Day 11, May 25th 2002

Route: From Altus in Southwestern Oklahoma to the region east of San Angelo and from there northwards…
Highlights: A few slow moving severe thunder storms east of San Angelo; a beautiful rainbow and sunset.
Text: Rob Groenland

Today we are chasing storms in the central/southern sections of Texas. The big question in this situation is the amount of shear in the lowest levels of the atmosphere. Unlike yesterday, the Storm Prediction Center doesn't think any tornadic activity will take place. Although they still talk about a small risk of one or two supercells. But again the weather doesn't treat us very nicely. But we don't give up; we buy ourselves a real mascot for good luck.

At the morning weather briefing, it becomes clear that we have to go south. The cold front, that brought us the severe weather over the last two days, is positioned over the central and southern parts of Texas. The best area to chase seems to be just south of the front. In comparison with the last 2 days we don't have to drive so much. After the briefing we take a nice breakfast in a family restaurant.

At 10 A.M. we start driving south. Along the road we stop a few times north of Abilene to download the latest weather maps on our laptop. The maps show that the wind profile in the atmosphere is not very good because there is not enough shear. Though, a positive point is that we spot an outflow boundary (from earlier cells this morning over eastern Texas) by looking very carefully at the latest visual satellite imagery. This might be the main focus point for the storms to form. We position ourselves just near this point east of San Angelo. Now it is a matter of waiting and being patient.

Around 3 P.M. the first towers of cumulus clouds appear in the humid and somewhat hazy sky. Soon storms begin to develop. What we were afraid of, really happens. The clouds hardly move. In the upper-air regions of the atmosphere there is almost no wind. What we see in front of us are the typical so called single cells which we often see in the Netherlands. In this mode of convection the updraft will be killed by the downdraft (when the rain begins to fall). In situations with enough shear, the updraft and down draft will be separated from each other so the storm can live a lot longer. No tornadoes today, but we do see a beautiful rainbow.

In the evening more storms erupt along the cold front, though they are all slow moving without any rotation. We start driving to the north again because tomorrow's action seems to be over Kansas and maybe Nebraska. At a truck stop, just after sun set a man starts talking to us. An incredible story follows. He tells us he has been a chaser for 17 years until 1999. That year a tornado caught up with him and threw him out of his car! Since that day he never chased again. Once again we realize that chasing is a serious matter.

Our luck is bound to change around 9 P.M. We buy ourselves a Weatherbug mascot! We had a penguin for luck the last few years but forgot our friend this year. Hopefully our duck will bring us more luck in our third week of chasing.