This was a chase that felt like three chases… days on both sides of this had hope of some chase potential but neither panned out. Ended up turning this into a very long circle with nice drives on both sides. Left Denver early Sunday evening with hopes of catching storms in eastern Colorado or western Kansas. It was a quiet drive that led down to Dodge City in the same hotel I had spent the night in several days earlier.
Waking up that morning, it was my hope to play in Kansas to allow for a shorter drive to a southeast Nebraska target. The hope was not having to go too far from Dodge City, chase into Nebraska the next day with an all night drive back to Denver on Wednesday. Well, the forecast that morning was setting up to be a classic Texas Panhandle chase. While I wasn’t thrilled with driving the opposite direction, I knew it was going to be the best play.
Venturing out, we dropped south on US-283 into Oklahoma and eventually cut over into the Texas Panhandle on US-60. Obviously a couple hours of that drive was in the data hole of northwest Oklahoma, so it wasn’t til we pulled a county into the Panhandle when I was finally able to catch up on things. The first thing I noticed was the lack of eastward surge in the dryline, which had my target almost beyond Amarillo.
I got in touch with Scott Hammel who was southwest of us in Pampa and told him we were enroute his direction. We drove the 45-minute trek down US-60, meeting Scott at a fuel station there in town. We discussed the prospects of the day, both of us a little doubtful of the overall potential. I joked how excited I was over the prospects of the grapefruit-sized hail the Amarillo HWO had been plugging all day and said I felt 95% confident in seeing at least two inch stones at some point.
After some discussion and another quick look at things, I decided our play was going to be west. We had the HRRR in the back of our minds which was consistently breaking out a impressive looking storm near Springfield, Colorado. That led us to go straight west as opposed to diving southwest, which also kept us both closer to our next destinations (him back home to Denver, me northward to Tuesday’s target).
On our way to Borger, several blips started to show up southwest and west of Amarillo, and it again led us to adjust our route. We ended up repeating my April 10 venture across to Amarillo as we elected to not go to Dumas and just get on the developing storms. No sense in stalling.
The storms were developing slow and moving almost as slowly as well. Every time we felt like stopping, we ended up pushing further as the storms we not making a very fast eastward path. That and they were struggling. We got to the 335 Loop north of Amarillo and took it to Bishop Hills and eventually dropped south into Bushland where we watched the first storms struggle.
About this time, I took note of the dryline showing up on KAMA’s radar and noted a bulge in the line to our immediate south. That was the hotspot I was eying, figuring if a storm could fire down there, it was stand the best chance of going. We jumped back up on I-40 over to the 335 Loop, heading south and east to catch FM-2590 which ran south along side I-27 to get under the newly warned storm that was quickly intensifying.
We got ourselves beneath the core on this route, which I guess was technically on the very southern part of Amarillo. We observed and measured 1.25″ hail falling here. Once the core passed and I lolly-gagged in the hail for a few, we shot east to get back up with it. This storm had some forward speed, but nothing we couldn’t easily keep up with. We ended up catching it again near the Tanglewood Lake sub-division where I’d estimate golfballs coming down at this point. I again stopped to measure further up the road and then continued east on the highway to Claude.
The storm was struggling, and others were forming on the old outflow boundary about 30 miles to our east. We gave this storm a couple more chances to impress us, but then decided it was time to move on to the storms in front of it that were going to be ingesting undisturbed air. We headed north to I-40 where the plan was to fill up in McLean, then head south toward Hedley to get in front of this storm.
After a fill-up, we made the south dive. We knew we were going to clip the core getting down there, but felt as if we had plenty of time. The core was estimated to contain golfball sized hail, so we figured a Tanglewood repeat at the worst. It remained consistent for a majority of the drive down there, so there wasn’t a ton of call for concern.
TX-273, our route south, makes a 3 mile job back to the west, and it had me concerned that we’d lose time getting down there. Again, core remained consistent with the turn, and all was good. It was the next scan that increased the core size to 2.25″. I recall telling Scott on the radio that the marker had increased and that he should probably hang back and let us probe the core in the event it started to get bad. I, of course, am a notorious core puncher, so I was going to blast in regardless of the size. Scott, he’s what he likes to call an ass man, and has no real desire to play in hail.
When the road finally turned south, we immediately still saw no hail. We had about 6 miles to Hedley, so we pressed on. The following scan again jumped to 3.50″. That’s about the time when I knew it was going to get fun. I announced the new size on the radio back to Scott, but we were already too much committed.
