Very early that morning, I poured over every piece of data I could get ahold of. For once this year, I really felt like the models had a good handle on the surface features...and would do a pretty good job. SREH well over 500 and nearing 850 with a perfect shear profile. CAPE was marginal at 2000 at best which I believe prevented a tornado outbreak. Good upper level energy with a strong shortwave approaching from the west. A warm front stretched across Central Texas and was moving slowly northward towards the DFW area. A surface low was just north of Abilene with a trailing dryline. The biggest question was moisture return and it was expected to be limited which favored LP supercells....at least I and everybody else thought that. Southerly winds at the surface and up to 850mb were screaming at 30-50mph. I picked the area immediately to the E and NE of Abilene as the target area for initial severe storms. I wasn't able to break away from work until 4:00pm and worked my way through the wonderful traffic jams in DFW, thanks to idiotic highway design and Friday afternoon rush hour, and headed west on I-20.
I heard the tornado warnings for the Abilene area and then Troy Duncan of WFAA Channel 8 talking about a TVS near Haskell. Listening to everything that was going on, I figured out that this sucker was doing the right turn boogie and decided to head north from 20 towards Possum Kingdom Lake to intercept it on the south flank....boy did I. Setting up on the north side of P.K., I encountered some phenomenal inflow of at least 50 mph. My truck was rocking pretty intensely sloshing out abit of my Diet Dr.Pepper in the cup holder. With this sort of inflow, I just knew there would be a significant tornado developing which never really did...at least through visual confirmations. The shear and turbulence above me was quite evident and some of the most wicked I have seen. I was still convinced that a huge tornado would be developing. As the storm got closer, I could see the new updraft area....not that impressive....high based and "normal" looking like a marginally severe storm....very weird and uneasy at the same time. I could from all of the spotter reports telling me otherwise. It soon became evident that this section of the storm was getting undercut by the outflow (against 50 inflow?..yep...) as a moderate 40-50 mph outflow passed by me from the NNW.
I retreated eastward to a little town (I can't remember the name). I passed a couple that had gotten a flat on their pickup truck. Knowing of the impending danger, I stopped to offer them a ride to shelter in town. They has just gotten the new wheel back on and told me they were headed to Graham right into the jaws of this monster. I informed them of the grave danger and they sorta looked at me like I was paranoid. They smirked and replied, "Well, we get alot of storms out here and we are used to them sonny. We certainly aren't going to drive into a bad storm." At this point, I realized they weren't going to listen to me and advised them that they were risking their lives going north. Sure enough, they did a U-turn and drove straight into the middle of that thing. I am sure that they encountered baseball sized hail and whatever else was being spewed out. Down the road, I where I ran into a few OU students and we exchanged info and a little chase humor trying to figure out the next move. The outflow boundary had stalled with calm surface winds but very intense turbulancewithin the inflow band. The storm had now slowed its E and SE movement/propagation and we were keeping an eye on a new anvil further WSW. Sure enough, another tornado warning for Throckmorton County. I figured that this new storm formed on the outflow boundary of the previous storms and would propagate ESE along the outflow boundary which it later did.
I bid the OU team goodbye and proceeded back out the the eastern side of PK where I had a great view to the west and northwest (plus....there are *no* escape routes if you are on the west or north side of the lake). I setup and waited for it to come to me. I could see the rain free base with all of the ragged clouds around it and an incredible sight....a huge wall cloud with a long beautiful tail cloud pointing right into the precip core. At this point, the CG was getting deadly and rapidly intensifying. The storm was advancing rapidly SE bearing down on me. (I found out that at about this same time, the NWS had detected a TVS ). I started feeling like I had a target painted on my head, so I quickly drove east to seek safe shelter. Experience, from the school of hard knocks and dings, told me that outrunning it was not an option...especially in this part of the area had barely even a scrappy Mesquite tree for shelter for many miles around. I *barely* made it back in time. In watching the movement of the bear's cage, I figured that the little town I had visited before would be just out of the danger area...so headed there and got under small a gas station awning that faced westward...bad move. The downburst winds from the west ripped the awning up and over the gas station. I quickly moved to another gas station's awning (this time facing eastward away from the expected onslaught of straightline winds). The little food mart also had an old-timey cooler/locker that would be the best tornado shelter in the immediate area. Within minutes, baseball size hail was assaulting the area. This is the same storm that would ravish Mineral Wells and Parker county with softball sized hail and a possible tornado which given the track of the wall cloud I saw earlier would be right on target.
It took me awhile to get back home to Carrollton, which is just north of Dallas, as other storms kept erupting further upstream and right on my tail all the way back causing me to duck for cover occasionally. I was one very tired dog when I got home.
Overall, it was a very educational storm and abit unusual. I had fully expected some LP storms transforming into HP beasts as they moved into deeper and better moisture further east like DFW and eastward. The storms I saw further west were definitely HP monsters from my first contact near Possum Kingdom....totally unexpected. Could there have been enough particulate matter from the smoke of the Mexican fires to act as condensation nuclei and aid in mutating these storms into HP monsters ..it would be very interesting to know. Roger Edwards surmised that a tongue of richer moisture just off the surface had streamed into the storms.
I would also like to add that these storms were extremely dangerous to chase and put even veteran chasers to the test. As for my fellow chasers and spotters, I heard a few reports concerning smashed up vehicles from the hail. I also know of one chaser's car that took a direct lightning strike knocking out his entire electrical system...he is OK...but can you say, "major bucks?". My condolences to everybody out there that suffered damage to your chase vehicles and equipment. Had it not been for that one little service station...I would surely have gotten dinged up pretty bad.
One more thing, I was very surprised that some monster tornadoes didn't come out of these storms. With the inflow I experienced personally and heard about along with the incredible dynamics that set up on Friday, I am still scratching my head while at the same time breathing a HUGE sigh of relief. The DFW area as well as Denton and other smaller towns in the North Texas area dodged not just a bullet.....but a major artillery shell.
NWS-San Angelo has some cool radar pics and a report of the storms this day. You can see this by going here
email me, Steve Miller, with any questions or comments at txt@gte.net