I'm home safely after battling the insane winds from the backside of the massive low pressure system which has caused all sorts of crazy things all over the country. My experience today was fortunately limited to high winds unlike my buddies Verne and Michael who left Amarillo a couple hours before me and endured quite the ground blizzard on Hwy 64 west of Des Moines, NM. By the time I arrived, a few spats of blowing snow were left.
None-the-less, I made it home after a 1251 mile round trip. Not much clean up to do with this one as I had enough time last night and this morning to catch up on most of my web-based stuff. My last change was to update my mileage for the chase and will late rpost video from the wind I encountered in the northern Texas Panhandle. Beyond that, just a very good chase to kick off 2007.
As for severe reports today, SPC reports show most of the tornatic activity limited to areas outside of our original cold core target. A couple of damaging tornadoes touched down in Arkansas earlier today, but only one brief, weak tornado touched down in Kansas. In total as of this writing, 13 reports have been received with only two remotely in the cold core ballpark.
It certainly makes returning home today a bit easier to handle as opposed to missing an April 10, 2005 repeat. Unfortunately our good fortune has a downside for many chasers whose weekend was planned around this forecasted event. In all, the entire system, both Friday and Saturday, threw enough forecasting curve balls to screw everyone up. Verne, Michael, myself, and a small handful of others caught the best tornado of the system yesterday during a time where we were originally hoping just for a storm to fire. While our target verified, it certainly was not the way we said it would. Saturday unfolded like Friday in terms of completely against original thinking. Unfortunately many chasers did not come away with the prize we found in the Texas Panhandle on Friday.
In any case, the 2007 season has kicked off in dramatic fasion (mostly talking winter and winds). Now its time to start making the adjustments and get ready to go for real. I'll be posting some reviews this upcoming week as soon as I catch up with some real world stuff. Overall, I'm very happy with the performance of most of my gear!
Good night from back home in Denver. See you under the next meso!
