Jim and I (Simon) forecasted supercells to develop in Southwestern Kansas and the Western OklahomaPanhandle. We left Norman and drove Northwest to Woodward, OK and then west on 412 into the OK Panhandle. While in the Eastern OK Panhandle we watched a cumulonimbus cloud develop to our northwest. We decided to drive to that area of development. We drove north on 83 toward Liberal, KS and
approached an extremely high based and dying storm from the south.

We drove through and north of Liberal and then turned west onto 51. We pulled onto a southward facing side road off of 51. From there we watched an anticyclonically rotating high-based updraft. The storm was LP and very small. We found nickel and dime-sized hail scattered on the ground around us, which meant this
storm was at least strong enough to produce hail.

We watched another updraft form to the WNW, so we got back on 51 and drove west. We then turned south on 20RD and hit a rain/hail core, which was the FFD of the storm to our NW. We turned west on D RD and hit a large and intense hail core 3 miles west of Route 25. We decided to sit in the hail core and see what this supercell could produce. We ended up sitting in the hail core between 30 and 45 minutes!
The road and surrounding fields became white as the hail piled up to around 2 to 3 inches in depth. Small rivers of hail began to flow throughout the flooded hail-covered fields. Almost all of the hail was nickel and quarter-sized, but at times golf ball-sized and larger fell. The large hail stones would shatter to pieces when they hit the ground and large splashes would be made in the fields around us. I exited the car at one time and filled a cooler bag with hail.

After experiencing the hail core for a while, we drove west and then south on 24 RD. At the OK/KS border we witnessed a beautiful rainbow along the back side of the rain/hail core. While watching the rainbow we could see large plums of dirt to the southwest being kicked up by the RFD of our supercell. We continued south on N0770RD in Oklahoma and then on CR 40. Just north of Goodwell, OK the updraft showed more rapid rotation, but no tornadoes were ever produced. We gassed up in Goodwell and continued south. Our cell began to die, so we drove west on CR 25 watching a LP cell develop to our NNW.

That storm then died, so we drove south on 1290 and then west on Route 15 toward a new supercell near Stratford, TX. This storm had a nice flanking line and a large rain free base. We encountered some nickel and quarter-sized hail in Stratford. From Stratford we drove south on 287 watching partial rainbows form periodically. We witnessed our cell pulsate multiple times, but our supercell really tensified and looked its best while we drove thru the town of Dumas, TX. We watched a great sunset and some nice lightening from as the supercell moved southeast over roadless territory.

This was a great chase. When we arrived back at my house in Norman we opened the cooler bag to discover a huge ball of hail. All of the hail, which had not melted, had stuck together into a large ball of hail.

Simon's Pictures will be up soon!