STORM TRACK: July 31, 1986 (Volume 9 Issue 5)

While a banner year for most, by comparison this chase season was a downer for me. A small tornado, brief gustnado and four small funnel clouds "was all she wrote." The first of my three weeks in May brought the best opportunity for twister tracking, during which I just missed two -one by chance and one by mis-judgement. Normally, such close calls would have paid off later -but the upper air support failed during the last two weeks and possibilities were few.

Fresh on the heels of the preceding Canadian, Texas/Edmond, Oklahoma week, the impromptu chase team of Zipser/Hoadley and Pettus (two cars) were keyed up, turned on and ready to go! Monday the 12th took us to southeastern Kansas -after a brief stop at the Wichita National Weather Service (NWS) office to do an analysis and chat -by phone- with Erik Rasmussen ("Raz" is putting in his first year at Weather Data, Inc. on daily radar duty, so storm tripping was somewhat limited). The rest of that afternoon turned mostly into a blue sky chase, but later Kansas City did verify our forecast at the southern end of their severe watch area.

Tuesday morning was spent, at the Oklahoma City NWS office -psyching out the future- and at Oklahoma University that afternoon -reliving the past. Howie Bluestein and his student, chasers showed slide after magnificent slide of four Canadian, Texas twisters -including one Union City size cone (with all 31 flavors!). Drool!! Miser- able at what had been missed before our arrival, we charged out to Dodge City, anti- cipating nearby activity the next day.

Our early Wednesday morning assessment took us back south to Gags, Oklahoma, where the initial 9 AM surface analysis was promptly overwhelmed by early severe weather sweeping in from the northern Texas panhandle. Western Oklahoma was soon blitzed by heavy morning storms and an outflow boundary that went all the way to Altus. Chasing south on US 83, we watched -in fascination- the broken line of T-storms bow east of us from Gage to central Oklahoma and back southwest to Altus -defining the 80 mile wide "bubble boundary." Winding around the poorly marked side roads in southwest Oklahoma, through heavy rain and hail, I unexpectedly left the black top and slid to a stop on a wet dirt road. However, Bruce wound up in the ditch. Gamely, Randy and I doffed our watches and ran over to help. In driving rain, we did a scene right out of the "Recovers" or a Keystone Cops short. Pushing the front end, Bruce spun his tires and gave us a mud bath from head to toe.

Jumping back in the car and knocking off the truly gross clumps we resumed the chase. We caught that storm base southwest of Altus and watched an impressive wrapping gust front for over 30 minutes, before deciding to intersect near Snyder and get east of it on US 62. About three miles south of the intersection, we saw a quick ground swirl gust up a hundred feet or so -just to our west. Unknown to us, this was the beginning of subsequent, larger rotation to our east. Shortly after, we plunged into the rain. Then the radio interrupts with a tornado warning for two just southeast of us -while we're racing through the deluge and hard blowing, rapidly shifting rain walls. Finally, we broke into the clear, 3-4 miles east of the interchange -and five minutes too late!! There were all our friends by the roadside (8-10 vehicles), waving cheerfully and with film canisters full of what we had just missed. Total depression! Black despairs! We continued to watch this storm, racing back and forth between there and Altus -- in futile pur- suit of the phantom twisters and warnings that went on for the next hour. We did see the new cell going up to our south, but: 1 it was well south of the morning's PVA (positive vorticity) outlook for western Oklahoma; 2 we would have driven away from a known tornado producing storm; and 3 we would have had to chase over an hour to reach it. However, others also saw it and took the chance. Gene Moore and the team of Chuck Doswell and Al Moller psyched the situation exactly right. They broke off from our marginal tornadic storm and caught THE BIG ONE near Archer City, Texas. Spiralling convective tower, rock hard anvil, massive high-contrast tornado -lots of slides and video. So near and yet so far.

Thoroughly chastened, we started the next day at Hobart -with our own forecast for northwest Texas. Towers bubbled up in our area, east of Guthrie, and produced a nice isolated Cb with backshear. A turbulent base formed with inflow bands -but little apparent rotation. The most fun this afternoon was running into Jack ("Thunderhead") Corso and a friend from New York and Arjen Verkaik and his wife, Jerrine, from Canada. The Verkaik's had -unfortunately- just been broadsided in Archer City by a local and were sporting a large crease on the driver's side. However, all was seemingly forgotten in the anticipation of the moment -while we chatted excitedly about that storm and others we had seen -- as unlikely a band of travelers as you'd expect to find, holding forth on a road shoulder in west Texas... hair tousled, wind blown, surrounded by thunder - the chase peak of the social season! Friday the 16th started in the northern Texas panhandle but eventually took us south to Matador -right into the middle of a tornado watch. Under the pervasive cirrus cover, scattered cells were slow to build. Southwest of Paducah, we caught a large Cb with Gene Moore -but also observed other building anvils to the south- west of us. When the slowly building Paducah storm began to look like a hailer (concentrated lowering under the base became linear and bowed), we broke off and charged southwest toward the clearer air and better heating. En-route, we again ran out of paved road where the map showed black-top, but a kindly Texas rancher led us through (across two cattle guards!) to the black top on the other side. There -about as isolated as you could get- we crossed paths with Doswell and Moller, who were just coming from the storm we were approaching. With everyone uncertain, we stopped and chatted for 20 minutes. Then, the radio warned of a tornado just east of Paducah (!) -our old storm!! Doswell and Moller broke away on the long shot of catching it. However, it was thirty minutes away and likely to be a brief event (given that air mass), so we continued on to the southwest to what should have been the best location (southern boundary cell, new anvil and clear to the west and south behind it). Near Dickens, we wound up photographing a spiralling updraft with only a small, high base rope funnel. We drove back to Oklahoma City that night (dodging a four foot tumbleweed en-route) and "crashed" at 3 AM. After that, I chased on my own.

The only good chase day for me turned out to be May 21 in eastern Colorado. Starting in Chadron, Nebraska, I dropped south to Scottsbluff for an analysis. Northeast Colorado looked good, so I continued on down to Kit Carson County, where I photo- graphed a small Tim Marshall type "Tahoka Twins" tornado and two funnel clouds 5-10 miles northeast of Stratton. After that, the infamous upper air cut-off low of 1986 took over and dominated the central plains for the next two weeks. Severe weather was all but gone.