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North Texas - 08 September 2001
I did not expect to have two moderate risks in a row in September, but sure enough, it happened! I woke up late and checked Dusty's site, and he had something on there about a potential chase for that day. I im'ed him and inquired as I looked at weather data, and sure enough, a chase could be warranted. The only problem was that we had tickets to the OU/North Texas football game later that day, and we had to decide where we wanted to go. We talked with Aaron and finally decided to go. Aaron brought along his girlfriend Jimmie and we piled in Dusty's Blazer.
Dusty really wanted to go down I-35 first to get south. A couple of us said we wanted to go on I-44, but Dusty was driving. The one benefit of going on 35 that day was that we stopped at Jimmie's house in Marietta to look at weather data. Aaron was nervous, as this was the "meet the parents" experience for him, but he did pretty good (despite knocking the wreath of the door :) We decided that our next course of action was to get west, for we had just driven through the front and wanted to get further along it and in front of it. We took US 82 at Gainesville, TX, and stopped on road just off the highway. We stayed here for a while and this is where I first saw cactus growing in the wild. We saw clouds building along the front to our north, but nothing was really happening.
We then continued through Muenster (a German town in Texas??) and took Highway 59 to the southwest. We saw a few chasers pulled over, so we stopped to say hi. The had a cell hookup to their modem, and there was only one storm to the southwest. We watched some towering cumulus in front of us rise and then get denied by the shear. The other chasers left to chase that one storm, for we could see the anvil from where we were. This storm produced several tornadoes right at nightfall and we tried to make it down there, but couldn't before it got dark.
All in all, it was a bust. However, it was our own fault. What if we had gone southwest instead of south? The storm formed right where the SPC had the highest supercell potential. What if we hadn't stopped to see those chasers? That parts okay because they were really nice guys from OU who had a lot of neat equipment (my ultimate chasing vehicle). Also a redeeming quality was that on the way back toward Henrietta we were treated with an absolutely awesome lightning show. We thought we saw some lowerings when the lightning struck, but it's highly doubtful. The one thing that soured the chase was the poor service at Carl's Jr. in Duncan, OK, but that was understandable because they're not used to having such a large crowd at 10:00 on a Saturday night. It was an enjoyable chase for I got to see new parts of the country, meet new people and check out really cool and expensive equipment, and then I got to see one of the best lightning shows.
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