March
24, 2024
(Click on images to enlarge them)
My son Ryan and I were drawn out west for the possibility of tornadic storms. We left the day before to meet up with our chase partner, Brian Stertz. On the way to his place, we took a side trip to do some wildlife photography and then met Brian and his wife for a leisurely dinner before getting some sleep at their place.
After a good night's sleep, we were up early and got on the road. The original target was Pratt, Kansas, but on the way, the target city was shifted south to Alva, Oklahoma. We had Lunch at Alva's Pizza Hut as we looked at data and waited for storm initiation.
The dryline initiated storms much further west in the Texas Panhandle earlier than was anticipated.
We moved westward toward Buffalo, Oklahoma to re-position for a potential intercept. The transition to a tornado warned storm did not take long after initiation and quickly put down three brief EF/EF1 tornadoes near Perryville, Texas.
We continued moving west as we made our move to intercept the tornado warned storm, but just as fast as the storm went up and did its business, the warning was dropped and the storms weakened. We followed the northern storm that was once tornado warned northeastward, but it never became severe warned again.
After tracking the storm for several hours, we watched the storm transition to a heavy rain maker and ultimately made the decision to cut our loses and head back home. The drive back toward Kansas City turned into a white knuckle drive as the rain mass continued to grow. Daylight turned to night as the rain mass worked its way up I-35 right along with us.
The day was extremely frustrating as we anticipated much more tornado action. Although there were several very brief spin-ups to our west, we never encountered any severe parameters the entire day.
 |
 |
| Trip Route |
Zoomed View |
40 Hours - 1345 Miles