I'm pretty excited to be writing this discussion right now. Whether the current forecast verifies or not, it's good to have a potential severe weather day on the horizon at the beginning of February. Friday is going to be another one of those touch-and-go offseason days like November 7th. The last 3 GFS runs suggest a surface low forming Thursday into Thursday night up around NW OK into the Panhandle region. The 00z NAM tonight is hinting at the same thing, though daytime Friday remains out of its range. If that low can form and deepen a little, it's a classic severe weather setup. Model guidance suggests modest CAPE, sufficient shear, and plenty of helicity. Moisture advection will have to occur rapidly as the low develops, but it appears 60F dew points have a good chance to cross the Red River. NAM is a little more promising with moisture. An upper-level trough, which the GFS tries to turn into a cutoff low through the day, will provide lift. The SPC has noted the possibility already in its day 4-8 outlook. That's really all I have to say about it right now--at four days out, numerical prediction is about all there is to go on when it comes to relatively localized severe weather events. But just for fun, my target for Friday: Ardmore, OK. (I wish I had an obscure little wide-spot-in-the-road town to make me cool, but Ardmore's really where I would head if things didn't change.)
EDIT: 00z GFS obscures things a little, moving the surface low SE slightly, toward Euro solution which would mean no chase. Just based on current guidance, I wouldn't go, but the setup will change a dozen times between now and then.
EDIT: It's Wednesday morning now, and the 06z NAM is insisting the low will be farther east in SE KS, too far to go after such a mediocre setup. NAM has been indicating a cold-core setup in S KS for several runs, with parameters sufficient for such an event. The SREF this morning is beautiful for N OK cold-core or warm-front stuff, placing the surface low far WSW of Wichita, out closer to Liberal. While this would be a huge stroke of luck, meaning we could start with Enid as a target and go from there, I'm only hoping for a compromise between the NAM, GFS, and SREF, putting a chance for cold-core storms around Wichita Friday afternoon. SPC has gone Day 3 slight risk for a small area around the DFW metro, but shear is not as good down there and it appears one might have to take off eastward from there to actually chase--east Texas is both iffy terrain and a long way from Norman. So it looks like cold-core or nothing for Friday.
EDIT: Per 00z NAM and GFS, whole setup's gone to crap. Going to do my p-math and intro homework and forget about chasing...
EDIT: Chased it. Everything lined out. Was introduced to In-N-Out in Fort Worth so the whole thing was worthwhile.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
11/7/11: Tornadic supercells in SW OK
November 7--where do I even begin with this day? I wasn't aware it was possible to be so pleased and so disappointed with a chase. It was apparent from a couple days out that this Monday had potential. In OU's student-run Oklahoma Weather Lab, I'd forecasted severe storms in the target area on my Saturday shift. The only question was whether instability would be sufficient for any tornadoes within our range, given that we had morning classes. Three of my friends, also OU SoM sophomores, formed our chase team for the day, and we headed southwest on I-44 just after one, bound for Lawton. Coming up to the Chickasha exit, we made a unanimous mistake. We could see supercells off to our west, though our target was still far to the southwest. A photo posted to Facebook by Joel Taylor of Stormchasers fame confirmed a tornado in Elk City, farther north than we imagined a storm could produce. With only this information, we took off on OK-9 toward Hobart. After an eternity of small towns and their associated speed limits, we closed in on the first storm of the day, picking up an occasional radar scan via smartphone wherever service allowed. We stayed with this storm just east of Hobart only a few minutes, watching its once-promising wall cloud grow less and less defined. (I'm strangely inclined to call the inflow tail in the first photo "cute." I don't know why.)
On to the next one. We dropped west and south on OK-9, skirting the precip core of our new target supercell--driving a Cobalt I'd like to keep through a good chunk of my adult life, I've begun to pride myself on avoiding even the possibility of severe hail. The land here, just south of Hobart, was the flattest I had ever seen, except for mountains on the southwestern horizon. This storm was fierce-looking, with a shelf cloud looming over its outflow and dominating the scene. It dwarfed a short train that rolled past our location. The mesocyclone was understated, nearly unnoticeable, until it tightened up and produced a wall cloud just up the road to our north-northwest.
The precip wrapping around the meso was catching up, and we had to move. In my obsession with avoiding hail, I made another mistake, this one all my own: I took off eastward into a network of dirt and gravel grid roads. We got one last look at the updraft area and wall cloud before it lost us.
