March 31st 2008 OK & TX

Monday March 31^st 2008

Left Weatherford for far south central OK to a Moderate Risk for the entire southeastern part of Oklahoma, part of northern TX and parts of AR and MO. There was a 15% hatched area for tornadoes in the North TX, South Central, and Eastern OK. My chase target was Ardmore OK. I messed around in some cells developing along the front and then made my way down to Northern TX near Gainesville TX, then came up behind the Supercell from the south up Hw 377 and then paralleled the supercell to the east on Hw70, which had a lot of other chasers, local news stations, Roger Hill with silver lining tours and tornadovideos.net. The cell had good shear and reported a tornado at one point but I was late for that. It eventually went HP and died out, with the Squall line that was with the dominant Cold Front. On my way back west I had a close call when it got dark with some rotation in a cell that was apart of the squall line. I parked next to a couple fire fighters that were spotting. I showed them the areas of rotation to our west while emergency management got on the horn and told us to take cover. A few minutes later the rotation passed to our southwest so we were ok. I have to say though I did end up putting on my goggles and helmet because it was dark and the tornado risk had elevated. That same part of the county was tornado warned about 10 min later. It was time to go home, so I drove north watched some lightning and drove to Salina KS for the night.