Target Area: Shamrock, Texas to Sayre, Oklahoma
Chase Area: Geary/Watonga, Oklahoma
Observations: one wall cloud and one supercell
Distance: ~400 miles
Time: ~8 hours
Chase Team: Gabe Garfield, Joe Garfield, Elise Johnson, Kate Horgan, and myself
SPC Convective Outlook: Moderate Risk (Click to see SPC products, data, and storm reports)
Chase Setup: A strong shortwave trough was moving eastward through New Mexico. A cold front extended from far western Texas southward through eastern New Mexico. Several outflow boundaries were located from the Texas Panhandle through Oklahoma. Surface dewpoints were generally in the mid-60s to near 70 over western Oklahoma, with surface-based CAPE between 1000 and 3000 J kg-1. The 0 to 6 km bulk shear was between 20 and 40 knots.
Chase Log: June 10, 2005. My first storm chase! I was very excited to go on this first storm chase, but I had absolutely no idea what to expect.
We first drove out to Shamrock, Texas, which was my first time in Texas. After pouring over weather maps via the free WiFi at the Best Western, we decided to move back east into Oklahoma.
Near Geary, Oklahoma, we intercepted a strengthening supercell; my first supercell. We even drove on red dirt roads (in the rain, no less) for my first time. There really isn't a whole lot to recount though; we stopped at the Watonga airport for a while to watch a small, weakly rotating wall cloud on the supercell, but that was about all we saw before the storm kind of fell apart and we headed back.
While it normally may not have been a very exciting day, I had a wonderful time and was immediately hooked on storm chasing...and the rest is history!