From 10th May to 20th May storm activity "shut down" in the chaseable part of the US as a major low over the Great Lakes scoured all the moisture out of the Plains right into the Gulf of Mexico. Day after day of sunny, blue skies - thr worst weather for this kind of "holiday"
Spent the time since then sightseeing - major impact on me was viewing the storm damage from Katrina along the Gulf Coast (around Gulfport & Biloxi) and in New Orleans. Destruction is the term that comes to mind - mile after mile of smashed buildings, debris and abandoned housing/businesses - and this after nine months has elapsed! It'll be years before that area recovers.
For last day here, I targeted western Kansas for some upslope activity coming from Colorado. Went up to Dodge City initially, arrived there about 3pm, but no cellphone coverage to get on to the Net. Managed to get an Internet connection courtesy of the Comfort Inn parking lot
- pulled down a satellite pic, and there were two storms blowing up in Colorado – the southernmost storm (next to extreme southern Kansas) had a 50,000 ft top, and had blossomed quite quickly, and had a nice clean, round appearance on radar, so I chose that one to target. The one further north, getting up to next to northwest Kansas had better moisture and better easterly winds for inflow, but it was too far away for me to get back to OK City at a reasonable time. (noticed late tonight that this location still has a 55,000 ft Meso at 1:00am!)Storm I chose was an LP ordinary thunderstorm (in the vicinity of Guymon), but had great views of virga and downdraft clouds (mammatus), and several very pronounced dry downbursts blowing up dust to quite some heights – very dramatic. Got some good pics with the setting sun behind the virga and downdrafts.
There was another storm blowing up south of Amarillo, so I decided to go south, on 136 from Guymon – I think a combination of the downdrafts from the earlier storm moving SE from Guymon, and an outflow from the storm to the south of Amarillo, fired up a great storm in front of me in the vicinity of Fritch, Texas , moving north from there – I made it into Borger, Texas just in time as the storm was severe warned on weather radio, with nickel size hail and 60 mph downburst winds. Sheltered in a gas station, heavy rainfall, great lightning and strong winds – then went off south after the storm moved through – then witnessed some more really strong microbursts stirring up dust in almost vortices fashion on several occasions.
All in all a good day after so many days with clear blue skies over the past 10 days – not a supercell or tornado, but satisfactory nonetheless after such a long “break†Drove about 800 miles, just getting back into OK City at 12:15am – was worth it!
Will try to post some pics when I get back to NZ.