The Dalhart Divide: or - Who Poked a Hole In My Thunderstorm

Dalhart Weather Review

by Aaron Graves

Storm clouds approach from the north. Lightning flashes. Thunder rumbles. Longs streaks of rain are visible just outside of town. The wind kicks up. A blast of cool air hits your face, and you can smell the moisture. You rush to roll your car windows up and herd the kids in from the yard. Five minutes pass. Nothing happens. Another five minutes. Nothing continues to happen. You look out the front door and see..... sunshine.

The "Dalhart Divide" strikes again. That is the new official

The voice of Dalhart, Jesse Torres

name given to the above scenario by KXIT Radio DJ and good friend Jesse Torres. Torres invited listeners to call in and name this phenomenon that seemingly makes a storm fall apart or split in half and completely miss Dalhart. Other names suggested by callers included: the Horseshoe Effect, the Dalhart Jinx, the Da-nana Split, and The Bubble. Dalhart Divide won by popular vote.

I have seen this happen with my own eyes here in Dalhart. Growing up in Lubbock, I noticed that city had its own force field (the Lubbock Limit?) in place when it came to rain. By contrast, when I lived in Canyon, we got nailed every year. Storms would form just outside of town and then dump all manner of cats and dogs on my house. 

It's not hard to notice over time. Some towns appear to get more rain, while other areas miss out. Is that the case here in Dalhart? Is the Dalhart Divide real, or is it an illusion, a trick of the wind? 

This storm north of Dalhart got caught on Uncle Seamore's
barbed wire fence. Actually, Channel 7's Steve Kersh said
it was powerful winds that caused the storm to bow and bend.

Being a bit shy of my Bachelor's of Meteorology degree (I need just four more years of college), I humbly decided to throw this question out to the experts. I conducted a highly scientific survey among my Twitter followers: "Sound off... Do towns and cities cause storms to change path?" An amazing 89.73% of those who responded said "Who are you? Stop tweeting me!" The rest seemed to be in agreement with Rick Smith, Warning Coordination Meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norman, OK. Smith replied: "I say no." 

Other negative responses include Chris Sanner with Tornado Titans ("very unlikely") and @TornadoQuest (an emphatic "No."). Jayson Prentice, a meteorologist in Kansas, had an interesting reply: "Unlikely. But, there have been studies linking cities to storm development." 

Steve Kersh, Chief Meteorologist with Channel 7 in Amarillo, seemed to sum things up. He responded: "Nope. This is a common "old wives' tale." The cities would have zero rain and outside would have all the rain!" 

Kersh makes a good point. It does rain in Dalhart every year or so. For 2015, we have recorded 7.56" of precipitation. In fact, over the past decade, Dalhart has been hit with two blizzards, a skylight smashing hail storm, and one gully washer that uprooted trees and downed power lines. I personally have been rained on so many times during the XIT Rodeo and Reunion I have lost count. 

Still, a highly scientific Twitter survey is not evidence enough to dispel the newly christened Dalhart Divide. So, I consulted with the National Weather Service in Amarillo, the very people who know how the weather works in the Texas Panhandle. "As far as I know," said Mike Gittinger, Warning Coordination Meteorologist, "there is no real proof that the actual town has anything to do with storms changing path." 

Oh well. There goes that theory. After all, Dalhart covers roughly 4.5 square miles. Rita Blanca Lake has less than a quarter square mile surface area. One of the bigger feedlots nearby measures just under a single square mile (Google Earth rocks!). Our tallest buildings in town consist of a grain elevator and a couple of water towers. There's not much here at ground level to scare a thunderstorm away. 

So if it's not the town, what happens when a thunderhead goes out of it's way to not rain on us. The answer has to do with the kind of a storm it is.  

Our typical summer thunderstorm is born from rising columns of hot, moist air. It meanders aimless across the sky, driven by weak, fickle winds in the upper atmosphere. These are typically only 15 miles in diameter and last an average of 30 minutes. A storm that falls apart on final approach to Dalhart has likely reached the end of it's natural life cycle. 

At times, a menacing line of storms will move at us from the mountains of New Mexico and Colorado. They form where dry mountain air meets up with moist air coming in from a different direction. "Because winds are more northwesterly higher up in the atmosphere, these storms tend to drift toward the Panhandle and can impact Dalhart," Gittinger explained, and then added, "Because these types of storms are more purely driven by instability and not a storm system, they tend to weaken and dissipate after sunset." 

Additionally, storms in close proximity can and do interfere with each other. A strengthening storm can rob its neighbor of moisture and make it fade away. The rush of air from a dying storm can push a nearby storm off course. Wind, being the invisible force that it is, does not allow us to see these interactions from the ground. We are just left holding a dry umbrella, wondering what happened. 

So, cheer up folks, the experts tell us that Dalhart is not cursed after all. There is not a bubble over us keeping the rain away. The Dalhart Divide, when it strikes, is a function of the atmosphere, the mechanics of storm formation and invisible wind fields. It's not like we have photographic evidence of it raining everywhere but in Dalhart. Oh, wait....

Proof of The Dalhart Divide and The Lubbock Limit