This was a high stress day where we picked up a supercell storm that formed in extreme northeast New Mexico – then had to stay ahead of the fast moving storm as it moved southeast reaching Borger, TX.  Near Borger, another supercell formed to its south and also moved quickly southeast toward southwest Oklahoma.  The combined storms produced several small tornadoes (we could not confirm) – and a tremendous amount of large hail.  We encountered some of that hail along I 40 near Lela, TX.  Stones near Lela were measured to be between 5 and 6 inches in diameter.

A relatively uneventful day that had us bouncing around from storm to storm in southeast Colorado… none of which provided anything too dramatic.

We had a narrow target which worked out about exactly as expected… picking up a supercell storm east of Trinidad, Colorado and staying ahead of it as it moved southeast toward the western end of the Oklahoma panhandle.  The storm did provide some pretty structure at times and was responsible for some very large hail reports – upward of baseball size.

While in a non-chase mode, roaming around southeast Colorado and southwest Kansas, we paused to watch developing slow moving convection from near Saunders.  We found a few old buildings to frame with the weak storms, and then found ourselves in the right place at the right time to observe a short-lived landspout tornado.  Our guess is it was a couple miles northeast of Lycan.

We dropped south to near the Red River southeast of Walters and then began hopping from storm to storm back northeastward through the Rush Springs and Ninnekah areas.  Despite a high amount of moisture and instability, storms struggled most of the afternoon and evening.  They either had small volume in the mid levels despite fat bases, or skinny bases and loaded up upstairs.  Overall, there was decent structure to be had and we had a few times where a tornado looked possible.

Another day to north Texas and another day with minimal results.  We did manage to see some structure and sky color, but overall the day wasn’t very exciting.  A few images taken from near Harrold, Kamay, Archer City, Antelope, Shannon, Newport and Joy, Texas:

Well, this wasn’t the most exciting chase day, but it was a good chance to get out with first time chase partner, Robert Satkus.  We took a drive down I-35 and stopped near the Red River southwest of Ardmore and enjoyed the warm and moist air.

The better looking storm development was occurring on the Texas side of the river and we made the short jump southwest – staying ahead of storms as they approached Gainesville.  Honestly, there wasn’t a lot to get excited about.  About 4 miles west of Kingston we took up shelter and let an approaching severe storm roll over where we measured 1.24″ hail.  This was my first severe hail to document in Marshall County.

We called it a day after the hail and rolled back north enjoying some BBQ in Ardmore before heading toward Norman and home.

The last chase of the 2022 season was a fairly short trip into western Oklahoma.  The atmosphere was very unstable southeast of a slow moving front that extended from eastern Kansas into the Texas Panhandle.  While no tornadoes were reported in Oklahoma, supercell storms – producing very large hail and damaging winds – formed over the west central and southwest parts of the state and moved slowly toward central Oklahoma.  Our trip took us through Fay and Thomas to west of Clinton where we started sampling storms, following them back toward Canadian County.

There were a couple of potential targets on the day… the panhandle where a cool northeast wind had filtered into the area, but recovery was expected throughout the day… and northwest Texas where instability wasn’t going to be in question.  Being better chase territory, we decided on the panhandle.  And really, confidence was fairly high that sufficient recovery would take place.  Unfortunately, it was later and not as strong as expected.

We drove west to the Goodnight exit and started drifting north ahead of a supercell that organized near Claude.

While the storm looked like it was organizing nicely, there were signs – such as low, almost stratus clouds that were streaming in from the east.  Still, the storm acquired supercell characteristics and even produced a weak tornado as we approached Groom.  The tornado was only on the ground for a few seconds, and that was about the last the storm would do.

When it became apparent that sufficient recovery wasn’t going to occur, we started making our dash southeast toward other supercells that were developing.  We were well behind the main show and had to settle for a severe storm near Dodson that left us less than impressed.

It’s not too often that you can leave Okarche and end up chasing a storm near Purcell by way of Waynoka.  We originally targeted northwest Oklahoma but became unimpressed with the idea as we got into Alfalfa County.  Things were a little messy, with a lot of storm interaction and little in the way of structure to keep us there.  A storm was approaching Kingfisher County that was more isolated, which we targeted and started moving south.  But we were just a tad late on arrival and missed brief tornadoes near Loyal.  We were still treated with some nice structure before the storm started weakening:

The next hope was storms moving from Caddo into Grady county.  We worked our way around Chickasha and east toward Purcell with a nice looking supercell:

Probably the best image we captured came on our way home… stopping in far west OKC for a view of the mammatus near sunset: