STORM TRACK: September 30, 1984 (Volume 7 Issue 6)
When I was a student at the University of Oklahoma (OU) during the 1970's, a game that we at the Meteorology Department called "storm chasing" came into being. Oh, we students at OU didn't invent the game, but we did develop a vernacular all our own. Some of the descriptors we used were truly undefinable (not to mention unmentionables), but every chaser somehow always knew what they meant. I'll try to define some of them ... and where possible provide the names of individuals to whom many of these delights can originally be attributed. So, here it goes...
1. A@@ Kicker - any storm worthy of chasing.
2. 'Baseballs' - the smallest size of hail that chasers get excited about.
Baseballs
3. 'Bilge' (C. Doswell) - low overcast that obscures a storm approaching Clarendon, unless you're in Clarendon.
4. 'Break Out' - what happens after you drive westward for three hours through solid bilge (See #3).
5. 'Caprock Delight' (G. Moore) - any storm that is born to produce tornadoes over the Texas Panhandle.
6. 'Cumulus Dentifrus' (J. McGinley) - Tooth cloud (i.e. ragged edges along a low cloud base, beneath the anvil).
7. 'El Paso Parameter' (G. Moore) - when last hour's surface winds at El Paso were 160 deg at 5 knots and this hour's winds are 270 deg at 56 knots.
8. 'Flaky CB' (S. Tegtmeier) - any storm that looks so lousy, that you opt to stay at the Dairy Queen and order another cornydog.
9. 'Getting Its S@@@ Together' or 'GIST Theory' (A. Moller) - what a storm always does thirty-minutes after the sun has set and you've run out of good photographic light, but you're in perfect photographic position.
Getting Its S@@@ Together
10. 'Go International' (G. Moore) - chasing where other chasers can't get to your storm (or, in the early years, anywhere outside of Oklahoma).
11. 'Gorilla hail' (G. Moore) - the size hail that deposits the windshield in your lap.
12. 'Gunge' - See #3.
13. 'Hard Tower' (G. Moore) - any vertical cumulonimbus edge that you feel like scaling rather than photographing.
14. 'Hurricane Hailer' (G. Moore) - any hail shaft in which hail, larger than baseballs (see #2) but smaller than gorilla hail (See #ll) is horizontally impacting the side of your brand new car.
Hurricane Hailer
15. 'Is It Gonna Fire?' (OU chasers, circa 1973) - what you ask when you walk into the teletype room for the first time, just as other well-prepared chasers are setting out on a chase -- and you want to go along.
16. 'It's Fixing To Pop' (R. Zipser) - an intellectual realization, when the clouds begin to appear, after you've driven three-hundred miles to get to wherever you anticipated the storms would develop.
17. 'Razor Anvil' (R. Zipser) - the only way I could usually tell the edge of an anvil from the background sky.
18. 'Turkey Tower' (A. Moller) - a developing cumulonimbus that has a cauliflower top, string-bean middle, and invisible base, but still is trying to make an anvil.
19. 'Upslop' (OU chasers, circa 1977) - any 90 deg - 120 deg wind that causes the caprock delight (See #5) to be obscured from view because it results in bilge (see #3) or gunge (See #12).
