awesome work guys and gals....tough day at the office, but it happens. Bloody jealous But in a good way!

Lovely shots there Jacci! been looking forward to your pics. Nice structure there too!

TS

A couple of photos from yesterday's action over near the WY/NE border...still processing pics as we drive east - we think we got a touchdown and there were some really fascinating dynamics during the afternoon. Spent the afternoon spotting for the NWS Cheyenne as well.

LOL a bit different to NE Nebraska yesterday where Willoughby's cartoon was most apt. Today we left the chilly O'Neill mist and headed for the steam of Western Missouri. (73f DP at one point). Was hard to see at times through the haze but we had a ball today. Followed a couple of storms around St Joseph area after lunch which were dumping lots of water. We could see some convection developing south of Kansas City and liked that. We thought E or SE Kansas could be ok but were worried about following storms toward KC metro area or them not occuring till late. As it was we spent hours just SE of KC particularly around Harrisonville. We got our first hail for the trip but did manage to successfully skirt the edge, we only had pea sized hail but storms had 2 or more inch hail on radar near the centre. Did get some video during the day but photos were limited due to combo of haze and trees, hills etc. Got this interesting lowering at the back end of the Harrisonville complex. Its through the window and near the local airport tower so excuse all that... Second photo is just a wannabe artsy fartsy photo of this storms flanking line under the anvil of the other storms.

Great pics guys keep them coming

Quite few days ahead but still the odd storm about FAR S TX and much further east with front but should pick up again mid late week or so

Hello All:

Awesome Pics & Stories--Greatly enjoying them.

At 2AM today (Mon.) radar shows a complex of T-showers rolling into SW Missouri. The interesting thing about it was there was a gustfront (fineline) ahead of this complex which went from Lebanon, MO and curved around to Branson, MO.

Happy Chasecation to All~~~Wet Snow

Beat most the native chasers at their own game ! well done

Had a bit of a sleep in today, got up in Springfield MO and debated the Texas option .v. Texarkana (where we are now in the hotel), got lazy and opted for the SW Arkansas option plus the scenery coming down through Arkansas from top to bottom is spectacular and we decided on that. A pretty big and slow complex of storms formed around Wet Snow's place and we approached from the Hot Springs area, as usual the forest and winding hilly roads were not exactly great for chasing/viewing storms but we were happy to wind around with roads to ourselves and 1950's horror movie anvil crawling lightning all around. We did find a few gaps in trees etc.Just in front of the big complex a couple of storms kept popping up and then dying within 30 minutes or so. This was a view to the SE in the late afternoon of one of the bigger storms with an STW on it.



This is a sideways view under the massive anvil from the bigger complex, this photo really wont show how small we felt in front of it, crawlers over head were great too.



One of the storms in front of the complex just before sunset was pretty interesting briefly. Now this photo is a bit grainy and there are trees etc. (its Arkansas) but there was a brief(I am talking 5 or 6 minutes) bit of organisation on the SW end of this separated cell, here is a crappy photo from the south side



We then drove back westward to Texarkana watching wonderful anvil lightning and occasional CG's and dodging the minor damage and debris left by the main storm in the complex as it headed down to Louisiana.

Here is a view of the storms handy work outside our hotel window



This will be our 7th night in a row of thunder as well. Lovin it.

A fair few quiet days ahead on the plains unless you venture into the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas for marginally severe thunderstorms.

May head out west again if the weather doesn't co-operate.

Edit: Nice pics Ruckle - you're keen to head into Arkansas!

Yeah not much on offer next week or so hoping turns for you guys later this week into next week long rang looking ok by mid May just have to rid that gulf low

Nice pics all

Morning all,

we're heading into the SW Texas region for a bit of a look see...suspect through that large scale storms breaking out under this approaching upper low may become rain areas, never mind, we like that area of SW Texas...last time we were in this area we ran into ...Willoughby and Dean in Ft Stockton!
Clyve & Jane

Have updated the last couple of reports on the summary page for ourt 2012 USA stormchasing trip..

http://www.stormchasers.au.com/aussky2012usa.htm

More to come in the next few days!! In Texas and exploring the far south of the state atm...

