The fat lady was clearing her throat today, this looked like the final opportunity for severe storms in the southern Plains for Spring 2005. But again, ongoing storms that continued well into the morning threatened to put a big question mark over much of the target area. Storms over northwestern Oklahoma and southern Kansas were creating a large cold pool, so Oklahoma was out of the question today. The only game in town was going to be the dryline in the southern Texas panhandle and western north Texas. As much as I HATE chasing that region due to sparse roads and nonexistent radio reception, this was going to be the last chance to chase in Spring 2005, so I was going out at all costs. As it turned out this was quite the frustrating chase. To make a long story short I was about 30 or so minutes late on all of the storms, as storms kept reforming further and further south of each other. I got to the Dickens County storm just as it was dying a horrible death.
I then went south to try to get another storm, but seeing that a core punch would be the only way to get into position I wasn't about to do that so I backed off and stayed north. It was just as well since the storms were pretty much done tornadoing by this time. All was not lost however as I was able to get some nice shots of the setting sun illuminating the updraft towers, the mammatus, and the reddish landscape.
