6/8/98 - Texhoma HPs

I woke late in Colby … Sunday was to be my brother’s first chase day this year, but we were extremely tired due to our late arrival the night before. After a bit of late morning forecasting, we targeted the eastern Texas panhandle for some HP supercell “blobs” later that afternoon. Sure enough, as we arrived in Canadian, TX around 3-4 pm, storms had initiated to our immediate east.

Initial convection near Canadian, TX.

We trailed the initial convection northeast along U.S. 60 toward Arnette, OK where we had to stop our progression as it started to hail (about hen egg sized, although likely much, much larger just to our east).

We then rerouted back to Higgins, TX, where we tried to outflank developing convection to our west. As we reentered into Oklahoma on a rural farm gravel road, we came across a lightning-initiated grass fire (approximately 10 mi southwest of Arnett, OK). We watched as rural fire crews put out the fire. The fire and smoke provide an amazing foreground to the stormy background; unfortunately, this “shot” was not captured well with my amateur photography skills.

Lightning-sparked fire (foreground) and the culprit (background).

Despite a bit of overhead rotation in a few spots, all of the storms in this area were undercut by the cold front – meaning there was really no chance for tornado production.

Undercut convection ... we actually had strong northerly winds at this location.

We finally hit pavement again on U.S. 283 just south of Arnette, OK. At this point, I was able to gather some radar data and make a decision to blast south toward Cheyenne, OK in order to intercept some rather “meaty” supercells heading east out of the Texas panhandle. We eventually ran into a rather large supercell, with attendant wall cloud and wet RFD, between New Liberty and Grimes, OK (along SR 6, west of U.S. 283). At this point, there was quite a bit of rotation along the RFD and wall cloud. In fact, we saw a number of gustnado like spinups along the eddies produced by the RFD.

View looking west (on OK-6) toward the HP blob with wall cloud to the right-center and wet RFD to the center.

A closer view as the storm marches toward us.

"Big & meaty" storm!

No hunting for tornadoes? Why?

Looking northwest toward the "kink" near the meso.

Strong rotation at this point as a new meso forms.

We allowed the beautiful, tor-warned HP follow us all the way back to Elk City, where we continued to view some rather robust rotation in the low-levels. Eventually we called it a night at the Comfort Inn in Elk City, OK … where Ken worked his magic and got us a 3 bed suite. Monday was a travel day ... we ferried to Ogallala, NE in preparation for Tuesday's Dakota play.

Sunset at Kinglsey Dam, Lake McConaughy, which is near Ogallala, NE.

"Big Mac" at sunset.