Nailed It! Darn!

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The meteorological "week from hell" continued yesterday. This time it was the southern High Plains. 

Many storm chasers diagnosed the situation. So had Blake Naftel of AccuWeather. The photo immediately below is a screen capture from his excellent video of this storm. I encourage you to go to the link and watch. 

I don't chase tornadoes very often. When I do, it is because I am confident that there will be tornadoes and that I can get to a safe position. 

Yesterday, I was confident when we left Wichita that I had a good grasp of the meteorology and I felt that I had nailed the location: the far northeast Texas Panhandle and northwest Oklahoma, the same area depicted in Blake's video. Yup, I nailed it!

Unfortunately, the forecast wasn't the only thing I nailed: I also nailed my left-front tire. So, I had to make an unforecasted detour to the City of Woodward where the great people of High Plains Tire pulled the nail out and repaired the tire. However, that cost me an hour. We were behind the rest of the day.

So, we saw the same storm Blake videoed but a half-hour later and and farther northeast near Buffalo, Oklahoma. Here's what it looked like when we got to it. And, this was the best photo I got. 
In the photo, the wall cloud (behind and left of the tower) is nearly scraping the ground. I believe I saw a brief tornado but lightning conditions were so poor I can't be sure. Fortunately, it passed just west of the town in a very sparsely populated area. 

It was just "one of those days..."

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