12 June 2005

Chase crew: me, Daphne, Nathan, and Brian Those of you familiar with the outcome in Kent Co. TX may wonder why I have pictures from Copper Breaks State Park. Well, I'll tell you the painful truth... We were forced to spend the night in Plainview after flash flooding impeded our efforts to meet up with Roger and Elke Edwards the evening before in Canyon, TX. That resulted in a late dinner and a late arrival at our motel in Plainview. The net result was that I screwed up my sleep schedule and lapsed back into mids because I stayed up too late. Two kids in a motel room and an uncomfortable brace on my left arm didn't help matters, though I did sleep some between 4 and 7 am on the 12th. My wife and kids didn't sleep much better, so we had a sluggish start to the 12th. Still, we had a target area E or SE of LBB and we loosely caravaned with Roger and Elke on the way to the forecast area. The first storms went up E/NE of LBB from 1-2 pm, though the storm structure was screwed up with the updrafts leaving anvils behind! I knew we needed to get the upper wave axis (and weaker flow) past W TX before the storm structures would improve, but how long would it take? With limited data access near Crosbyton, I started wondering if it would be 6-8 pm before things got any better. Meanwhile, one of the kids had an upset stomach, and everyone was hot and tired. Around 2:30 pm at Dickens, TX (on the caprock), I decided that we'd cut our losses and get back home at a reasonable hour so that I wouldn't be dead tired at work the next day. To make a long story short, we bailed out and stopped by Copper Breaks State Park for 1-2 hours on the drive back to Norman. We were hiking around the park about the time the tornadoes began in the Dickens to Jayton area...where we were sitting about 3 hours earlier! It was painful end to a painful chase season for me.