may 24, 2002
hp linear mess in northwest texas


Jay and Jeff spent the previous night in Elk City OK, where they got to visit the friend they made a week earlier. Late in the morning, they went to the Elk City library to look at data. They decided to head to the Childress TX area, where the best instability would be, and blow off the area closer to Elk City where there would be better shear. To make a long story short, this would end up being a very difficult chase in an area with too many storms and limited access to good roads and TV/radio reception. You had to be in the right place at the right time to see a tornado today, and those who were caught brief tornadoes near Cordell OK and Vernon TX. The latter location was a place Jay and Jeff went through 30 minutes before the tornado occurred, but by then Jeff had already assumed everything had turned linear and had decided to head back to Norman. Upon returning back to Norman, Jay and Jeff decided to end their chase vacation, as the jet stream was forecast to head back north and Jay was offered a contracting job.


Jay and Jeff left Elk City OK and headed to a rest area between Kirkland and Goodlett TX, where they sat and waited for storms to fire.
30 minutes after the previous picture was taken, a full blown thunderstorm was in progress just to the west in Childress TX. Here low clouds can be seen feeding into the newly developed storm.
After about an hour, it became apparent the storms around Childress were forming a line, so Jay and Jeff headed south hoping to catch Tail End Charlie. But before the Childress area storms merged with the storm in Cottle County, they saw this high based wall cloud ingesting some scud to their northwest from a rest area north of Crowell TX.
With a poor road network into Knox County and merging line of storms threatening to swallow them, Jay and Jeff let the storms take them over and decided to call it a day. On the way back to Norman they saw lots of lightning and gusty winds, and even got a visit from Roy G. Biv.


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