Start: Lubbock/lunch: fast food in Ozona/end: Ozona/541 miles
Previous Day, May 25, start of Tour 5: Denver/lunch: Arby’s in Lamar/End: Lubbock/556 miles
Tour 5 out of Denver began in somewhat unfortunate fashion. Was there a Death Ridge? No. Did we have to drive into Canada? No. Did we have to drive to the Ends of The Earth down towards Rio Grande? Yes.
On the 25th out of Denver, the only play was to dive SSE-ward for the setup the following day south of I-10 in south Texas. There was some high-based junk to look at in the Campo area on the 25th, and if I remember I will stick the iPhone shots for that day at the bottom of this page.
On the 26th we got out of Lubbock mid-morning and had to fight through some morning convection near I-20. By 3 p.m. we were at our pit stop in Del Rio, with a supercell to our WSW in Mexico. As is often the case, these rotating storms that form to the west of Del Rio, over mountains in Mexico, wind up turning a bit to the southeast. (We do not chase into Mexico.) Chasers line up along the fences near U.S. 277 between Del Rio and Eagle Pass, and wait.
And that is what we did. A very nice supercell was about 25-30 miles to our WSW when it spawned a fairly strong tornado. It was a little too far away for us to see it, and the storm was a bit HP also. This supercell continued to move to the southeast, which meant that it was not crossing the river anytime soon. It became a bit disorganized as other nearby convection interfered. We were then drawn northward a little, closer to Del Rio, for a new strong updraft that sported decent structure and was spitting out some lightning.
Once this activity had reached U.S. 277, it was more of a messy linear outflow blob fest. The limited road options made it next-to-impossible to remain in good position, so we started our way back to the north.
The images above are from the Canon cameras. Pics 7 and 8 show the big rain-filled beast to our south as it approaches 277, near Jimenez. Someone saw a short-lived tornado in (our near) this blob, towards Quemado. Some of the iPhone images taken about this time (near the bottom of the iPhone dump below) show some low-level organization, with perhaps a clear slot wrapping around an action area.
iPhone pics from May 25, near Campo (below)
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