Wednesday, February 28, 2007
CHASE: 2/23/07
On Friday, February 23rd, the SPC issued a moderate risk for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes (15% hatched tor). Moisture depth and quality remained an issue, which precluded the issuance of a high risk. This turned out to be a good decision since the verification of the event was in the slight risk regime (only a few tornadoes and hail reports). Nevertheless, Friday was a fun chase day.
Started out the chase in Norman, and we departed around 3 p.m. for the Childress area. This was a late departure time, but due to outstanding driving (;-)), we made it to the targete area by about 5:40 p.m. By this time, a full-fledged supercell had developed west of Memphis, TX, so we decided to target this storm. We saw this storm, and a very well-developed supercell to its north. The convection on the northern cell was particularly impressive, given the time of the year. Our storm had a flat base, but it was obviously rotating with an *extensive* beaver tail feeding the storm from the east. This might have been the most notable part of the storm, since I've never seen a bigger inflow band. At any rate, the storm began to produce lowerings around 6 p.m. We saw one RFD occlusion of a low-level mesocyclone, and it made a legitimate attempt at producing a tornado (two brief funnels were observed). After this, the storm became an HP supercell, which lowered our hopes of seeing tornadoes. Officially, this storm did produce a tornado around 6:15 p.m., but we were in the wrong position (apparently) to observe it. The northern cell also produced a tornado, but this tornado was far more visible as the northern storm was distinctly low precipitation in nature.
Overall, this was a very fun chase with good friends. :-)
Started out the chase in Norman, and we departed around 3 p.m. for the Childress area. This was a late departure time, but due to outstanding driving (;-)), we made it to the targete area by about 5:40 p.m. By this time, a full-fledged supercell had developed west of Memphis, TX, so we decided to target this storm. We saw this storm, and a very well-developed supercell to its north. The convection on the northern cell was particularly impressive, given the time of the year. Our storm had a flat base, but it was obviously rotating with an *extensive* beaver tail feeding the storm from the east. This might have been the most notable part of the storm, since I've never seen a bigger inflow band. At any rate, the storm began to produce lowerings around 6 p.m. We saw one RFD occlusion of a low-level mesocyclone, and it made a legitimate attempt at producing a tornado (two brief funnels were observed). After this, the storm became an HP supercell, which lowered our hopes of seeing tornadoes. Officially, this storm did produce a tornado around 6:15 p.m., but we were in the wrong position (apparently) to observe it. The northern cell also produced a tornado, but this tornado was far more visible as the northern storm was distinctly low precipitation in nature.
Overall, this was a very fun chase with good friends. :-)
# posted by Gabe Garfield @ 9:43 AM 
