MARCH 17th - Graford/Santo, TX
CHASERS: Bobby Eddins,  Michael Cohen,  T.J. Sivley,  Curtis Sivley NOWCASTING: Sam Barricklow
SUMMARY: This St. Patrick's Day system had been seen in the models for a week or more but what originally looked like a potential outbreak day had dwindled down to one for the optimistic only. This system was not classic by any means. It had incredible wind speeds at upper levels which were diving from the mid Pacific coast towards south Texas and an upper low that was progged to cut-off over the south central plains. Meanwhile a surface low which had formed in Colorado was supposed to deepen and slowly drift south with a dryline bulging to the southeast across western Oklahoma into northwestern Texas, to just west of DFW. All this was handled quite well in most models and everything was in place except deep moisture from the gulf. The two systems that preceded had hung along the gulf coast and circulation around them had prevented the gulf from opening up. Even so morning analysis showed upper 50's lower 60's dewpoints in the DFW area with a narrow fetch of 60+ dewpoints approaching the counties to the west. The moist axis was along a Austin, Brownwood, Vernon line with winds at Abilene already out of the west at 11AM. My original target was to just go west on I-20 for anything that goes up but the Noon observation showed winds starting to veer at Wichita Falls so I decided to head up Hwy 287 to just south of the Red River. Michael picked me up and we met TJ and his brother and all 4 of us loaded into his Crown Victoria (boy that's a lotta beef) and took off. Graford, TX Storm As we approached Decatur, TX I called Sam Barricklow and he vectored us in on the best storm, a hard right-mover, in Young, Co. to our west. Hearing this we took Hwy 380 to Jacksboro where another check with Sam confirmed that the storm was to our southwest. We could now see the anvil visually so we took Hwy 281 south to get in front of it. As we reached Hwy 254 the storm was to our west so we headed toward Graford to get a closer look. As we drove west we started to make out a wall-cloud and rain-free base south of the storms core. We went a bit west of Graford to take a peak at 2 lowerings but precip started so we drove east to Hwy 4 then south. We found a good observation point 2 or 3 miles south of the Brazos River and set up.
	A decent anvil off to our southwest as we drive south on Hwy 281.
	As we drive west on Hwy 254 a nice wall-cloud becomes visible and shows some rotation.
	Driving south on Hwy 4 from Hwy 254 two wall-clouds emerge from behind a plateau.
	The lowerings appear to scrape the ground.
	We set-up south of the Brazos for some nice wall-cloud action.
	Precip began to wrap around the wall-cloud in a hook fashion.
	The wall-cloud concentrate's as rain continues to wrap in.
	A broader view shows a nice beaver's tail feeding from the ENE.
	An RFD clear-slot begins to slice through the wall-cloud. as the storm really winds up.
	The clear-slot broadens.
	As the RFD pushes out the familiar "horse shoe" shape appears.
	The wall-cloud tightens it's rotation as the RFD pushes towards us.
	Scud forms rapidly at the south edge of the RFD as the wall-cloud tucks behind the wrap-around precip. Will it tornado or occlude?
	Tornado or occlude?
	RFD very near! Tornado or occlude?
	As the RFD hits us we can see cascading motions to our north and a almost horizontal funnel stretching to the west. Much like Trinidad, CO in 2001. Tornado???
	As we drive north to look another chaser which we had just passed reports a funnel and cascading motion just to his north. We stop dead in our tracks looking straight up at the back side of the updraft. We're hit by warm RFD of perhaps 60 mph. ??? Tornado or occlude!!
	As we stay put we view rapid downward motion to our NE followed by rapid left-to-right motion into this funnel. OCCLUSION!!
Timelapse of this storm We drove on across the river where a few small tree limbs and light sheet metal damage had occurred and then hit very heavy rain and small hail. We decided to drop south of Hwy 4 to Palo Pinto and then go east on Hwy 180 to get back in front of our storm. Santo, TX Storm While driving through Mineral Wells I got a call from Sam saying that a new storm to our southwest was intensifying and would probably merge with the Graford storm around Weatherford so we dropped down to I-20 and drove west to intercept. At first this storm was high-based but the closer we got the better it looked. We missed the exit at the rest stop but pulled off in the grass near the entrance ramp with a great view and set up the cameras.
	The second storm begins to look very nice.
	A beaver tail, wall-cloud, and stack-of-plates. What a view!!
	Outflow appears to kick up scud and then try to form a wall-cloud.
	The inflow/outflow battle continues as a new meso tries to form to the left.
	The scud formed a ragged tail cloud-like feature as fingers of cloud material ripped up into the updraft from right-to-left.
	As outflow pushes this feature to the south and away from the core the lowering to the left picks up some rotation.
	The battle continues as the rotation increases a bit.
	Outflow isolates the lowering as it approaches I-20 where Tim Marshall and Carson Eads observe a brief tornado at Hwy 281.
Timelapse of this storm CONCLUSION: This was a very nice first chase of the season. Very little hope was held for tornado's and low-topped supercells were the theme of the day as expected. Congratulations to those who bagged tornado's in SW Oklahoma but it's hard to beat this kind of structure and being back home by 9pm. Would have driven much further for this show. As expected the storms suffered from an imbalance between RFD and inflow, favoring RFD. Just a little better juice surface winds and it would have been a much better day tornado-wise, though I hate to think of the consequences here in DFW. Thanks Sam for the nowcasting! Note: slide scans and timelapse will be added ASAP so check back.

All Images © 2003 Bobby Eddins. All rights reserved.