Tornado Chasing in the Plains

Hey guys its Frank. As a few of you may know I've been out in the plains on a tornado chasing tour with a group called Extreme Tornado Tours. Theyre affiliated with Reed Timmer and the rest of the crew from Discovery Channel's "Storm Chasers." Also leading our trip is "Cyclone Jim" Leonard (he's famous in chasing circles mainly from his work on over 60 hurricanes and hundreds of tornadoes).
Anyways, we flew into Oklahoma City on Saturday and met up with our group... Saturday-Tuesday the weather was calm so we took the time to go see some tourist attractions. Sunday we drove to Amarillo TX to eat at the Big Texan Steak Ranch, home of the 72 oz porterhouse. Monday, we drove to Canyon TX to see the Palo Duro Canyon National Park. Tuesday we drove down to Carlsbad NM to tour Carlsbad Caverns. After we saw the cave we drove back up to Abilene TX to bed down for the night.

Wednesday was our first chase day and so we drove from Abilene up towards the area east of the OK/TX panhandle. The models indicated some good CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) along with decent dewpoints in the upper 60s and good upper level winds. We saw a few storms trying to fire up but a strong cap along with some lingering high level cirrus clouds, which prevented heating, killed any chances of severe storms. So today was officially declared a bust...
More updates will be coming tomorrow morning after our briefing which highlights a target area and the possible factors that will contribute to the formation of any severe storms

Palo Duro Canyon

Carlsbad Caverns

Until next time,
Sub Divo

Frank Mullens