Date: April 30, 2018
Time: 4:50 - 7:35 PM CDT
Place: McLean to Wellington, TX
Distance: 602 mi (357 positioning, 70 chasing, 175 to hotel)
Camera: T3i and GoPro3 Black
Warnings: SVR
Rating: S2

Pre-Chase

10:00 AM MDT - 4:50 PM CDT: Well, here we are finally kicking off the 2018 storm season on the last day of April. Up to this point, the year has been annoyingly quiet. But it looks like we're finally going to get a multi-day event sweeping through the southern plains. Today will be a day-before-the-day event in the TX panhandle. As such, all ingredients are on the more marginal side: dews will barely hit 60°F and bulk shear will be in the 30-35 kt range. If we get anything, it'll probably be some high-based storms and maybe a nice LP supercell for structure. But I can't think of a nicer way to knock the rust off and start the chase season - especially in preparation for the following 2 days.

Today is also our first chase starting from our new house in southeast ABQ, which conveniently shaves half an hour off our departure time when leaving east on I40. (If we make any last-minute tornado intercepts this year, I will credit the new house and its convenient locale 😄). After grabbing the requisite Chick-fil-A breakfast, we were off - targeting somewhere in the McLean, TX vicinity.

The day took a somber turn shortly after departure when our long-time friend, Neal, texted to say his father had just passed away. Many of my earliest, fondest "chase" memories from way back involve heading to Neal's house (January 24, 1997) or on vacation with his family (July 7 and July 9, 1997). For our friend to be going through one of his worst days ever while we were starting one of our favorite adventures was a terrible and helpless juxtaposition. Maybe one day Neal will be able to join us on a chase.

The Chase

4:50 - 5:30 PM CDT: Only stopping for the occasional gas-up, by late afternoon we were nearing our McLean target. The SPC had recently issued a Mesoscale Discussion and SVR Watch for the area (a tad disappointing, but I wasn't really expecting a TOR box given today's conditions).

Decent cumulus towers were already trying to breach the cap, so we dropped south of McLean - watching their evolution from the same spot where we observed the Mclean Deluxe tornado just last year. It was a great feeling to get the sliderail out for the first motion timelapse of the year, but it wasn't long before the towers got choked off. The cap was still holding strong.

5:30 - 7:35 PM CDT: A new cluster of disorganized multicells had initiated between Turkey and Estelline, TX. Having no other storms in the immediate vicinity, we headed south to Memphis and then east on lonely HWY 256 to get downstream of these new storms - hoping one would organize and become dominant as they moved towards us.

By 6:15, we arrived at a nice little spot near the 256/83 junction with a view southwest with a few other hopeful chasers scattered around the roadside. Encouragingly, one cell in the cluster had already gone SVR warned and looked to be consolidating on radar. Unfortunately, visual clues told a different story: a morass of crowded updrafts and left-splits were all fighting each other. We needed a bully storm to take over, but none of the updrafts could get a good foothold.

Nevertheless, I set up some timelapse and flew the Karma drone for a bit - soaking in the gloomy skies and rumbling thunder as the cluster of cells headed our way. But by 7PM, the entire multicell complex was collapsing - victims of the cap and their own interference. One left-split remained, having gained some separation from the group as it flew north towards Shamrock. We briefly pursued that storm, but gave up in Wellington and decided to cut our losses for the day.

Post-Chase

7:35 PM - 12:50 AM CDT: With two more days of chasing ahead, we commenced the drive north to Liberal, KS - positioning for tomorrow's event in central Kansas. Along the way, I stopped a few times around Shamrock to snap photos of some little thundershowers in the evening twilight - probably the nicest pics I got all day, honestly. We also started a new set of audiobooks for the season: The Nexus Trilogy by Ramez Naam.

The book, along with anticipation for the coming days, made quick work of the drive to Liberal. We enjoyed a late-night dinner and beer at the recently completely Old Chicago Pizza (yes we keep tabs on new restaurants in little KS towns) before retiring to the Fairfield Inn (also a new addition - yes we also track hotels in little KS towns).

Recap, Filmmaking Notes, and Lessons Learned