Reaching OK-9 near Gotebo, we saw for the first time a radar image of the monster storm producing an EF-4 tornado in the Tipton-Snyder area. Just from the hook echo, we knew we had to drop down and get on it. We raced south toward the Wichita Mountains on OK-54, taking in a spectacular view of the back of the cyclic supercell about the time it was producing a tornado in the Wichitas.
Turning eastward toward the storm's mesocyclone just north of the Wichitas, we saw we would have a difficult time getting any kind of position. We could only make time going east, while the storm was moving northeastward. Nevertheless, we slowly narrowed the gap. The number of other chasers around increased steadily. Stopping along a back road north of the mountains and south of the meso, we saw a rapidly rotating funnel, seemingly detached from the main area of rotation. It momentarily looked as if it could touch down, but never did.
Shortly thereafter, we caught a wide view of the massive flying-saucer-shaped mesocyclone and wall cloud. It was in this area I managed to get the Cobalt mired on the shoulder. Thankfully, with three people pushing and me nudging the accelerator, we dislodged it quickly and kept chasing.
Though we pursued the storm as far as Binger through nightfall, the closest we came to any action for the rest of the day was south of Carnegie--a brief swirl of dust under a distant wall cloud. Had we gone east on OK-9 from the second storm and simply waited for the storm of the day at Fort Cobb, we would have seen a tornado cross the road there, but such is the nature of chasing. Even though we're paying our dues in terms of experience, it's undeniably exciting to see sights like this in the middle of November. We keep getting better, and spring isn't all that far off.
On to the next one. We dropped west and south on OK-9, skirting the precip core of our new target supercell--driving a Cobalt I'd like to keep through a good chunk of my adult life, I've begun to pride myself on avoiding even the possibility of severe hail. The land here, just south of Hobart, was the flattest I had ever seen, except for mountains on the southwestern horizon. This storm was fierce-looking, with a shelf cloud looming over its outflow and dominating the scene. It dwarfed a short train that rolled past our location. The mesocyclone was understated, nearly unnoticeable, until it tightened up and produced a wall cloud just up the road to our north-northwest.
The precip wrapping around the meso was catching up, and we had to move. In my obsession with avoiding hail, I made another mistake, this one all my own: I took off eastward into a network of dirt and gravel grid roads. We got one last look at the updraft area and wall cloud before it lost us.
Reaching OK-9 near Gotebo, we saw for the first time a radar image of the monster storm producing an EF-4 tornado in the Tipton-Snyder area. Just from the hook echo, we knew we had to drop down and get on it. We raced south toward the Wichita Mountains on OK-54, taking in a spectacular view of the back of the cyclic supercell about the time it was producing a tornado in the Wichitas.
Turning eastward toward the storm's mesocyclone just north of the Wichitas, we saw we would have a difficult time getting any kind of position. We could only make time going east, while the storm was moving northeastward. Nevertheless, we slowly narrowed the gap. The number of other chasers around increased steadily. Stopping along a back road north of the mountains and south of the meso, we saw a rapidly rotating funnel, seemingly detached from the main area of rotation. It momentarily looked as if it could touch down, but never did.
Shortly thereafter, we caught a wide view of the massive flying-saucer-shaped mesocyclone and wall cloud. It was in this area I managed to get the Cobalt mired on the shoulder. Thankfully, with three people pushing and me nudging the accelerator, we dislodged it quickly and kept chasing.
Though we pursued the storm as far as Binger through nightfall, the closest we came to any action for the rest of the day was south of Carnegie--a brief swirl of dust under a distant wall cloud. Had we gone east on OK-9 from the second storm and simply waited for the storm of the day at Fort Cobb, we would have seen a tornado cross the road there, but such is the nature of chasing. Even though we're paying our dues in terms of experience, it's undeniably exciting to see sights like this in the middle of November. We keep getting better, and spring isn't all that far off.
10/11/11: CGs over Norman
I needed something to make up for the disappointment of not having anything to chase over the summer, and I got it late on the night of October 11, 2011. Seeing distant flickers out the window, I pulled up Weather Underground's lightning product and noticed quite a few CGs in some storms off to the west. They were inexplicably holding together in a cool, uninspiring environment for thunderstorms. I tried a couple worthless, overly lit roadside spots in northern Norman before parking in a neighborhood off Tecumseh Road and walking down to the sidewalk. There I was treated to a rapid succession of CGs in the distance to the west, as well as a couple closer strikes just to the northeast. I finally got something like a good lightning photo with the nearest stroke.
