The Setup
The setup was not that great for us. There was a dryline target in the southern part of the Texas panhandle, starting near the New Mexico border west of a Lubbock to Plainview line. Storms were forecast to initiate near the New Mexico border and proceed eastward and northward, perhaps getting to Amarillo to Childress by the end of the day.
There was a second target along a weak cold front, stretching from near Amarillo, northeastward into south-central Kansas. The convection-allowing models (CAMs) showed a decent storm developing on this front near Perryton, Texas in the late afternoon. This storm would be nearly stationary and was on the verge of exhibiting supercellular characteristics in the CAMs. Since we (Tour 4A and my own Tour 4B) needed to be back in Oklahoma City the next morning, and a delayed arrival in Oklahoma City was not really possible due to our need to start driving toward Denver to service the vans and start the later season tours, our target was constrained to this second option.
The Chase
As the day went on, successive CAM runs showed less potential for our target area. Bill made it to the target area a little faster than we did, but given the deteriorating forecast confidence, I was in less of a hurry to get there. He had noted some beefy cumulus, but they weren't developing, and he gave up before we arrived along the cold frontal boundary. We didn't really spend any time with this boundary. By the time we got there, it was pretty clear nothing was happening, and even if it did, we would be close enough to the action at our hotel in Woodward that we would be able to go out for a quick chase.
Meanwhile, the dryline storms became prolific landspout producers. There were numerous reports from around Lubbock and especially near Abernathy, Texas, where a relatively wide landspout developed. These seemed to form mostly on storm boundaries rather than any sharp, pre-existing boundary with a vorticity sheet that could be rolled up and stretched. It probably would have been fun to get to this more southern play. Since our enthusiasm was rather low for this area (we had just seen tornadoes in Colorado yesterday), I'm not sure we would have gotten to this target.
Wrap-up
Overall, a bust, but since we had already seen plenty of activity earlier on the tour, we were not unhappy about it at all.