at 12:00 AM by Pierce Larkin

Storm Chase Days 4 & 5: TEXAS

We woke up in Alva, Oklahoma on Friday after an amazing Thursday, in which we saw a large tornado near Waynoka. It was an awesome day, but the Friday morning forecast was not easy. There were two targets overall; southern Kansas near Pratt was one, and Paducah, Texas was the other. I was pushing for the Pratt, KS play because the high res models were all over the place on how convection would evolve over Texas and southern Oklahoma, and shear wasn’t as good as it was in Kansas. Models were also developing a thin line of broken storms along a cold front, and I believed that enough destabilization would occur to allow for supercells to develop.

The instability that had built up in Kansas on Friday was sufficient. h/t SPC

We ultimately ended up playing the Texas target for two reasons. One, it was closer to the next day’s severe risk (I’ll get to that momentarily), and two, it was high risk/high reward. Here is ultimately what we missed in southern Kansas.

I am very happy we played the Texas target, because that is what the consensus was, and it put us in play for Day 5’s severe weather. However, it was nice to see that my target had verified as well! Had we gone to southern Kansas, we would have gone 3/3 with a tornado on every chase day.

We left Oklahoma for central Texas around 9 am, and drove for what felt like forever (we were in the car a long time on Friday; almost as long as we were when we drove from BG to Hays, KS). We stopped for Subway in Oklahoma, and it was mighty fine. We have had some really good subway on this trip, and I expect that trend to continue the rest of the way.

When we got to Paducah, Texas, we headed further south. Storms looked like they may go up there, and it was exciting to watch. However, after about an hour of sitting and watch, not much had taken root. We were throwing the football around trying to waste time, but the storms just wouldn’t get rooted. We finally got a storm to initiate to our southwest, and we engaged with it. It produced some really cool structure!

It was well worth the trip down there to see it.

On Day 5 (Saturday), we woke up in Abilene, Texas and had to make some “tough” decisions on what to do that day. We had one of two option. Either play the only severe threat of the day in south Texas, or take a day off an go sight seeing. After looking at the models, we came to the very quick consensus that southern Texas was a terrible play and wouldn’t be nearly as fun as potentially exploring the Texas Panhandle. So we did the latter, and what a day that ensued.

We embarked for Amarillo, and stopped in Lubbock for lunch at a fantastic BBQ place. It was called Tom & Bingo’s Hickory Pit Bar-B-Q, and man it was worth the stop. We all had shredded beef sandwiches, and their sauce was excellent.

The place was just cool, and honestly? Lubbock was much bigger than I expected. They had tall buildings, which you wouldn’t expect. Also: the weather on Saturday was fantastic. I want it to be 85°F, with a 70°F dewpoint so we can have severe weather. But if we don’t have a severe weather threat? I want mid to upper 60s, which is exactly what we had. It was amazing. There were even a few puffy clouds in the sky, making some of the landscape pics look more like images off of a computer background.

Our first stop on this sightseeing tour was the second largest canyon in the US, the Palo Duro Canyon just to the southeast of Amarillo. Let me tell ya, this place was awesome. I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, so I haven’t seen anything like this in real life. It was so, so, so cool. There was a ton of life within the canyon itself, with a river/stream running through the middle. Trees and shrubs were noted everywhere, and there were plenty of awesome opportunities for great pictures.

This place was one of the more beautiful landscapes I have ever seen, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. AND we met a WKU Grad, class of 1999 there as well. What a small world!

After that, we headed to something called the Cadillac Ranch. This was probably the weirdest/most interesting thing I have seen on the trip so far. It was a field, and 10 Cadillacs were set up out of the ground at the angle of the Pyramids in Egypt. These are here for people to come and spray paint whatever they want to on them. They are extremely weird and awesome at the same time. Also: some people were taking like a model pictures in front of this, and they were awkward and hilarious.

So that was just weird. However, nothing that we saw on Saturday would compare to what was to come: The Big Texan. I am not sure that I can do that justice. I can’t do anything out here justice, to be honest. I can’t do the weather justice through pictures and stories. But my goodness, you just have to experience the Big Texan. It. Was. Awesome. I had a big ole steak, and we had a couple hours of laughs as a group.

Cap that off with a great night of sleep, and Saturday may have been the most fun day of the trip so far!