The highlights of summer 2011 in WV
In the midst of the unparalleled 2011 tornado season, I returned from the heart of Tornado Alley to my home in West Virginia, one of the least tornado-prone places east of the Rockies. I missed out on the Joplin storm and the May 24th Oklahoma outbreak by a couple weeks. With some Plains experience, I felt prepared to run down anything resembling a supercell that might go up within a couple hours' drive. Unfortunately, there were two problems. First, that didn't happen all summer. Second, I wasted a considerable amount of time searching for any kind of summer work, which I never found despite several employers' promises. Still, I managed to see a lot of the sky shows the Mountain State served up, however mediocre they were. I even got my girlfriend to venture out to a garden-variety thunderstorm to catch a little lightning! Being with her, my family, and my friends at home after a year in Norman made this an unforgettable summer. It was much less memorable meteorologically, but here are some of the highlights.
May 23: The only CG I caught this night connected Milton, WV, with an unimpressive Cb. Thanks to Heather for tolerating my obsession for a night :)
June 4: It's always a good night when you can shoot anvil crawlers 50 feet up the street from your house.
June 21: A modest squall line moved down I-64 into Scott Depot, WV; the most interesting feature was a shear funnel far in advance of the storms. When the gust front hit (second shot), it was a bad day for trash cans up and down my street.
June 23: Tornadic supercells in eastern Kentucky, one round early in the afternoon and another in the evening, fizzled but still brought severe winds well into West Virginia. In order: a panorama of Scott Depot before the evening storms; a shelf cloud begins swallowing the I-64 corridor; and an up-close view right up under the shelf in Nitro, WV.
July 11: A weak squall line, the remnants of a derecho that struck the Chicago metro, was only a distraction from the real display--sunset mammatus like nothing I'd ever seen at home.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
4/22/11: Wild skies in Norman's backyard
When I came out of OU's Huston Huffman Fitness Center, affectionately called the Huff, after a Friday afternoon workout and heard a rumble of thunder, I turned and saw a massive tower already formed to the east. Within minutes I was behind the wheel with my roommate John thumbing through the Oklahoma atlas in the passenger seat. Noticing some rotation in the storm on radar, roughly around Pink (near the Cleveland-Pottawatomie county line), we took off eastward on OK-9 out of Norman. As we did so, OUN tornado-warned the storm.
We knew we must be in the right area because a news helicopter began circling near our position, close enough that we waved (although they probably didn't see us). In central Oklahoma, news stations actually send out choppers in search of aerial views of tornadoes, resulting in amazing footage (look up some video from 3 May 1999) and street-by-street updates. Viewers didn't get much to look at on this day, and as far as the storm goes, neither did we. It moved on east and a linear storm with heavy rain and hail moved rapidly up from the south-southwest to merge with it, cutting off any route to the southern side of the storm. We drove back and forth on country roads, encountering tiny hail once, before I realized I needed gas.
The real show in the sky began in Macomb, OK. With rain spitting from the southern storm, John held my umbrella while I took photos of the setting sun under an increasingly stunning mammatus display.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
4/14/11: Tornadoes in the SE OK hills
Thursday, April 14, 2011, was an explosive storm day across the state of Oklahoma from I-35 east. We got a late start due to classes, but headed out just as storms initiated on the dryline about 3:20 CDT. In my car were my friends and fellow OU SoM freshmen Tim and Dana, and Michael, a friend I met at church. Trying to get back ahead of the dryline, which was right overhead, we raced east on OK-9 out of Norman into some light precip from a strong storm that was being born right on top of us. Three of our friends passed through the edge of that storm less than an hour later and reported some rotation in it.
Storms had initiated both far to the north, well out of range and running away from us to the northeast, and to our south near Ardmore. The Ardmore storm quickly mushroomed into a monster and was tornado-warned as we traveled. We took US-377 south out of Seminole, our original target, to make a play on the southern storm. It became clear as we headed south that the storm's heaviest precip, likely including damaging hail, would beat us to Ada, OK, so we cut back west on OK-39 to maneuver around the back of the storm and come up at it from the south. Our first interesting sideshow of the day was on OK-39 just east of Konawa, where a farmer in a beat-up Buick was poking along at about 15-20 mph. Why? A big black cow was trotting down the opposite shoulder! Fortunately the bovine took a detour through a barbed-wire fence (not a very good one apparently) and the farmer pulled off at that point. Welcome to Oklahoma--tornadoes and renegade cows.
