pictures perspective for a few days, but I'll keep you posted on the calorie intake which should eclipse the daily recommended amount quite easily.

Bedtime calls, alarm for 445am.

14th of June 2012: The Rain Monster Cometh!

An interesting day weather-wise. We woke up in Goodland, Kansas and had a nice sit-down lunch before the action kicked off in the afternoon. Luckily due to the previous day's drive were were in roughly the right spot for convection and storms to kick off in the afternoon. We drifted around Colby, Kansas during the mid-afternoon with temps making it into the mid-90sF before storms started to develop just to our NW. Once the covection got going we drove towards it from the south and saw numerous mid-level funnels from the developing cumulus - cool to get a picture of.

After reaching the storm which was already pretty well developed we were able to stay along side it or just ahead of it, despite it pushing outflow winds in the range of 60mph. It was apparent that this was going to congeal into a huge mess/MCS through the evening and turn into a rain eating monster. But not before we got to see a ragged wall cloud develop on one of the multi-cell storms before it merged with everything else that was developing.

There was a huge amount of dust being kicked up from this storm - and as we struggled to stay out ahead of it, the dust being kicked up by the storm and our car (which we were traveling down a dirt road) brought the visibility occasionally down to virtually 0. It was funny because we were probably travelling 50-60mph down these dirt roads, but at times the outflow was catching up to us, signalling it was moving at rough the same pace.

After punching a little ways out ahead of it, we saw the Netweather chase team go by and had a brief chat with them. Their chase was carrying them north for the next few days of chasing, while ours was taking us back down south to get Pete closer to the airport for his flight on Saturday.

After heading back south we were englufed by the rain, gusty winds, frequent lightning and small (penny-sized) hail for about 2 hours as we drove towards Wichita, Kansas. We did finally break ahead of it in time to get checked in at our hotel and head out for a late night Appleby's meal before calling it a night.

Here are some pics:

Convection developing near Colby, Kansas

Convection developing near Colby, Kansas

Mid-level funnels just north of Colby, Kansas

Pete examining the atmospheric potential

Big thunderstorms going up well to our south

Dust being picked up on the 50-60mph outflow of the storms

Dust being picked up on the 50-60mph outflow of the storms

Measuring gusts speed (45mph) at head height!

13th of June 2012: The letdown - no storm today...

Lubbock, Texas to Goodland, Kansas. 

Well it was bound to happen after an active storm chase so far, today was a bit of a let down. (although we did carry on our streak of consecutive days of seeing lightning between midnight and midnight as it was still flashing away after midnight in Lubbock as we went to sleep).

After waking up, we drove from Lubbock Texas up to southeastern Colorado hoping for storms to develop. We did see a little bit of dry convection (large cumulonimbus cloud that isn't producing rain at the ground) in the high plains of eastern Colorado, but alas no storm. It was probably too dry and with not enough instability and forcing it meant nothing could get going. So we carried on northwards and stayed the night in Goodland Kansas. Hoping for another round of storms to develop across western and central Kansas on Thursday afternoon.

Here are a few pics from our drive up through eastern Colorado:

South of Lamar, Colorado

South of Lamar, Colorado

Kit Carson County, Colorado

Kit Carson County, Colorado

Kit Carson County, Colorado

12th of June 2012: A wonderful supercell in New Mexico...

Wichita Falls, Texas to Lubbock, Texas. (Chased a supercell near House/Melrose/Dora, New Mexico)

What a day! One of my best chase days in a long time...(may still add a few more pics and a video in the next couple of days) If you don't want to read all the text the pics are all below!

We started the day in Wichita Falls, Texas and drove northwestwards through Amarillo and into eastern New Mexico where we began chasing a developing supercell at around 5pm near House, New Mexico. We would stay with this same storm over 7 hours, until around midnight.

Near House, NM we saw the infant stages of the supercell developing over open country and bringing nice inflow winds into the storm. 

We then moved to near Melrose, NM where the storm took on a classic rotating mesocyclone structure. During this stop we observed a couple of funnel clouds that developed along with amazing storm structure and plenty of cloud to ground lightning. 

We ended the night near Dora, NM where the storm was tornado warned and we could hear the sirens going off in the town. A very eerie noise, especially for those who lived there. After we let the dangerous part of the storm pass in front of us (it was night time)...we then drove in behind it where we saw 2 inch hail stones, bigger than golf-balls, covering the ground. Along with trees that were shredded by hail stones falling.

From there we called it a night and drove back to the east to Lubbock, Texas. This was about a 2.5 drive from just before midnight to 2am where we saw lightning flashing constantly to our north from an MCS that had developed over the Texas Panhandle. Once arriving in Lubbock we were treated to heavy rain as we unloaded our bags and gusts to about 40mph.

Developing supercell near House, NM

Inflow dust being sucked into the storm.

Developing supercell near House, NM

Developing supercell near House, NM

Mesocylone developing near Melrose, NM.

Brief funnel cloud development near Melrose, NM.

Lightning near Melrose, NM

Lightning near Melrose, NM 

2 miles W of Dora, NM - During a tornado warning

In Dora, NM, 15 mins after the previous picture

In Dora, NM, 15 mins after the previous picture

Tree shredded by 2" in diameter hail

11th of June 2012: Supercells, wind, hail and lightning in Texas...

Another successful chase day - this time across north-central Texas...We drove from Ponca City, Oklahoma across the Red River into Texas on I-35 before drifting southwest to intercept a series of supercells that develop around Breckenridge, Texas. Along the way we hit 103F on the car thermometer - so it was quite toasty out to say the least! From there we chased across Stephens, Young, Jack and Clay counties into the late evening before letting the main storm pass over us at Henrietta. 

We first intercepted the storm near Graham, Texas were we saw a lot of cloud to ground lightning, some dime (5p) sized hail and then were blasted by 50-60mph outflow winds.

As we then drove northwards to get out ahead of the storm we got a great view of a new developing updraft - signalling that the storms were still developing and likely to stick around for a while and also some great "shear-funnels" spinning out of the mid to upper levels of the storm...very cool structure to see...

As it started to get dark we stopped near Archer City, Texas to take some pictures of the outflow / gust front of now multi-celled structure...

And then stopped for a few lightning shots near Windthorst, Texas...

We then decided to set up in Henrietta, Texas to let the storm wash over us. There we saw very frequent cloud to ground lightning, wind gusts to about 40mph and some more dime to perhaps nickle sized hail. (Not to mention some very heavy rain, probably over an inch or so in 30 minutes).

After the storm died down we drove to Wichita Falls Texas for a sleep (although we did have Whataburger before we went to bed, mmm mmm, one of my favorite burger places - originated in Texas).

---------- morning of 12 June ---------------

We woke up in Wichita Falls, Texas this morning (Tuesday morning) and are heading towards the Texas Panhandle (Amarillo) or eastern New Mexico to intercept this afternoon's/evening's storms.

This is probably our best shot at a tornado so far this trip, although it is still a very small chance (SPC has a 5% risk). However, supercells with strong gusts, BAH (big ass hail) and another good lightning show are almost a guarantee again later though.

I'll try to update from the road.

Oh, and hello from our friendly friend Mr. Grasshopper: