Housekeeping for April 20 and 21 included…
April 20/Start: San Angelo/brunch at Rosa’s Cafe in SJT and dinner at TC’s Ponderosa BBQ in Dickens/End: Turkey/233 miles/down day
April 21/Start: Turkey/Caprock Canyons side trip/End: Lubbock/Down Day
April 22/Start: Lubbock/Lunch: Chick Fil-A in Lubbock/End: Fort Stockton, TX/about 360 miles
The morning of the 22nd was spent in part trying to get one of the van windshields replaced in Lubbock. This endeavor failed. Much of the TX PH was under a slight risk for severe, but we needed to be quite a bit farther south, south of Midland, to find decent air. The radar images below show that we were first on a cell near Coyanosa, but then diverted farther south to the developing supercell near Fort Stockton. This one was moving deviantly to the SSE into the road-poor desert south of I-10. One obvious option was to head SE out of Fort Stockton on 285, and most chasers chose this route and were able to stay close to the storm. But the risk of encountering large hail along 285 appeared quite high, and I didn’t want to chance having more large hail battering the already damaged van windshields. We went east on 10 and then south on the next paved option —- highway 11 perhaps.
This took us well around the east side of the storm, which provided decent looks at the storm structure. The supercell was tornado-warned as we neared it and 285, southeast of the leading edge. If there was a tornado, then it was not a high-end one (or it was rain-wrapped). Earlier tornado reports closer to Fort Stockton were landspouts. I don’t recall witnessing anything prominent!
iPhone pics for April 22 near Fort Stockton below.
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