So… my love for the state of Texas has become something of a running joke among the chase crew this year, and for good reason. I’ve been joking a lot about how much I like Texas. I’d like to illuminate one of the main (amusing) reasons why.

But first, a tiny bit of backstory. On the chase, unless you spend money to buy fast food at stops, you most often eat cold meals from the coolers in the back of the vans. This typically consists of some lunch meat, peanut butter and jelly, bread, crackers, chips, grapes, and a few other foods I’m most certainly forgetting. Buying a lot of meals can get expensive, so I eat out of the cooler as much as I can. That said, I will lose my mind for lack of hot meals – so the continental breakfast at hotels is very, very important.

More specifically, I eat waffles. A LOT of waffles.

My morning routine goes as follows: get up, shower, finish processing photos, partially pack, eat a waffle, finish packing, morning meeting, then depart. There is very little wiggle room there for any activities to take longer than they should, as this process already takes about two hours on an average morning.

This means unexpectedly small waffles are quite inconvenient, as that means I have to make more than one.

Enter Texas.

As we all know, Texas is… rather fascinated with itself. Everything there is in Texas is about Texas – sometimes hilariously so, as is the case here. In many hotels, the waffle iron in the breakfast area makes a Texas-shaped waffle. The overall iron is the same size, but instead of putting a circle inside the circular space there is a Texas shape in the circular space.

This poses a problem, as shown below.

The shape of Texas occupies much less area within a bounding circle than the circle itself, meaning that an inset Texas shape in a waffle iron wastes a large amount of space. More exactly, Texas occupies around 52% of the area within a minimum-size bounding circle. Therefore, a waffle from a Texas hotel will be significantly smaller than a waffle from a hotel anywhere else in the developed world.

Everything is most certainly NOT bigger in Texas.

As a consequence of Texas’ renowned self-admiration, I end up needing to spend a few extra minutes each morning in the lobby making an additional waffle in order to satisfy my daily desire for delicious hot waffles as a measure to stave off the urge to buy hot food during the day.

This slightly inconvenient consumption of my time has resulted in a strong, if not rather unreasonable, opinion of Texas.

So there you have it. Texas isn’t so bad… but their waffles kind of are.

Today was another bonus day. The majority of the tornado threat was west of Waco, but because we needed to head north and didn’t want to get pinned in Houston line 2013, we decided to leave our lodging in Rankin, TX and play northwest of Dallas in hopes of catching an interesting storm in the process of heading closer to home.

We didn’t really get anything, and I spent a lot of my time making photos of the flora and fauna we encountered along the way.

Once we decided it was unlikely that the cell we were watching would produce anything of note, we headed toward Graham, TX and skirted north of the Dallas metroplex toward Arkansas. On the way we caught a great looking rainbow stretching over the highway!

…and, of course, I have to include a photo of the fantastic crew of Probe Two today!

We’re overnighting in Texarkana, AR tonight and will be working on heading to Blacksburg tomorrow. We’re going to stop by the damage path of the Mayflower and Vilonia EF4 tornado on our way; just hearing about tornadoes affecting people is sobering, but seeing it firsthand will surely be an experience I won’t forget.

Onward!

Armed with the knowledge that the next day’s threat was marginal at best, we set out determined to chase yesterday’s setup until we could chase no more. We headed out from our lodging to a park in Big Spring, TX to wait for initiation. Sadly, during this process I sustained the first casualty of the trip – one of my fast memory cards disappeared.

Once storms fired, we blasted west to intercept. The first storm we got on produced several wall clouds before it started to get really HP-ish.

Once visibility became lacking, we aborted off that storm and ran.

The next storm we got on exhibited great structure; a good looking mesocyclone with a wall cloud and visible inflow bands.

We sat watching that storm until we were about to get hooked, then headed out.

Farther down the road, we paused to take another look at the storm structure. It was a very photogenic storm – a shelf cloud and a wall cloud under a smooth mesocyclone base, with bubbling convection above.

We sat and watched the next two storms until they overtook us and we were forced to drop south.

We stopped at a gas station to regroup and eat dinner. We saw the Texas Tech DOW trucks for the third time there, so I had to take a photo.

Today will be the beginning of the long pull back to Blacksburg, perhaps with some chasing on the way.

