Day 3, May 17th 2002

Route: From Pampa through Abilene into the area east of San Angelo.
Highlights: View of multi-cells in southern Texas.
Text: Rob Groenland

Friday 7.00 CDT the third chase-day starts for me with a good shower and a real American cup of coffee. The nice thing with coffee in the USA is you can drink it all day. In the Netherlands you could die after drinking so much coffee, because of the simple fact it is a lot stronger.

With the Pampa-storms of yesterday in mind, I started my computer to look at the latest weather maps. Jules, Eric and Coen came in a 7.50 CDT. It is obvious today; we have to go south.. A cold front has already pushed the warm and humid air towards the far southern parts of Texas. The forecast maps for the late afternoon shows the position of the cold front between San Angelo and the Mexican border. The plan is to get ahead of the front around 16.00 CDT so we have to drive a lot again today.

The Texas-Panhandle is cloudy and cool with temperatures around 60 F as we start to drive. At lunchtime we do a weather update in Abilene. It is funny to see the reactions of people walking by. In general, one is aware of the fact storms can develop in an instant. So people tend to ask direct questions; like when and where are the storms going to fire up today.

On our way south, we make several quick stops to look at the actual information, like radar, satellite and observations. We are especially looking at the wind-observations just ahead of the front and looking for the "good shear". This means ground winds have to be different from the upper air winds. This shear creates an environment with rotation in the storms, and increases the risk for tornadoes.

Between 3:00 and 5:00 several beautiful multicell-storms erupt 20 to 30 miles to the south-east of us. Rule number one is to get yourself at the south side of the storms as soon as possible. However the storms developed and expanded so quickly, that it became one big "soup of rain and clouds" without any interesting organization. What we really enjoyed were several cloud to ground lightning strikes near Bandera, some 20 miles west of San Antonio.

We decide to check around 7:00 and get ourselves a decent meal instead of a quick stop at McDonalds. The weather maps for the weekend shows high pressure over the Mid-West with cool northerly winds. It means we have one or two days off, before new action is going to start early next week

Regards,
WeatherBug StormChase Team 2002