Day 3: A beautiful sunset storm in rural TexasPosted May14, 2008 at 01:44 AMWEATHERFORD, Texas -- It was getting past 5 p.m. Tuesday and there was no sign of storms firing anywhere close as we waited beside a church on top of a hill just west of Ardmore, Okla. Storms had started to develop from Oklahoma City northeastward toward Tulsa and beyond, but nothing was going up south of Oklahoma City. A warm layer in the atmosphere called the cap simply wasn't being broken by enough strong updrafts to produce thunderstorms. But a few counties south in Texas, we noticed storms rapidly developing on radar. With nothing else close to us, we made a quick jaunt south across the Red River toward the storm more than 100 miles away. Just before 8 p.m. we succeeded in catching up to the biggest of the stroms, over a very hilly and forested part of north-central Texas in Jack County that wasn't all that much different than Virginia, if you ignored the cactus. The countryside provided a dramatic setting for a powerful thunderstorm that dropped several lowerings and showed signs of rotation. Low-level shear -- winds changing with height near the ground -- was not strong enough to produce tornadoes this day. In fact, despite two large tornado watches being issued, there was only one tornado report in the nation on Tuesday, and it occurred along the Missouri-Kansas border. But we did get an exciting and gorgeous conclusion to a long chase day that looked for a while like it might be a bust. Our student storm chasers were excited with how the day ended. You can see some of those scenes in the audio soundslide that will be inserted into this blog entry. Here is one photo of a wall cloud trying to spin into something more. WEDNESDAY: It looks like there is severe potential in the same general area of north-central Texas, so we will probably not be traveling far. Follow Kevin's progress on this map. See previous video on May 13.
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About this blog
Kevin Myatt works on the copy desk for The Roanoke Times and is its principal weather geek, writing a weekly weather column and advising the newsroom on weather topics. He helps guide students on a storm chasing trip to the central U.S. each May and was an editor for "Hurricanes and the Middle Atlantic States." .....Advertisement.....
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