Yesterday there was fairly significant disagreement among some of the chasers on where to target; some people, including me, favored moving west and playing along the dryline where there was less chance of storms, but much better territory for chasing. Others wanted to head south to near the Mexico border to where the tornado threat was higher, where there was higher risk of losing storms due to terrain or a sparse road network.

We ultimately decided to jog west and make the decision as late as possible. After some deliberation, it was decided that we would head west in search of a stalled outflow boundary from the previous day that would set up very near – if not on top of – the dryline. We set up near Hobbs, NM to wait.

We caught a some little developing cell and watched them eject anvil after anvil in the upper level winds.

We decided to bail off of that area in favor of development occuring northwest of Roswell, NM. On the way, we encountered some cumulus towers building on the dryline; we stopped to watch them develop. They started looking fairly promising, so we decided to stick with that area for a while.

Once that started to weaken, we realized that there was a good looking cell west of Hobbs near Lovington, NM. We decided to shoot for that cell because it was entirely discrete. It had become a supercell and looked fantastic on radar. Not only that, but it was not surrounded by a cumulus field and was very visible. As we approached, the rain-free base became visible much earlier than we would ordinarily expect, owing to the discrete nature of the storm.

We stopped to admire the storm for a few minutes, and noted beautiful anvil structure, as well as surrounding scenery.

The storm had fantastic base structure. It was one of the most photogenic storms I’ve laid eyes on.

Unfortunately, we were losing light. But because of the lightning show, we were able to stick with it and keep looking at structure well after dark.

All in all, a great day. We overnighted in Lovington, NM and will probably set up somewhere in the Texas panhandle for the chase today.

We started today by heading into Texas to wait for storms to initiate. But  by the time we got there, storms had already fired.

The first thing we caught was a cell that would soon dissipate, but showed amazing structure on its way out.

While admiring this storm, it was impossible to ignore how remote this part of Texas is. So I took a really wide picture of the road with the anvil over it, because why not?

The last thing we caught was a little updraft trying to get started. It ultimately didn’t do anything, but was really adorable while it tried.

Once that cell petered out, we headed for Colorado City, TX for the night. During our trip, we got to enjoy some nice scenery!

Our target area for tomorrow is in this general area. Hopefully we don’t whiff!

All we did yesterday was push a bit south and wait at a park in case anything happened. Nothing did, so it ended up being a great rest day! We headed south to Clovis, NM for the night once we had blown off steam with frisbee and football.

So, instead of a storm photo, here’s a photo from Wyoming of some horses we made friends with.

Today we’re targeting eastern New Mexico and the western Texas panhandle. Hoping for a photogenic storm!

Yesterday did not look like a particularly good day, with the primary threat being multicell storms. We went after it anyway… because why not? We headed south from Lamar, CO toward Clayton, NM. On the way, we watched cumulus towers going up behind some beautiful landscapes.

We targeted a nice cell that appeared to be trying to organize, and stopped to observe some nice anvil structure on our way to the base of the storm.

The storm was fairly photogenic, with some nice green tint to it.

Unfortunately, the storms were beginning to coalesce due to the lack of a meaningful cap. We headed east to get out of the way and observed two interesting features on our way – some nice anvil structure, and some cumulus towers that had been overspread by anvil material from the main storm. It was very bizarre to see convective towers under another cloud structure.

We stopped again to observe the front flank of the storm, and didn’t really see anything other than a shelf cloud.

We continues moving east and saw what we believe to be a very, very brief landspout tornado. I caught just a bit of it; it was very faint and rather far away. Around the time we stopped to look at this, lightning struck a field less than a hundred yards from the car; it was extremely loud and close enough that we could see the puff of smoke rising off the grass where it had hit and feel the shockwave.

We stopped again to observe a gust front from a southern storm colliding with our storm. It was causing a lot of vorticity and it appeared that a tornado may occur nearby. I spotted some rising scud clouds and started keeping an eye on them. The feature I was looking at is in the center of the frame below. I also got luck enough to catch a lightning strike in the same frame.

After watching it for a couple minutes, the feature started to become laminar and then became a funnel cloud.

Chris spotted it about the time I started yelling to Robert that we should go, and we all jumped in the cars to head east and get to a safer place to observe the circulation. Nothing ever came of it, but it was certainly an exciting few moments.

