5/24/11 Chase

Very disappointing chase!  Left Fort Worth around 12:30 and headed north to Gainesville.  Noticed that a large cu field was already developing (earlier than thought) in SW OK by 19Z and figured that we better head W on 82 towards the SPS area.  We came up to US81 and headed north towards Waurika.  Waited there for a while while storms were firing north along I-40 in WC OK.  We stayed put hoping that other storms to the south would fire and move in our direction.  In retrospect, we should have headed N and positioned for storms as 2 tornadic supercells were dropping large tornadoes north of us.  We eventually hopped on the storm that eventually produced the Dibble tornado.  We played catch-up the entire time.  Partly my fault for waiting to long to intercept and aided by the 50mph NE storm motions, we never were able to see the tornado.  I also made a terrible decision in Lindsay to head west for a mile and then north to view the tornado.  The storm was moving so fast that we fell behind it and then had to move north to Dibble and then east.  We passed two damage paths.  From what I saw, damage was at least EF3 and the path was probably 1/4 mile or wider.  It was the most intense damage that I have ever witnessed before.  I will never forget the smell of the fresh pine from all the snapped trees and the completely destroyed homes with families all huddled together in shock.  I will upload some images when I get a chance. 

We made it to Purcell and decided to head south to intercept a storm headed for Pauls Valley.  Never made it in time but saw a mid-level funnel from the weakened storm along I-35.  More storms were to the south, so we continued heading south into Ardmore and followed another tornadic storm through town.  After playing around in the rain curtains of the RFD for about 15 minutes, we headed back to 35 and decided to just head for home.  For the remainder of the drive, we had to witness several supercells just to the east of 35.  It was excruciating to see these rock-hard updrafts and know that we werent able to intercept because we were too late.  Brought back memories of 4/14/11. 

When we made it into the DFW area, we noticed an incredibly structured supercell directly to our south in the Benbrook area.  It had an incredible back-sheared anvil and continuous lightning illuminating the updraft.  It was about 9pm, but we decided to intercept.  We headed around the east loop of 820 and intercepted the storm near the intersection of I-20.  Followed it east and witnessed a large wall cloud and funnel but the RFD eventually wrapped around the meso and we were forced to stop the chase.  We made it home around 11:30.

So, to sum it up.  An 11 hour chase with several intercepts of tornado-warned cells and 0 tornadoes.  It was an epic fail in that regard.  However, I learned a lot about chasing on these "major outbreak" days.  Position well to the NE and get on the first storms that fire if you can.  If you play it right, you can drop off and get the next NE moving storm coming your way.  It lloks like several veteran chasers did that and I definitely won't make that mistake again.  Also, I need to make sure that I don't become so radar-dependant.  I found myself treating the updated radar images as they were in real time with respect to the storm.  This put us out of position near Lindsay as I went against my gut and headed west instead of east.  If I would have just went with my original plan, we would have had one hell of an intercept of the Dibble-Washington-Goldsby long track strong tornado from close range! 

As Marc put it well........"Shoulda gone east!"

Oh well.  There will be more tornadoes to chase soon :)

Here are the reports from today: