11 June 2005

Chase crew: me, Daphne, Nathan, and Brian. This day began in Norman after a long bust chase the previous day to the TX Panhandle. Instead of staying overnight on the 10th, I wanted to sleep better at home coming off a set of mid shifts. The net result was me sleeping until noon on the 11th, which left us little margin for error. A quick glance at surface obs and visible imagery confirmed that an outflow boundary lingered near AMA, with sufficient vertical shear and instability for supercells. Weakly enhanced moisture and low-level shear on the boundary might support a local tornado threat, so we jumped in the van and drove back to TX. Our first storm encounter was a supercell just west of AMA. Outflow from a left-mover seemed as if it would interfere with the AMA storm, so we switched plans and raced SE to get ahead of a storm to our south. The storm moved slowly and we had plenty of time to drive through Palo Duro canyon and then sit in place while the storm wandered toward us near Wayside, TX. All told, the storm produced one definite tornado, and perhaps three in our view (a second, brief spinup with the same meso that produced our "definite" tornado, and another probable rain-wrapped tornado near the south rim of Palo Duro canyon.