OK-39 brought us to Asher, where we went south on US-177. About that time, however, radar began to show a second storm behind the first big cell strengthening and closing the gap between them. To get south of both storms, we realized we would have to slip southeast through Ada on OK-3 in between the two storms' cores. We cut over from US-177 to OK-3 just south of Asher, in the process passing through an intersection in the absolute middle of nowhere where people with buckets were trying to take donations for some church. We must have been about the third car they'd seen all day from the way they reacted to seeing us come over the rise.
We slowed down in some hard rain just northwest of Ada to be sure the first storm's hail core was gone before moving into town. A large area of very heavy rain was visible at the west and northwest side of the storm, bulging out at the bottom because of RFD winds. We passed through Ada, which is a bigger place than you'd expect, in full sunlight, and saw a complete double rainbow that both began and ended in a field next to the road.
Right after this gorgeous sight, things turned a bit scary. We entered the narrowing gap between the two storms; skies around us turned almost black, and winds picked up significantly. As the storms began to interact with one another, it was hard to tell which was closer. A greenish tint appeared in the sky just to our west in the vicinity of Stonewall, and we knew if we didn't get out soon there would be hail. I think I was probably speeding a bit through this area, but all the police we passed seemed more interested in the storms. Finally, light skies appeared ahead of us to the south, and we broke out of the precip and worst of the wind just east of Tupelo, OK.
We dropped south of that leading storm into Coalgate, OK. Hesitating for a few minutes due to the ominous black sky ahead, we headed north and then northeast on OK-31 and OK-131.
After stopping to watch the sky briefly, we moved on under the southern edge of the storm and turned up a farm road. We believe we saw a funnel touch down on the top or far side of a distant hill, but it was too far off to know for sure.
We chose not to attempt a risky nighttime intercept of the back side of that monster storm as it crossed the Indian Nation Turnpike south of us (good call, as a tornado was reported crossing the turnpike), and instead got back to Norman around 11:30. Except for the OK-63 fiasco, it was a very good chase--and from everything we could see, our first tornado day.
Storms had initiated both far to the north, well out of range and running away from us to the northeast, and to our south near Ardmore. The Ardmore storm quickly mushroomed into a monster and was tornado-warned as we traveled. We took US-377 south out of Seminole, our original target, to make a play on the southern storm. It became clear as we headed south that the storm's heaviest precip, likely including damaging hail, would beat us to Ada, OK, so we cut back west on OK-39 to maneuver around the back of the storm and come up at it from the south. Our first interesting sideshow of the day was on OK-39 just east of Konawa, where a farmer in a beat-up Buick was poking along at about 15-20 mph. Why? A big black cow was trotting down the opposite shoulder! Fortunately the bovine took a detour through a barbed-wire fence (not a very good one apparently) and the farmer pulled off at that point. Welcome to Oklahoma--tornadoes and renegade cows.
OK-39 brought us to Asher, where we went south on US-177. About that time, however, radar began to show a second storm behind the first big cell strengthening and closing the gap between them. To get south of both storms, we realized we would have to slip southeast through Ada on OK-3 in between the two storms' cores. We cut over from US-177 to OK-3 just south of Asher, in the process passing through an intersection in the absolute middle of nowhere where people with buckets were trying to take donations for some church. We must have been about the third car they'd seen all day from the way they reacted to seeing us come over the rise.
We slowed down in some hard rain just northwest of Ada to be sure the first storm's hail core was gone before moving into town. A large area of very heavy rain was visible at the west and northwest side of the storm, bulging out at the bottom because of RFD winds. We passed through Ada, which is a bigger place than you'd expect, in full sunlight, and saw a complete double rainbow that both began and ended in a field next to the road.
Right after this gorgeous sight, things turned a bit scary. We entered the narrowing gap between the two storms; skies around us turned almost black, and winds picked up significantly. As the storms began to interact with one another, it was hard to tell which was closer. A greenish tint appeared in the sky just to our west in the vicinity of Stonewall, and we knew if we didn't get out soon there would be hail. I think I was probably speeding a bit through this area, but all the police we passed seemed more interested in the storms. Finally, light skies appeared ahead of us to the south, and we broke out of the precip and worst of the wind just east of Tupelo, OK.
