Thursday 17 May 2012

Thursday 10th May 2012 - S Central Texas

Todays Chase Target was just South of San Antonio which would be below the MCS Boundary, but to get there we had to drive south from our starting position of Dallas Fort Worth and through some non severe MCS's first near Waco and then near Austin. I decided to dive south ust past Austin and finally arrived on the warm side of the boundary near Kenedy. What greeted us was much more structure and a nice low base, we are fairly certain we saw at least a funnel cloud just as the storm was tornado warned but could bot be 100% sure due to terrain. What did surprise me this day was just how good the terrain for chasing is between San Antonio and the Gulf Coast and also what sort of Supercell structure we were about to see in the coming hours. We picked up another HP Supercell just south east of Kenedy near Goliad, this was a great storm and we tracked just south of this HP Cell watching a rotating wall cloud for a long time, we went further south to Refugio and saw probably the storm structure of the day, a lovely HP Supercell, once again this storm could not get a Tornado to the ground, our final storm of the day would be near Beeville, some great Lightning was shot with this 4th Supercell of the day, we would then let this cluster of storms chase us to Corpus Christi where we would stay the night (Who would have thought we would be staying at the seaside on a storm chase) This line had a sting in it's tail with a Tornado warned storm in the line, an insane 95mph gust was recorded close to our location and lot's of damage was reported including big 18 wheeler trucks blown over and damage to grain silo's north of town. At times it felt like a Hurricane with palm trees bent over and some locals said it was one of the worst storms to hit the town in 20 years.

Wednesday 09th May 2012 - JFK Assassination Visit

Finally the guys are arriving later this afternoon, the car is kitted out and ready to go with everything working so me and Dave went to Downtown Dallas for some Lunch and visit the site of JFK's demise as we had some time on our hands.

It was really good learning from the guide exactly what happened and where the crucial shots were fired from, we also found a great little english style pub for lunch before the journey back to DFW Airport to pick up Olly, Nick and Tim.


Pictures show the road where JFK Was Shot and also me pointing at the 6th Floor Window of the Library Building where Lee Harvey Oswald took the supposed shot.

Wednesday 9 May 2012

Setting Up For Stormchase 2012

Left London Heathrow at exactly 12 Noon on Monday 7th May and arriving at 310pm Local Time so a 9hr 15 Minute Uneventful flight. Temperatures were very Humid when we got here at 87f with dewpoints in the low 60's. An MCS Was ongoing off to our South West and this would set the stage for Monday evening. After grabbing a bite to eat we headed off South towards Grand Prairie and found a great spot overlooking about 10 Radio Masts, Our Target Storm was about 15 miles further south and we were treated to Anvil Crawler and Ground Strikes out of the anvil hitting these masts in front of us.
Tuesday 8th May was used as setting up and kitting out the Chase Car, the atmosphere today was much more stable with temperatures in the low 20's due to the Cold Front's passage the night before so no storms today or indeed this evening. The Outlook and the Models still cannot be trusted much more than 4 days out and we are starting to see signs of some chaseable opportunities over the weekend (Initially in Southern Texas) and then next week maybe from Upslope Flow over either New Mexico or Colorado.

Some Pictures of our Chase Car and 1 of the Lightning Images from 7th May 2012

Sunday 6 May 2012

2012 Storm Chase

Well in 24 Hours I will be in London Heathrow Terminal 5 awaiting 9hr 30 mins flight to DFW On British Airways.

This year we have decided to go out chasing 10 days later which has kind of bitten us on the arse (As I Expected) with Storms or Supercells nearly every day for the last 10 days, granted there has not been 1 picture of a Tornado touching down anywhere but some of the Structure has been amazing.

So what does the outlook look like for the next 10-14 days, well pretty damn grim it has to be said, Models are still showing little or no Jet Stream over the US, With the Northern Arm firmly on it's love in with Canada and the Southern Stream eating Fajita's in Mexico City.

What all this means for us is marginal low risk chase days (If any for the foreseeable) Which is not what we wanted, we still have until the 10th May for Chase Day 1 but todays outlooks (6th May) are getting worse and not better tbh.

Will update when we get to DFW and have everything set up.