OK and TX Panhandle Storms

Chase Recap:

I started off the day at work with no intention of chasing in Texas, but parameters were coming together nicely to bring an appreciable tornado threat to the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles.

I headed west on I-40 into Texas before stopping for gas in McLean, TX. I ran into Chris Sanner as I was coming out of the gas station.

I decided to head north towards Pampa, but even north of Pampa seemed like a decent place to sit and watch the uninspired CU field. Things didn’t seem to want to fire, until I started seeing development in the north sky. I thought maybe I could catch up to it, but it appeared on radar in Kansas and I knew it was out of striking distance.

I ended up heading north, just in case. I made it north of Perryton, TX before turning around and heading Southwest to go after the less-than-impressive storm going up north of Amarillo. I intercepted those storms (which had become multicellular) west of Spearman near Gruver at sunset.

I continued following the storms north into the OK Panhandle near Texhoma where I had some small hail. Most of it was pea sized, but a few pieces on the ground were dimes and penny sized.

I followed that storm up north of Guymon and tried for some lightning ops, but ended up missing the better Cloud-to-Ground lightning.

Eventually I headed back to Guymon and met up with Stephen Jones, David Goines and Zach Elliot at Pizza Hut.

It was a long drive home!

Photos