Target Area: Bowie, Texas area
Chase Area: Bowie/Jacksboro, Texas
Observations: one wall cloud, two supercells, a scudnado, and a rainbow
Distance: 475 miles
Time: 11 hours
Chase Team: Andrew Barrett, Heather Moser, Renee Curry, and myself
SPC Convective Outlook: Moderate Risk (Click to see SPC products, data, and storm reports)
Chase Setup: Dryline day, with a surface low in southern Oklahoma and a dryline extending southward through west central Texas. Dewpoints in the mid-60s and CAPE of 1000 to 2000 J kg-1 in west central Texas. Wind shear not too bad; decent for supercells with hail, but would be better for tornadoes if surface winds could back a little more.
Chase Log: We set out for north central Texas on a day that looked like it had great potential for large hail and possibly some tornadoes later in the evening (shear-dependent). Sitting in Bowie for a while, we waited for storms to start firing, worrying about the strength of the cap. We got to know Bowie pretty well by the end of the day, as we wound up there three times this day!
Eventually supercells started forming off the dryline, and we chased two rotationally weak supercells between Bowie and Jacksboro. A weak wall cloud formed on the southern storm, but the rotation did not tighten up enough for the wall cloud to become well-organized, let alone produce a tornado. We did, however, see some low-hanging scud in the shape of a funnel, about the time a possible tornado was being reported on the storm. There were several tornadoes that formed this day, but they were all in central Arkansas.
We followed the storm until about dusk, when we decided to go back home as our chances of seeing a tornado were very low. We did see a beautiful double rainbow near sunset, though, and heard that there was some very large hail reported on the supercells. We didn't manage to see any of the hail, however, as I was more concerned with avoiding it than risking driving in it.