James Gustina
Summary: A marginal setup with some tornadic potential in the eastern panhandle. Chased with Brady Kendrick catching some grungy crap just east of Groom as well as an awesome monster shelf just west of Alanreed. Lack of capping ruined what would have been an otherwise good day on the Caprock.
This day began showing up on the GFS several days in advance. Moisture return seemed to be a problem that would plague this setup along with almost no capping to speak of. But the day of, dewpoints in and along the Caprock canyons and along I-40 reached the mid-60s. At this, Brady and I decided to pull the trigger. Shear was modest but decent enough for a semi-discrete storm to get something going if it hit the deeper moisture pooling in the Caprock. We headed out of Norman around two, with an initial target of Groom.
We made it through the construction from hell pretty well just outside OKC and made our first stop on the other side of the state line in Shamrock at the Taco Bell. We ran into Jon there with two freshmen from OU. After shooting the breeze for awhile, we all moved west to Groom while the first storms were just beginning to take shape down by Tulia. We made it to Groom as the first storms came out of Palo Duro and became severe warned. Unfortunately, the storms had no shot at becoming even close to supercellular with the storms congealing into a line very quickly. We decided to move back east of Groom (I didn't get to see the giant cross unfortunately) and set up just off I-40 to watch the storms move in. Coincidentally enough, it was exactly where Brady had been three years earlier to watch the Groom tornado move to his south on April 22nd of 2010. We watched the storms for awhile as they puttered around and spat out some decent lightning.
In the final two photos, it briefly looked like the storm was getting it's act together and attempting to spit out a wall cloud. In the first photo below it actually had some decent rising motion but unfortunately it quickly fell apart.
We then decided to call the chase, as it was apparent that none of the storms would get isolated enough to do anything of note. As we went east on 40, the storms fully congealed into a line, with the northern segment slightly bowing out. Brady and I pulled off just past the Gray County rest area and just west of Alanreed to get some shots. We got an amazing view of a mean looking shelf rolling off the Caprock in the distance.
Brady and I continued east, briefly stopping in Shamrock for some food before continuing back to Norman. We unfortunately missed a semi-discrete storm with some monster hail that came through Shamrock not thirty minutes later, but it was after dark and a Chevy Sonic in gorilla hail is a recipe for disaster. All in all, it wasn't a bad chase and even though I thought I was ending the season, a nice reward would come exactly a week later on October 4th.
Chase Stats
Miles Driven: 468
Cost: $20
Tornadoes: 0
Hail: None encountered
Wind: 35 mph outflow
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