A good chase day conjured from nothing at all. We then headed west to Vega, TX for the night. We fought some flooding on the way through Amarillo, TX but got through after some maneuvering.

It’s uncertain what we’ll be doing today; stratiform rain has settled in and that seems likely to choke out any potential for severe weather.

We’ll see.

For yesterday’s chase, Denver was our target… along with every single other chaser within a day’s drive. We headed south out of Kimball, NE fairly early to make it in time for storm initiation. On the way, we saw some nice low-level rotation in the form of wind farms.

We arrived at Denver International Airport and waited around a while for the storm to come down off the mountains into chaseable territory. It looked fantastic when it finally arrived where we had set up. Unfortunately, it soon started wrapping curtains of rain around the mesocyclone, obscuring any view of a potential tornado.

We kept repositioning further and further east, following the storm. It produced a lot of convincing lowerings (such as the one pictured below) and a couple funnels that members of our group thought they saw. Unfortunately, none of them produced anything.

Right before we got off the storm, we got to see a wall cloud with incredible rotation very, VERY close to our position. Inflow winds were approaching 40 mph, and the whole storm was rapidly spinning.

By this point, chaser convergence was getting bad. The line of cars pictured below wasn’t all that problematic for single cars trying to merge, but for our three vans it was quickly becoming a dangerous situation. Headlights can be seen streaming out of the precipitation of the storm as chasers flee the rain and hail. The nature of the road network focused the vast majority of chaser activity onto this road, and we ultimately aborted as the storm became outflow-dominant and chaser traffic worsened.

We dropped south immediately to try to beat thunderstorm development occuring in a line between our storm and the storms to the south. We drove through some heavy rain and passed very near the wall cloud pictured below, but made it through to sunlight on the other side without encountering any hail.

After that, we beat feet to overnight in Lamar, CO to set up for the next chase day.

It looks like today we’ll be either in northeast Colorado again, or somewhere in eastern New Mexico. We have yet to have our strategy meeting this morning, so it will be interesting to see what the other forecasters in our group think.

Onward!

We left North Platte, NE at 11AM to head into Wyoming to catch storms firing off the mountains. They promised to be nice low-precipitation storms with beautiful structure. Unfortunately, that didn’t totally pan out, but they were still amazing. First, though, the intrepid members of Probe 2!

We arrived at a hilltop and ended up staying there well over an hour, watching the bases of two cells pass by us. Below is one of my favorite images from the first storm – a wall cloud under the rain-free base, and blue sky outside the storm. Very nice to have isolated cells!

While up there, we saw what appeared to be a very brief elephant trunk tornado. Unfortunately, it appears that it may not have been; spotters closer to the event say that the dust column was not rotating as we believed it to be.

We eventually fled south as the second storm drew closer, and saw some nice storm features on our way.

Once we dropped south a ways, some of the chasers in our group thought they saw a cone tornado embedded in the rain of the more northern cell. I’ve really overcooked this image to bring out detail, and I’m pretty convinced that it’s a rain shaft.

We repositioned again after watching that for a moment, and were treated with a beautiful striated, ground-scraping wall cloud over a nearby mesa. This cell was not tornado warned at the time; perhaps the rotation was (literally) under the radar. I tried calling it in on the local SKYWARN frequency, but I couldn’t hit the repeater with my radio.

We capped the night off with a wonderful lightning show and sunset. Grabbed this photo of a lightning bolt next to the sun peeking through the rain – probably my best lightning image yet!

After waving goodbye to the storm, we headed to Kimball, NE for the night. It looks like today we’ll be somewhere in Colorado. Mid-level winds are mediocre at best, so today will probably echo of 2013 – running away from lines of storms.

We’ll see!

Yesterday we arrived in North Platte, NE with the trip odometer now at 1,358 miles. We’d been watching models all day and hoping that we could catch some storms firing off the mountains in eastern Wyoming as they moved into western Nebraska. Unfortunately our plan didn’t pan out, but we still saw some neat things.

On our way out of Columbia, MO, we drove through some pretty serious south winds bringing moisture in. With it came some neat roll clouds!

As we got closer to North Platte, there were cumulus clouds going up and then fizzling when they hit the cap. They ultimately produced nothing, but still made a few good photos.

Today, we’ll probably head for Wyoming or Colorado. Hopefully we’ll bag our first storm today!