I woke up content but also a wee bit hungover from the celebration last night. For the fourth day in a row we had an SPC Slight Risk with 5% tornado risk to chase. This time in the Oklahoma panhandle and southeast Colorado. Since we already were in the same area (Shamrock, TX) we treated ourselves with a good breakfast at a family restaurant nearby.
I bumped in to some old acquaintances from Cloud 9: Charles Edwards and George Kourounis but also Klipski who I had been emailing with in the pre-season. It is an awesome but absurd feeling to go halfway around the world, stop by a small restaurant in an even smaller town – and bump into people you know! I love it!
We moved westward on the Oklahoma panhandle when the first storms started popping up. We chased them and had to make a turn up north in order to avoid the rain but by doing so ending up north of our HP cell. There was a tornado reported on our storm but there was no chance to get back on it without core punching it, which obviously was a bad idea, so we pretty much had to sit it out and watch it congeal with the other cells (like all storms seems to be doing this year). We were treated with some nice mammatus instead.
So, even though we got to chase some storms and saw/felt some amazing thunder and lightning it felt like a semi-bust. It was however the fourth day in a row where we had been chasing a storm with a tornado!
