Follow the adventures of storm chaser Rebekah Lo.
Be sure to check out the Green Sky Chaser home page on Monday, as I’ll be unveiling the new design, on the one-year anniversary of Green Sky Chaser!
There will be a few big changes, including the layout, the lack of a photo of the week (for now–I may reinstate this soon), random rotation of the home page photo, new chase photo gallery layouts, and new chase logs and photos!
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With highs forecast to be in the mid to upper 90s, and dewpoints in the upper 60s to lower 70s, heat index values this week for Oklahoma are going to be between 100 and 110.
Overnight lows are only going to drop to the mid-70s (thanks in large part to the high dewpoints).
As the summer ridge is starting to build, the storm season looks to have finally wound down for the Southern Plains (and at least in some part perhaps for the Central Plains).
Now it’s time to go to the lake, fire up the BBQ, and hope for a good MCS season this summer! 🙂
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This week’s post in the global weather and climate series features Matador, Texas.
I chose this town because I briefly stopped there last night on the way back to Norman from a storm chase, and there could be some storms around Matador this afternoon/evening as well.
Bob’s Oil Well in Matador, Texas.
Located in west north Texas, just south of the panhandle, Matador is home to 740 people (2000 census) and the seat of Motley County, Texas. Bob’s Oil Well, seen in the photo above, was established by a guy called Bob who moved to Matador after he fought in World War I. Up until his death in 1947, Bob kept live rattlesnakes and exotic animals in a small zoo to attract visitors from across the country to come to his adopted hometown.
A few more facts about Matador (weather data from US Climate Data):
Current and forecast weather: The National Weather Service is calling for mostly sunny skies and highs in the lower 90s this week in Matador, with lows in the upper 60s to lower 70s. Yesterday, some strong thunderstorms passed through Matador, and today there could be some strong to severe thunderstorms that pass through the same area.
With dewpoints in the upper 60s, southerly surface winds veering to westerly winds aloft, moderate instability, and some weak wind shear, it looks like there will be a decent chance for multicells and probably a few supercells to form in the south Texas Panhandle into west central Texas and eastern New Mexico. Severe hail and an isolated tornado or two cannot be ruled out.
For more information on Matador, here’s a link to Wikipedia.
For information on current and forecast Matador weather, see the National Weather Service Lubbock page for Matador.
Next Tuesday I plan to take a look at the climate and weather in Antarctica. As always, if you have any comments or suggestions for future cities, please leave a comment on this post!
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On the road again…targeting Texas for the third day in a row. 🙂
(As of the time I am now posting this, 1:10pm, we are between Lawton and Altus on Highway 62, heading west.)
Chase forecast hasn’t changed much the last couple of days…there is less upper-level forcing today, as the trough has lifted. We don’t have very high expectations of today, but again, hard to resist a chase day in west Texas, especially when it could be the last one for a long time.
Long story short, we’re heading down I-44 and then will go out towards Childress (Texas) and perhaps see how far west we can get. Today is a bit tricky as far as determining storm initiation location…yesterday’s storms laid down some outflow boundaries that storms today may form along. There should be some supercells today, but my primary concern at this point is that we may not get to them (at least for a while) as the forecast keeps pushing the storm initiation location further west.
As to yesterday…we drove all over certain parts of west central Texas, chasing a tornado-warned supercell that fell apart as soon as we got on it, chasing another tornado-warned supercell with tennis ball-sized hail that dropped to only quarters when we got on it (did see the most amazing shelf cloud and green sky, though, and got some tiny hail), and later chasing a bow with a great shelf cloud and getting pea-sized hail with extremely strong winds that made my car shudder even as we were parked under shelter. We saw a beautiful sunset with mammatus clouds, and also saw one of the most incredible lightning displays that I have ever seen…the lightning on the way back to Norman (behind the line) was not that frequent, but when we did see it, there were many tendrils that crawled along the underside of the clouds and occasionally touched the ground. We’d see a dozen or more both intra-cloud and cloud-to-ground flashes in one several-second display at a time.
More to come in the chase logs later…I probably won’t be updating the chase logs until I get the new website up, but hopefully that will come as soon as the end of this week!!
Shelf cloud over Guthrie, Texas
Sunset and mammatus clouds over Spur, Texas
Sunset and mammatus clouds over Dairy Queen in Spur, Texas
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Didn’t see too much yesterday…two supercells and two wall clouds, as well as plenty of CG lightning and a very green sky (and a bit of tiny hail)…but overall it was a bit of a frustrating day as we missed a few tornadoes that were in our area. However, we did get to see a fun little windmill museum in Shattuck, Oklahoma (oh, and we also saw a flock of wild turkeys south of Lipscomb, Texas)!
However, it’s off again today; setup is fairly similar to yesterday so I won’t go into details. A few supercells with hail and tornadoes possible south of the Texas Panhandle.
Just about to head out for the area just east of Lubbock, around Matador to Ralls, Texas. Will be on Spotter Network, but not streaming (using old computer again, which doesn’t like my streaming camcorder).
From yesterday:
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