We couldnt leave Arkansas till 11am so we didnt get into target area until afternoon. I had a bad feeling about this setup from the day and morning before. In the afternoon convective outlook the SPC upgraded the moderate risk to a high risk (for northern Texas) and I was even more worried as it always seems that during a high risk things just dont work out.
We were on the eastern edge of
storms for what was basically all day. First storm we got on was
the tornado warned cell in Palo Pinto? county. We were very near
the supposed circulation but it was very outflow
dominant and I would guess the circulation was on the leading edge area:
When we got to Weatherford we saw the only interesting thing of
the day:
Couldnt tell for sure but there seemed to be some hints of
rotation with that. Then we had to go THROUGH Weatherford when
everyone was getting off work and well it took quite a while. The
storm above is what probably what went on to become the Fort
Worth/Dallas storm. We had decided earlier that we would not
chase anything into the DFW area and so being held up in
Weatherford in the end really didnt matter.
While getting through
Weatherford we saw the gust front getting well out ahead of the
storms and we knew we would be really fortunate to see anything
good during the rest of the day. **The lone expception was the
storm to our east which was getting better organized and was able
to stay pretty much even with the boundary by its heading nearly
due east. As it was entering Fort Worth, tornado warnings were
issued and indeed a tornado did develop with some damage being
reported. I am not at all dissapointed about not heading into the
DFW area though...I am actually glad we stuck with our pre-chase
rule to not risk being caught in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex
with a severe storm in the area...especially with a lot of race
fans being in town already for the BUSCH & NASCAR races over
the weekend.**
Once through Weatherford we starting playing the keep heading
south till you find a storm even though everything looks like
crap game....and it was sooo fun!
Here's some of the clouds
between the pseudo outflow/frontal boundary and in front of the
linear storms.
The only storm that even appeared at all like anything worthwhile
was the tornado warned storm coming out of Hamilton county. It
didnt look as bad as the others on radar but it looked pretty
much the same as the others when we got to it. We did get some
nickel size hail around Laguna Park but it was brief and for a
for a little bit there was some nice inflow in there but it just
didnt last.
A dissapointed chase for the distance traveled BUT again at least I had inklings that it might not work out.