On Wednesday, April 28, I headed to Abilene, Texas to chase the slight risk of severe weather in place that day.
Outbound: I-44 to US 277, which, once I pick up the mile or so I have left in St Louis from when it was extended over old I-70, will grab me a full clinch of I-44. From there, US 277 all the way to the Abilene metro area, then out I-20 east to stage near Baird, Texas.
Notes: Most of the towns along US 277 are actually on business loops. So there are effectively no stoplights after you leave Wichita Falls until you hit the town of Anson. Texas’ speed limits mean you can feasibly get from Wichita Falls to Abilene in a little more than 2 hours.
Chase time: Heading south out of Baird from the Love’s travel stop where we gassed up, US 283 south to Texas 36 east into Comanche County. At that point, we stopped as the cell we were chasing began a (brief) weakening trend. We thought we were done, but it began showing signs of life, so the chase was back on again. A series of Farm to Market Roads that I cannot remember all of brought us to Texas SR 16, which we took north to I-20 east into the DFW Metroplex.
As sunset approached, the storm continued to hold its intensity, so we bumped north of I-20 to stay out in front of it on FM 3325 and then FM 1886 over to Texas 199 in the Lake Worth area. We sat at the western side of Lake Worth for around 20 minutes, and as the storm began to close in on us, we began to punch east, then the tornado warning was issued and it was full go.
We hit I-820 around the north side of Fort Worth. I made the decision that, in order to stay with the circulation, we needed to bump north on US 377 and then ultimately east on one of the various city roads. We did so, but as we continued north, we unintentionally punched into the hail core which began throwing baseball size stones at us. This resulted in a slightly comical moment where my roommate, who was driving, heard one particular stone hit the car, saw the hail starting to accumulate on the roadway, and out loud voiced exactly what I was thinking, “Noooooope.” We nope’d back to the nearest gas station and waited out the hail, only to find it was too late as it had already dealt a blow to our windshield (right where the PikePass transponder is in the photo at the below link). At the same time this was occurring, by the way, hail was dealing a hard blow in Central Oklahoma as well.
https://mobile.twitter.com/JeremyMoses85/status/1387595240245182465/photo/1Homeward: As the storm finally got out of reach, the warning was cancelled and we opted to make our way back north via I-35W and I-35 to OKC, arriving about midnight that night with no further damage to our already compromised windshield.