The first stones came down, small and non-threatening. But it was probably only seconds later when the baseballs came down. I slowed and eventually stopped, knowing that any forward momentum was just going to add to the impact force on the car’s glass, so I opted to hold tight. Several other vehicles took the same approach and stopped as well.
The onslaught began and reminded me immediately of my Seminole hailstorm years earlier. It took a minute before the front windshield finally cracked, but once that happened, it was a free for all. Every stone that landed on the front glass added more cracks. The impacts on the roof were enough to bounce the mag-mount antennas to hang off the side of the car and kept opening my sunglass holder on the console above me. Meanwhile, the windshield continued to crack more and more.
I figured at this point, it was moot to stand still, so I moved forward, knowing the end of the core was down the road. While I was still able to drive with most of the damage on the passenger side, I didn’t want to cave int he glass as it was holding on and figured if I limited the damage to what it was, I’d be fine to continue. It didn’t take long to reach the end of the falling hail, and I directed Hammel south informing him that the rampage was over.
I immediately got out to check out my trophy dents and take stock of the damage. In addition to the front glass, I lost the side mirror on the driver’s side and the mirror housing on the passenger side. The antennas on the roof were hanging off after being bounced from the roof, but were both in tact and fine. The dents were many all over the car, but the rest of the glass had survived just fine.
Scott pulled in behind us, stating that his truck was ruined. I ran up to make sure he was okay, then took stock of his vehicle. While not immediately noticed, his sunroof was cracked, but not shattered. Initially, we thought it had survived, and we laughed about how amazing it was. Turns out later he discovered the cracked glass up there. He had also lost his back window in addition to his windshield along with some side mirror damage.
I suggested we return back to the scene to document the hail size. The storm was in view and we could keep an eye on it as it slowly moved east. It looked okay, but not tornadic. The storm we had left earlier was making its way along US-287 toward us and that had my attention as I felt continuing the chase was doing to be difficult for both of us given the damage we had taken. Figured we get south, let the storm slide to our north, then call it a day. But, we had time, so back north we went.
The stones were 15-minutes old, but still measured out to be 2.75″. I submitted my report to the National Weather Service which they posted with the amendment “per this report”. I felt like they didn’t believe me. But given we had seen several passing vehicles, all with windows looking as good as ours, I knew this core caught a few people.
After documenting the hail, we finally got down to Hedley and pushed west a bit on US-287 to observe the approaching storm. It looked mean, had some rotation which briefly really got impressive right over the highway in front of us, but never really got anything together. It was about this time we decided to call it a chase, with my thoughts of getting to OKC where I could get a new windshield in the morning and head up north to chase. Scott was going to return home. We said our goodbyes, me again offering my condolences on his truck, and I ventured down to Memphis.
We hung tight there for about an hour waiting for the storms to move on. The chase was done, and with the integrity of my windshield compromised, it didn’t make sense to be core punching, nor did I want to let this thing chase me across southern Oklahoma. I wanted back up on I-40, so we waited the storms out at a hotel overhang.
Once we were in the clear, we returned to Hedley, shot north to I-40, and made our way to OKC. I was in touch with my Wichita station as I had learned that another chaser had lost windows in the surprise supercells that developed west of Dodge City. They recommended a good, cheap windshield shop in Wichita, so my plan was to hit that up enroute up north.
With evening setting in, and internet coverage strong on I-40, I planned out my following day’s chase. It wasn’t looking good as the main area of interest had shifted well north into Minnesota, and was completely out of play. Even southeast Nebraska looked marginal, and Iowa was just too far east given the marathon drive back that was planned Tuesday night (and it’s still Iowa).
Got to the hotel on the north side of OKC and bunked down for the night. The plan for Tuesday was to cherry pick anything that may form in northern Kansas as only the GFS had any hope of something firing up there. Got up, packed, and headed to Wichita to take care of the windshield. Unfortunately, the only appointment I could get was at 4pm, which all but sealed the fate of the day. After lunch with Rodney Price of KWCH, I took the car in for the work. It was about 5:15 when it was finished, and we continued north on I-135 to Salina.
The day was done, a cirrus shield had overspread all of Kansas and the nearest storms were north of Lincoln, so the marathon drive to Denver commenced. We stopped to admire the amazing sunset which wrapped things up before the drive back home.
