Day 5 — a chase of a day!

About 900 km on a real chase through Oklahoma into Texas. We started with our analysis on paper and discussed target areas in teams, then loaded into vehicles, accepting the offer of a tour through the Accuweather facilities with The former graduate of our course a few years back. The office was right downtown, and traffic was very light on the Sunday morning. 

The operational group was up and running in this 24/7 operation... impressive tracking of weather, responsiveness to a wide range of agricultural and industry clients, EMO officials, and event-planners, in the USA and internationally. They run sectoral, national, and very issue- or client-tailored datasets, and report as required by each. They were all articulate and enjoyed their work at computers, each linked to many monitors for different, concurrent displays of many product runs. They also track Canadian weather, and one of our instructors relayed the while the US has National weather Storm Prediction Center that issues all weather watches and localized warnings are outlined in conjunction with county or local officials, Canada has regional offices that issue both watches and warnings directly for very large regions (e.g., prairie central region includes Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba and extends to the the Territories, the Arctic, and into Northwest Ontario. After students asked weather and career-related questions we filed out and presented our Miller analyses outside in the shade. In good group presentations of our charts, all three teams identified two regions, one in mid or west Oklahoma and another in the area where Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri meet up. After the previous day (or really more), the latter was going to be tough to get discrete cells and was already in the morning involved in new thunderstorms in the morning, so we'd miss it by the time we got there. To the delight of those wanting to put another state on the list, we were heading west and south, likely into Texas depending of how things turned out with weather during the day.

We headed south on I-35 watching radar carefully as we threaded between cells on the radar display, knowing there were prospects of heavy rain (realized) with possible hail. After stopping in the burning sunshine for gas and a quick lunch (fast-food outlets were mostly slow), and watching at least one chaser vehicle race out southbound ahead if us, we got back on the highway and headed south once more. Traffic was very slow on a 30 mile stretch as there was an accident in the midst of a construction zone that was down to single lane flow. The initial plan at 5pm was to go to Ardmore and turn east to intercept storms coming toward us in that location. But our stop (and photos) at the junction showed a nice wall cloud and lightning (another “repeater”) to the west and more than one cell that looked promising, so we drove uphill in their direction. We got to a turnoff into a scenic overlook about halfway to Wilson, where there were already tripods doing time-lapse imaging. We saw heavy rain and hail approach fast from the western valley we looked over, and peered into a “whale's mouth” of sunshine over the hill to the southwest. As rain got heavier, we decamped and headed further west, now going in curved roads up then downward. We turned south at Wilson onto road 76 watching the sky and radar displays trying to fine a good view to the west without trees along the road, and not get trapped in a bend of the Red River of the South without a backdoor exit if the weather got too rough with hail or the hoped-for tornado. There were two cells coming one after the other, both topping about 45000ft. We stopped on the roadside in sunshine again, with heavy, green-grey clouds to the west, and watched the lowering cloud deck, and dark layers in the anvil. The condensation in the updraft was tantalizingly dark and beautiful above the turquoise blue-green, eerie and somewhat threatening sky. I looked for rotation but didn't see any on the underside of the cloud deck. We all felt the wind shift from the warm updrafts to cold downdrafts, sometimes for very brief periods, other times for longer times. The roadside setting in tall grass and wildflowers was perfect for watching the lightning as the rain approached and the first heavy drops fell. Knowing we needed to get out from under with that safe exit to the south (the alternative being to core punch straight west into the oncoming storm with a mandatory turn to the north, also in the storm, and stay in Oklahoma). I remember thinking there were so many changes from brilliant sunshine to stormy with pouring rain in one day. Loading once more into the chase vehicles, I thought with no small regret, that this may very likely have been our last chance to see a tornado forming, and it turned out that way, alas. 

We turned west on 32 through Courtney in heavy rain, then south over the bridge, crossing the very red, Red River laden local earth, into Texas. It continued raining heavily through our pitstop in St Jo, then lightened up by Muenster (unfortunately without a stop for the poppyseed strudel advertised on a billboard along the highway). It was already getting late in the daylight and any further storms were further west or south, so we got back to the interstate and drove back to Ardmore for cajun-style dinner at Two Frogs, complete with a collection of fancy electric and acoustic guitars autographed to the owners by famous crooners or rockers, accompanied by B&W photos of some same and others including images of young Dylan, Jagger, Cooper, etc. We had enjoyed the chasing on our last chase day before the long drive home, and were enjoying one another’s company. We stopped for a group photo under the “Two Frogs” neon behind the live-band stage in the restaurant, loaded into the vans, and drove north to overnight again in Oklahoma City. 

As I now do understand, tornadoes are truly rare events in fairly commonplace severe thunderstorms, and the instructors leading our chase had given us the best opportunities, right in the inflow notch of more than a few supercells. All in all, we'd actively chased in seven states (SD, NE, IO, CO, KS, OK, and TX). The weather pattern with a south-lying jet stream, means that severe weather and chasing were further south this year than in previous course runs. Of nine or ten courses that have run so far, only three saw tornadoes (one saw one and two saw multiples, three or four). I'd bet that more than one member of this year's course will chase again, whether or not they become meteorologists. An interesting time to travel trying to find really bad weather that typical vacationers on holiday would try to avoid! 

Looking back, only a few days has brought a significant experience, weather-wise intellectually, in real-time learning, and personal, to each of us and to the group as a whole, as we're becoming friends who could really work together and continue enjoying one another’s company. An A+ and vote of confidence with thanks, to everyone! Something tells me that the Canadian weather forecasters (and the public) are going to gain at least a few new colleagues from among the class, and judging by the preparations, thinking, and presentations this week, they will be excellent! Judy Anderson