25.05.2025: Wichita Falls - Crowell - Benjamin - Dickens - Afton - Seymour - Wichita Falls (375 miles)
Rating:
Today we are a little late to an early convection at the Cap Rock near Paducah. While we head
west towards the cloud, another tower goes up south-east of it. The early storm has pretty
much every storm chaser on it, so we speculate on the southern one with a little detour and
see this sky: We drive underneath, what is this?! Yes it's nice and all, but that's not how it's done:  We change plan and drive to the other storm, which was stationary with very hight cloud top for at least two hours. We could easily have busted big time, if this threw a tornado while we were sampling dying alternatives. We need to keep in mind the swarm intelligence of the chasers here and be careful with such cold blooded outsider tactics, because I have troubles to mentally handle missing tor situations that could have been easily reachable. Well, this time, we didn't miss too much, and at the moment we reach the storm, it gets into great shape, throws 5 inch hail in front of us (as to reports) and tries hard to maintain a ground circulation over there in the field:   Darkness is upon us:  Or this green-age after we make a little more distance. We stand here like deer looking into a head-light:  Under the storm we meet the great explorer George Kourounis. We have a short talk and he shows us some of his amazing volcano shots, great guy, live your dream:  Mobile radar truck under the big cloud:  There was a moment this storm almost threw a tornado, when a lot of inflow-"food" came in from the south and got ingested. Reports came in for >4 inch hail stones. Overall a great feel-good and weather rating:  Afterwards, we have a few words with Dr. Howard Bluestein (the guy with the truck above), doing velocity spectrum analysis of tornadoes with the mobile radar truck. He tells us that the rain drops on one hand and debris on the other separate quite well on the spectrum:  At bed time in Wichita Falls we get rolled over by another thunderstorm, so we get up once again to catch this at a nearby lake:  Another hour later, a few roaring thunders strike directly at the home base. I am amazed how good the sound quality of that phone is when there is no wind: |