Day 10 (5/26/2017): Limon, Colorado to Pampa, Texas (553
miles; 4427 total for the trip)
The forecasters for the day decided to stay north for more
chasing in Colorado. But before any chasing, we drove about 45 miles away so we
were able to see the Rocky Mountains! They were about 60+ away, and there was a
large cloud covering Pike’s Peak but it was very cool. After seeing the
Rockies, we decided to go back to Limon to re-evaluate. There were two spots in
Colorado that storms were possible and we decided to stay north instead of
chasing the group of cells in southeast Colorado. We headed towards Denver
where some storms were developing coming out of the Rocky Mountains; we hung
out east of Byers, Colorado to watch the approaching storm. The lightning show
was great; many students took awesome pictures. We stayed with the cell for a
couple hours and saw so many other chasers out. We eventually decided to start
heading towards our target city for the next day due to the long distance we
would have to travel. As we were heading south towards the Texas pandhandle we saw
the storms that tried to develop in the southeast part of Colorado. These
storms were not as organized as the ones we had witnessed in the northeast part
of the state. We were happy that we did not go south to chase, because the
storms were pretty bleak down here. We got into Pampa, Texas around midnight.
Day 11 (5/27/2017): Pampa, Texas to Denton, Texas (542
miles; 4969 total for the trip)
After a long night, the WeatherHawks gathered at 8:15 AM for
a weather briefing. There was a moderate risk of severe weather that covers
southern Missouri with an enhanced risk covering portions of Oklahoma, Kansas,
Arkansas, and portions of other states out east. The Storm Prediction Center anticipated
a 10% chance of a tornado forming throughout eastern Oklahoma and southwest
Missouri. The amount of Convective Available Potential Energy (CAPE) was
expected to reach over 5,000 joules with shear reaching over 70 knots
throughout the area. Around 4:00 PM a dry line was expected to come through the
area, dropping the dew point temperature from 70º F to 55º F throughout eastern
Oklahoma. Heat will be coming from both the Gulf of Mexico and the southwest portions
of the country. With a low-pressure system above the area, short-wave troughs,
and diverging winds, lapse rates of 9.7º C with storm-relative helicity of 245
m2 s2. The team decided to head towards El Reno, Oklahoma
to eat lunch and reassess the conditions.
After lunch, the team decided to drift south in order witness
the initiation of storms in Sterling, Oklahoma. However, one of the problems
with chasing storms throughout this region is the terrain. The area doesn’t
provide great chasing conditions due to the rolling hill, tall vegetation, an
inadequate road networks. In addition, another complication was the realization
of a holiday weekend. As a result, more people will be out on the roads either
traveling or chasing.
It wasn’t until 7:00 PM or so when storms began initiating.
We chased a developing storm that showed rotation and was intensifying
throughout the area. Throughout this time 2 tornado warning were issued and
more were to follow as the night progressed.
Around 8:30 PM we called off our active chase because of the
added challenges of chasing at night time. We did however move south of the
storms and encountered a significant amount of cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground
lighting strikes. We stopped for dinner in Ardmore, Oklahoma before heading on
to Denton, Texas for the night.
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| Cloud-to-cloud lightning strike. Photo by Luke Beringer |
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| Convective initiation. Photo by Luke Beringer |
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| The radar reflectivity of the storms we were chasing south of Oklahoma City. The blue target was out location, the road network east of I-25 is very poor. Screen shot from RadarScope. |
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| The radar velocity of the same storms. |
Day 12 (5/28/2017): Denton, Texas to Shreveport, Louisiana
(429 miles; 5398 total for the trip)
At the morning briefing it was determined that today would
be our last chase day. Given the conditions over the next few days and the
distance we were away from Whitewater we needed to start heading back to
Whitewater on Monday, May 29. At the briefing, we decided our target area for
the day would be south of us in Waco, Texas. The short-term models were showing
that storms were going to potentially fire within the area. After arriving in
Waco, we all had lunch and made a local tourist stop to Magnolia a
store/warehouse owned by Chip and Joanna Gaines from the HGTV show Fixer Uppers.
This made the day for one particular student that is on the trip because she is
a huge fan of the show. After lunch, we headed south to the small town of
Lorena, Texas and hung out in a city park waiting for the storms to initiate
and indeed they did. The storms were forecasted to stay isolated from each
other for some time but they merged very quickly and due to road networks had
to pull off the chase. We had to cut through the line of storms to get to the
back side of the storm. While we usually try to avoid these cores since they
were mainly rain we drove through the line. Along the way, we witnessed
multiple close cloud-to-ground lightning bolts. After escaping these storms, we
then began to head towards our final destination of the night, Shreveport,
Louisiana, where we will begin our journey home on Monday!
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