Day 1, chase 1.

After meeting up with Chris, Chris and Todd we headed west from Dallas towards towards Abilene, where the dry line was and the prospect of some stuff to chase. We pretty much got straight onto a storm and was able to chase it for a short while and for a time it was looking pretty good with a tornado warning being issued on it at one point. However another cell cut off the development of this first one and it quickly started to die. After a quick stop to get a last couple shots we took off after our second cell of the day. Although no tornado warning was issued on this one we  chased it for quite a while and it had some very large hail reports associated with it and a great green tinge to the clouds. After chasing for a while it appeared to be weakening so we decided to try and punch the core and get ourselves amongst some big hail (upto ping pong ball size). By the time we got on a road that we could intercept the core the storm had really died and sadly was producing nothing  but heavy rain. Whilst still looking photogenic we were low on fuel, and the best of the action appeared to be further south, so that's where we headed.

The days first storm

The second storm, shortly before it started to decay, showing the green tinge to the cloud.

Mammatus cloud

A rapid pit stop in Brady and it was time to chase the third cell of the day, along with every other chaser in Texas converging on this one cell, it was looking pretty impressive. Sadly as we moved further south the topography became less favourable, more hilly and bigger vegetation. We finally found a spot where we could get a decent view, complete with lightning bolts touching the ground all around us, making leaving the car a non starter. The base of the cell was looking even more impressive, and with another tornado warning in force it looked like we might be about to hit the jackpot on day 1! Sadly we had to move at this point so continued on along the road in an attempt to find another vantage point, but with the light fading we had to find somewhere to stick the car and try and ride the thing out. Baseball sized hail and windscreens don't tend to mix very well! After a couple of false starts we ended up under a hotel awning, and with the tornado warning sirens wailing faintly in the distance we waited. When the hail arrived it wasn't quite baseball sized but a couple were getting on for golf balls. One blokes windscreen didn't make it and got smashed in.

Video of the hail to follow.

For the geekier, below is a couple of radar scans/model outputs from yesterday. Below shows the CAPE levels from around lunch time. To put this into some context, in the UK CAPE (CAPE being a measure of instability) of 1000 J/Kg would be a lot, you can see we're upto 4x that level yesterday.

Today's forecast from the SPC seems even more positive than yesterday, so we'll see what turns up!