Chase Log: May 05th, 2009

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NO CHASE MAP EXISTS

Total Distance: 600 miles
Target Area: Throckmorton, TX
Chase Area: Breckenridge to Stephenville, TX
Maximum SPC Risk category: Moderate

This is borrowed from Dan:

We, unfortunately, *were* with the hordes that got hammered by hail on I-20 near the highway 108 exit. However, we weren't trying to get *to* the meso at the time, we were instead driving away from the meso trying to get ahead of it and south, timed it just a bit too late, and clipped the core as it was crossing I-20. Pretty much everyone in our caravan had a cracked windshield. Personally, this is the first time I've ever been chasing where our vehicle got damaged this badly by hail (and even this wasn't *too* bad). We usually try pretty hard to stay out of it.

As for the rest of the chase, before the hail incident we were on the storm pretty much from Breckenridge on. It was neat to watch the storm initially evolve from several narrow updrafts into a single massive updraft that quickly acquired supercell characteristics thereafter. A group of high school students from Windom High School in Minnesota were with us and were treated to a nice classic supercell with pretty much the whole gamut of severe weather except for the tornado, and it was nice to be able to explain to them what was going on with the storm (to the best of our ability, of course). We hopscotched ahead of the storm on 207, and at one point near Necessity we witnessed a brief funnel cloud in a rapidly-occluding wall cloud surrounded by rain curtains. At times, very warm, strong RFD winds were present south of the wall cloud. At no point do I remember any particularly cold outflow, so I really doubt cold pools were an issue with the lack of tornadic activity with this storm. I suspect, with Don, that the storm motion relative to the hodograph had a lot to do with it. Also, there was a lot of opaque rain curtains surrounding the meso through most of the storm's life, which quickly shrouded each new wall cloud, which makes me wonder if excessive water loading was hurting the overall buoyancy of the low-level updrafts.

On the way back we hit some ridiculously extensive and dense fog starting just north of the DFW metro, which didn't really let up until north of Ardmore, and never completely went away all the way back to Norman.