We dropped south of that leading storm into Coalgate, OK. Hesitating for a few minutes due to the ominous black sky ahead, we headed north and then northeast on OK-31 and OK-131.
From there, we continued up OK-131 and stopped atop a large hill in the vicinity of Wardville, OK. The first storm was drawing in the one behind it, beginning to rotate strongly in the process. I took video of the well-defined base as rotation tightened. This marked the first time I had ever seen scud visibly rising straight into the base of a storm. A decal-plastered SUV full of spotters/chasers pulled up, and the men who jumped out kept exclaiming something about a wedge as they pointed to a distant precip shaft far from the updraft area; fortunately, from looking at SPC reports, it appears they didn't call in their phantom "wedge." For some reason, my camera kept refocusing, ruining my video, but some still frames from it show what we saw. Suddenly the scud fingers, wall cloud, and cloud base all spun into what looked for all the world like a wide tornado. The terrain made it impossible to say for certain that the funnel touched down, but the image is convincing. This wedge shape persisted less than a minute.
This was the highlight of the day for us. While we don't know for sure that the funnel reached the ground on the far slope of the hill, it looks a heck of a lot like a big twister. When it came to the top of the ridge, any number of the little funnels underneath the wall cloud were probably on the ground.
This was what we came for--spectacular rotating storms dropping tornadoes miles from anything they could damage. The meso occluded just as the base moved out of view, and from that remote area our chase went downhill quickly, thanks to a huge navigational mistake I made. We took OK-63 northeast from Kiowa, trying to stay with this storm even though it was perceptibly weakening. That road is incredibly long and is lined with trees all the way--some of which had dropped thick branches along a stretch of a couple hundred yards where strong winds must have come through. It took us all the way out past McAlester, with no other road options off of it, and effectively ended our chase. Had we stopped at Kiowa to watch the first storm pass on, and then moved south on US-69, we could have been in position to see the Tushka-Atoka tornado. After seeing its aftermath, however, it might be for the best that we missed it. None of us have any desire to see a town wiped out and people killed, and there were already more than enough spotters on the storm to call in reports and help with rescue operations. The residents of Tushka are in my prayers.
Monday, April 11, 2011
4/8/11: First good chase--N OK lightning barrage
Friday, April 8, 2011, was my first true Oklahoma storm chase. The day had looked promising all through the week as the spring's first classic dryline setup over central Oklahoma. However, when I went to bed Thursday night, the Storm Prediction Center still had only a slight risk of severe storms in the area. During my programming lab Friday morning, the slight risk area was removed except for a sliver of north-central to northeast Oklahoma up through Kansas and Missouri. In no mood to drive that far, I held out hope for the dryline to the west on the 10% or worse chance that it might produce an isolated storm. I loaded up the car (camera, tripod, atlas, weather radio, etc.), picked up my friend Tim from his class, and cruised northwest up to the OKC suburb of Mustang. Tim is a freshman from Pittsburgh who, like me, was drawn over a thousand miles from home for days just like these. In a Taco Mayo in Mustang, we mulled over our options, and based on a mesoscale discussion from the SPC that suggested possible convective initiation off to our southwest near Lawton, took off down OK-4 to Tuttle, where we picked up OK-92 toward Chickasha. We ended up stopping by a railroad crossing in the town of Amber, on the edge of a vast green wheat field.
Watching the southeast wind send ripples through the field was certainly entrancing but lost its intrigue after an hour or so; line after line of towering cumulus failed to break the cap. More and more short-range models and other chasers' thoughts pointed us farther north toward OKC, so we left our spot late in the afternoon and retraced our steps north. As we approached Yukon, a tornado watch went out for a swath of the state from roughly our position up to the central Kansas border--and storms were already exploding south of Enid.
With no other choice, we took I-40 east into downtown OKC to hit I-35 north, and we made the trip through town smoothly in spite of rush hour traffic. As we raced north, huge anvils overspread the sky. After about an hour, we approached the town of Perry. Leaving the interstate, we stopped for a few gallons of gas, photographed some mammatus over Perry, and headed east on US-64 to parallel the main storm at the time. It had split, and the northern split was going tornadic, but the south storm was in our way and still presented a mediocre chase target with lightning and mammatus. We turned north on US-177 and stopped twice for unimpressive photos, and the storm died out in front of us.
