Chase Day 5/13/08

I will be chasing this afternoon and evening as parts of the area are under a slight and moderate risk of severe storms. Conditions this morning are complex with a cold front racing southeast across western parts of Oklahoma. Ahead of the front temperatures are already in the upper 70s to low 80s at 11am. Dewpoints are pretty sticky as well from 66-70 degrees. Skies were mostly sunny in parts of southwest Oklahoma however to the east and south there were mostly cloudy under a stratus deck. Models continue to indicate the 500mb wave to continue to be sheared out as it heads northeast. This will help intiate storms ahead of the cold front throughout the afternoon and evening. My target location is the area just to the east of Wichita Falls and west of Ardmore. This area has several questionable parts to it but is the area with the best potential in my immediate area. Pros is the extreme instability with CAPE >4000 and LI >-8 and some backing of the 850mb winds towards dusk. Cons is the lack of 850 and 700mb winds, subsidence behind the 500mb trough moving east and possible Cap still holding back the storms at the surface till after dark. One thing that gives us hope is the very steep and good convergence of Theta-E. So any t-storms that root there way to the surface could put down a tube with any boundary interaction and its strong updraft. So not looking for long tracked tornadoes but we could get some weaker short lived tubes. I'll try to update this later this afternoon before things pick up around 5pm central time.

Edit: 5/20/08 Sorry for the late post but I typed and posted a final chase analysis. Didn't noticed it didn't post until today so this will be a little shorter then the original.

The chase started out with me and my photog Oliver head southeast to just south of Waurika, Ok. We sat there for almost two hours just along the boundary where towering cumulus tried and tried to organize. By this time you could really see how the lower and mid level winds were not going to be favorable. However the temperature was 92 with a dewpoint of 73 at our location. By 6pm storms we starting to go up along the boundary in northern Oklahoma and to our southwest in northern Texas. So we went after the storms to our southwest since it was in our viewing area and in an area of over 4,000 CAPE. Once we got in to the general area I started to lose my Internet and the two counties that the storm was in has horrible chase terrain. So waited to the northeast side of the storm hoping for another storm to fire along the boundary or for it to move towards us. Well the storm matured and moved more east then north till dark. However it never produced anything more than a wall cloud and golf ball size hail. We did have a storm fire to its northeast in Archer county that was warned for golf ball size hail. We drove around it core and received only dime size hail. Shortly before sunset the storms quickly dissipated and the day was over. As you see by the storm reports my target area was a little off and the day was pretty quiet.