This Week's System: Sir Busts A Lot

Wow what a crappy week for chasing this turned out to be. Brady, Zack Allen and I left Norman around two with an initial target of Waurika. Lack of appreciable forcing along the dryline/triple point doomed this day from the start. We sat at a truck stop in Waurika and watched as tower after tower shot upwards before toppling over and getting shredded. Many a healthy TCu was lost Tuesday. The only upside were the people I had a chance to meet in person for the first time, including Craig Maire, Chris Hayes, Mike Scantlin, Andrew Newcomb, and Evan Hatch as well as running into Blaize Edwards.  All that was salvaged was a little bit of dignity as we only had to make an hour and forty-five minute drive from Waurika back to Norman. The only supercell of the day ended up going just SW of Abilene, and went through the same area we had been two weeks earlier. It spat out some very nice structure and a few wall clouds near Throckmorton from what I've seen in terms of pictures so far. The bust itself wasn't so bad, but more what it portended for the next two days.

The next day would just end up rubbing more salt in the wound. A very moist, unstable airmass was situated squarely over all of western and central Oklahoma with the dryline slowly advancing out of the TX PH. A pretty stout cap was in place per the 12Z OUN sounding and most hi-res models had the only storms of the day breaking up along the warm front/triple point in the evening. The displaced dynamics for this day put out a red flag early, but it still looked like any storm that could maybe just get a whisper of life along the dryline in western OK would go crazy. Unfortunately, the only storms of the day ended up riding the north side of the warm front, with one of them having a nicely structured updraft and multiple gustnadoes before sunset. We were in no position to even get close to it and decided to call the chase around Kingfisher instead of continuing north any further. All attempts at TCu further west fizzled leaving us with a patchy cirrus deck and a juicy, untapped airmass. A lack of any trigger really killed the potential further south. Just goes to show how different a dryline day in April is compared to a dryline day in May.

Meanwhile in north Texas at Denton, there's a tornadic supercell about to cross I-35. 2014 not off to the best of starts.