Forcing ourselves to be content with a nice drive and some mammatus we wouldn't have seen back east, we turned toward the Interstate for a long drive back. That plan was interrupted by a violent display of lightning to our north and west as darkness fell. I had been wanting to try lightning photography for some time, and the new storm was a convenient opportunity. As we came to I-35 not far from Tonkawa, radar indicated the storm had split, and while the northern split again looked more attractive, the closer storm displayed a distinct notch on its southeast side that we thought bore watching. We took I-35 north to the next exit, Blackwell, and drove west on OK-11 toward the light show.
My first experiment in lightning photography took place on a desolate dirt road a few dozen yards north of OK-11, and went fairly well. The storm was now severe-warned for hail up to baseball size, and we decided to cautiously draw closer on OK-11. Suddenly, just past Deer Creek, raindrops splattered on the windshield, and I promptly pulled a U-turn to save my poor Cobalt from a brutal pelting. We'd almost gone too far west, because once we came back into cell phone range, radar showed the storm had turned from a northerly course to an easterly one and was now barreling right at us. It had also begun to rotate strongly, earning a tornado warning from the NWS in Norman. Thankfully, it was a slow mover, and we stopped for a few more shots (including a nice CG) before flying south on I-35 back to Tonkawa.
From there, we headed west about a quarter mile on U.S. 60 before pulling over. This is where things got interesting. As I set up for more lightning exposures, chasers appeared by the truckload, hurtling down the two-lane road at breakneck speed into the maelstrom as we watched intently from the soft dirt shoulder. One group stopped just down the road.
An unmistakable wall cloud emerged from behind a stand of trees to our west-northwest. The stacked-plate structure was awesome, even by lightning. (Yes, these photos are of the same storm! The difference is the distance, as well as the angle of the lightning.)
Rotation was impossible to discern by lightning flashes, but little fingers were hanging down in different places every time we got a glimpse. Inflow cranked up from a stiff southeasterly breeze to a jet that threatened to blow my tripod over and rolled my shirt up my back. Despite all our verbal encouragement, the storm failed to put down a definite tornado while we watched, and inflow became chilly outflow. I snagged one more shot of the wall cloud, now practically scraping the ground, due north of us, and we headed off down I-35 for some much-needed food and rest. This shot shows a seemingly lighter area illuminated by lightning just above the wall cloud; I can't help wondering if this tube shape is actually the storm's updraft, clear of precip.
The storm continued to produce significant hail past midnight as its right turn carried it all the way across northern Oklahoma. Unfortunately, while it wouldn't tornado for us out in the middle of the fields, it decided to try a little harder shortly thereafter as it moved past Tonkawa into the more populated area around Ponca City. A 94 mph wind gust was reported there, and possible tornadoes did damage in the vicinity.
It was an enjoyable chase once we got a good storm, but we learned something important: chasing with iPhone radar apps is dangerous (particularly at night) and demands awareness. We got out of range and while we were flying blind, the storm took a 90-degree turn right at us and we were lucky to be in a place where a U-turn was safe. Our basic severe storm knowledge slipped our minds in the heat of the moment--we should have expected a strengthening storm in that environment to move right, though maybe not as sharply as it did.
All in all, it was a good day and an awesome night. I'm now hooked.
With no other choice, we took I-40 east into downtown OKC to hit I-35 north, and we made the trip through town smoothly in spite of rush hour traffic. As we raced north, huge anvils overspread the sky. After about an hour, we approached the town of Perry. Leaving the interstate, we stopped for a few gallons of gas, photographed some mammatus over Perry, and headed east on US-64 to parallel the main storm at the time. It had split, and the northern split was going tornadic, but the south storm was in our way and still presented a mediocre chase target with lightning and mammatus. We turned north on US-177 and stopped twice for unimpressive photos, and the storm died out in front of us.
It was an enjoyable chase once we got a good storm, but we learned something important: chasing with iPhone radar apps is dangerous (particularly at night) and demands awareness. We got out of range and while we were flying blind, the storm took a 90-degree turn right at us and we were lucky to be in a place where a U-turn was safe. Our basic severe storm knowledge slipped our minds in the heat of the moment--we should have expected a strengthening storm in that environment to move right, though maybe not as sharply as it did.
All in all, it was a good day and an awesome night. I'm now hooked.
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