Hello from Vernon, Texas!

Successful chase day today: saw one, possibly two tornadoes today near Mangum, TX. 

We started off in Childress, TX this morning and the Storm Prediction Centre upgraded to a HIGH RISK and a 45% hatched for tornadoes. This meant they were anticipating strong, long-track tornadoes. Needless to say, we all had an uneasy feeling about the day.

Several things make a high risk chase stressful: choosing the right storm, the atmosphere is so primed for severe weather everything goes up, fast moving storms, and the danger to the public.

The forecast models were indicating multiple rounds starting early in the morning so we got up early to ensure we were prepared to hit the day head on.

Well... we hung around in Childress for a long time. A PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) Tornado Watch for the region and storms started to fire mid afternoon. We headed west and south out of Childress to watch the two storms coming up out of our southwest. Both storms had hooks on them but were fighting each other for the environment. 

Eventually one storm became dominant and we followed along with it north and east from north-central Texas into southwest Oklahoma. As we approched the storm from the south nearing Mangum, OK, it was producing a large cone tornado. Unfortunately visibility was very poor with a lot of moisture/haze in the atmosphere so it was low-contrast at points. As we got to Mangum, the tornado became thinner and started to rope out. We followed along in behind it as it passed through the north side of town. It then dissipated.

We continued with the storm as it was still looking good toward Granite, OK. It produced strong circulation that passed the road in front of us and into the field beside us. It was hard to tell if that cirucation was on the ground or not. Eventually the storm started to gust out so we decided to proceed north toward Vernon, TX to intercept an incoming storm that had rotation on it. The storm started to weaken as we got there so we did a little bit of lightning photography then headed back to Vernon for the night. Currently there are storms ongoing just south of town so we've got our weather radio handy just in case. There was a super close lightning strike not too long ago that scared the crap out of everyone.

Tomorrow looks like a down day, we won't be venturing to Kansas. We'll likely head to Amarillo, TX.