MAY 8, 1998 Where indicated, images © 1998 Ed Cohen
King County, Tx Our target for this day was Vernon, Tx. but by the time we reached Wichita Falls around 1 pm non-severe storms had already started to fire to the SW north of Abilene with stronger storms stretching back to Lubbock and a tornado watch had been issued for these. Everything was High-based and over the cap in our target zone so after topping off in Vernon we drove SW on hwy 70 to check out a stronger storm coming NE. This was still High-based but had a great amount of CG. After a flanking move on this storm we turned west on hwy 82 at Seymour. Our plan now was to move west to hwy 83 where we could go north but as we approached Guthrie, Tx. a new storm to our west rapidly darkened the sky. A quick call to the Fort Worth NWS from Guthrie confirmed that our storm was exploding rapidly so we drove north of town on hwy 83 to take a look. After a couple of miles we noticed a rain-free base with a beavers-tail developing into the rain off to the right. Finally deep convection! There appeared to be a funnel with a dust bowl underneath but it was just too far away to confirm. Finally the RFD won the battle. While moving back east on hwy 82 from Guthrie to stay ahead of this storm we hear about a new storm with a tornado warning to our south, moving toward Haskell. We quickly plot an intercept course. Already past the best route, Hwy 222, we continued west to Hwy 267 and went south to Hwy 222 just west of Munday, Tx. Then SE to Hwy 380 just west of Throckmorton, Tx. Ahead of the storm, we make the mistake of turning south on Hwy 283 in Throckmorton to take a look at the storm as it approaches. The storm was rather high-based but had a wrapped-up meso and hail core on the south end as we would soon find out. As golf-balls started falling we quickly made a run south, hoping to punch through before things got bigger. But as things started getting bigger and the road turned SW, right into the core we turned around and headed north looking for any kind of shelter. Luckily there was a small tin-topped carwash with one slot open and we dove in. We rode the storm out in the vault with the worst hail to our south but still had scattered golf-balls to a few baseballs.