And now you have run into Michael, Roddy & Jason..... what are the odds?

Geez it looks ordinary after this small upper low coming through TX etc. Death ridge returns and plants it's sorry butt across T-Alley for the foreseable future. Hope that pattern breaks down a little more promptly than that!

TS

Yes, hopefully the trend of the ECMWF runs breaking down the ridge past 200 hours proves correct. Here's the latest 12Z prognosis, +240 hours.

This pattern would be highly favourable!

Spent today after lunch (and looking for aliens in Roswell) wandering through the mountains of New Mexico chasing storms! Small hail, flash flooding, lots of lightning!!! Heading back to the NE tomorrow - a couple of very successful storm days..

Photos up later this evening..

Hi everyone, a couple of quietish days for us since Arkansas. We have not gone down south. I have always had a bit of a weird interest in all weather associated with the high / western plains and the relationship with the Rockies etc. ANYWAY, with that in mind we went up into NW Nebraska yesterday to wait for the pretty solid cold front coming in from the NW. It was 32 , 33 degrees with strong dry winds in front of it.As it approached we had a rather pretty virga display which produced some weak gustnado action and squalls. The northerly pushed through with a spectacular temperature drop and blew hard with lots of 40 to 50 mph gusts for the next few hours - good fun! We got back to North Platte around 1130 and it was still 23 with S winds. We got up at 8am to 8 degrees and fresh N winds. Anyway determined to follow the front south and noting the eastward upslope tending winds behind it we headed to Colorado under a deck of strato cu. By Fort Morgan we could see snow and rain virga. As we got to outer NE burbs of Denver we got some light rain and temp dropped to 5 degrees or so (about 2pm). We headed west towards our usual accomodation in Louisville with steady light rain, temp was in the upper 30's when we got here, the odd blob in the rain. We headed to Boulder (about 5 minutes down the road), enjoying the light rain and steady 4 degree temp amongst the nice houses and lovely town. We headed west up toward Nederland, got as far as the eastern edge of the Barker Dam (2497m asl). It had changed to mixed precip, half way up but we stopped here as there was parking and snow was starting to slush on road and it was HAMMERING down. Temp recorded was 31f

Photo's from dam side below.









An awesome late afternoon (snow) chase for us!

Love those SNOW pics Ruckle--Keep 'em comin'.
It's amazing to me of how deep into the Spring you can go and there will still be high-elevation areas (in the Rockies) that are still getting snow-showers.

Hi everyone. Yesterday Sunday 13th we drove from Colorado Springs down to New Mexico. Something about the words upslope and New Mexico fired us out of our leisurely Coloradoness (I know not a word), anyway even on the northern slopes of NM we had showers and storms, watching storms come off the snow covered Sangre De Cristo's was pretty awesome late morning. Anyway, we spotted a decent storm SW of Las Vegas NM after lunch and followed it all the way across the state. It was STW a few times but only got going properly as it passed Roswell. Here is some shots







So the storm was rotating a little and looking very nice for awhile, it then collapsed and blasted out dust and mess across a very dry Artesia.



Storm did reorganise a little at sunset and then other storms and mess joined its east side, we drove with the rain and flangs onto Odessa Texas for the night.

So today 14th May was a bit disappointing in the end. We thought that the 50 or 60 miles closest to the Mexican border were best chance of severe storms. This was correct BUT, they fired early, there was heaps of "other" cloud around and then it petered out by late afternoon - the fact there were no roads and they were heading into Mexico was not helpful either. Anyway, we did manage to experience a STW storm core on the edge of the Peco's ranges which should be a good vid.

First storm if you strain your eyes to our NW around lunch



An example of how uninteresting the sky looked, this was booming like crazy and you can see some of the sludge it had left in the desert



This storm also had an STW on it though not entirely sure why.



Anyway, this soon died and there were just very weak cells and rain and Texas and the reasonable storms all moved into Mexico. This is a photo of the weak last cell (very weak) we were just 11 miles from Mexico.