Adam Lucio and I set off Tuesday afternoon from Chicago, IL to Wichita, KS. We left at 12 P.M. and ended up arriving at 12 A.M. We were staying at Mike Nelson's place on the south side of Wichita and hoped to be on the road by 6 A.M. the next morning for the northeast Texas panhandle. We woke up to clouds and fog and this was the case throughout the Southern Plains. Things were not looking up, that is for sure. As we nudged through Greensburg, KS and points south.... clouds were beginning to break and by the time we reached Shattuck, OK we were in bright sunshine.
We reached Shamrock, TX and the clouds were back in play. Dreary cool cloud cover with a cool wind. We sat at the McDonald's off of I 40 and grabbed a bite to eat. My Verizon USB760 snapped and I was without data. I was NOT happy. Efforts to repair it were futile. Luckily Adam had his AT&T card and we were still somewhat in business. We went south out of Shamrock and then east toward Memphis. The plan was to wait in Memphis, but convection was starting further to the west around Amarillo and south to Lubbock so we went southwest toward Silverton. On the way to Silverton we met up with the Caprock Canyon State Park. It was a beautiful sight, but storms are much more important than site seeing ;). As we crested the last hill, we were treated to the flat plains I have grown to know and love from Illinois.
As we hit Silverton, a nice cell formed to our southwest and quickly exhibited super cell characteristics. Bases were relatively high but it tried its' hardest to spin a low level circulation. As seen below, there was just not enough low level instability/moisture to get the job done today.
CG started to pick up, so we made haste back to the car and decided to call it a day and head to Childress for dinner with Skip Talbot. Video of close CG below.....
Overall a decent chase: 650 miles or so - amazing LP structure - pea hail.
April 21st, 2010 - Floydada, TX
