September 20, 2001: Squall Lines in Texas, Part 2

Miles traveled: 405. SPC risk: Moderate.
Chase soundtrack: Sevendust, "Sevendust"

I was all by myself for this chase - no partner, no nowcaster, nothing. Just me and Ma Nature. I had a couple of tests during the day, so I couldn't leave until 4pm. I debated even leaving at all, but 4 inch hail mentioned in a severe thunderstorm watch was too appealing to me. I headed southwest, going after the one storm that had developed by the time I left, which was then southwest of Childress. Since daylight is getting more scarce by the day this time of year, my main goal was to try and get a view of the front side of the storms before dark, then get some lightning after dark. (I figured there would be a lot of lightning with the storms; a cluster that moved through Norman at 6am that morning was highly electrified.) At Lawton, I went west, then south at Snyder on US183 to Vernon. The storms seemed to be moving/developing farther south than I had thought, and there was a severe thunderstorm warning in Foard Co., to my west. My only option was to go south on US183/283, and I was finally able to get ahead of the system when I reached the US82 junction. The main gust front was well to my west, but the storms to my immediate north and northeast were organizing as well. As darkness fell, I tried to take some lightning stills (as suspected, there was lots of it), but the only stuff I could get was of the gust front, first from a distance, then as it nearly swallowed me as I approached TX114.

As darkness fell, the squall line became better-organized, with the gust front taking a stacked-plate appearance as it neared the town of Megargel. I drove east on TX114 toward Olney (fond memories from there), stopping periodically to shoot lightning stills. This time, I was a bit more successful. There sure was a hell of a lot of lightning out there...

By the time I reached Olney, the gust front's structure looked less impressive. Chasing the system farther east would put me farther from home, and with the line appearing to weaken a bit, I headed north on TX79 to Wichita Falls. As I drove through the line, I got hit by 40-50mph winds and some pretty heavy rain, but nothing too nasty. My hope was to be able to get some lightning shots from the back side of the storm, as I had seen several anvil-crawlers already. However, cloud cover and light rain, not to mention the weakening storms, made taking stills a bit more difficult. Plus, I could see more lightning off in the distance to the north. I gave up on the Texas storms and headed toward home.

I found a spot near Middleburg, OK, along US62 (one of a few very good spots for visibility to the west on that highway), and set up to take some lightning stills. I started with my manual Pentax (we'll see how those turn out... if they do, I'll put them on this page as well), then set my digital cam up. Too bad I don't have a telephoto lens for it, or that I can't take exposures for longer than 4 seconds at a time, but I still managed to get a few good shots. In all, I took over 100 digital stills throughout the chase (all but about 3 or 4 for lightning), and got 10 decent pics. That's how it goes sometimes...

More lightning stills from the Pentax; I exposed the film for between 10 and 30 seconds for each pic.

All those stops for lightning made for a pretty late night; I finally got home around 1230am. So what if it was a squall line, this one turned out to be pretty fun. Lots more fun than the line of 2 days before.

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