CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO (video begins at 24-second mark)

Howdy all!  It is May 1 as I write this, my first post since I left California for my chase season a couple of weeks ago.  I have a lot of catching up to do on Stormbruiser.  Tempest Tours’ 2012 Tour 1 began out of Arlington, TX, on April 21, and ended on April 30.   The first half was very slow storm-wise, and the last half was very active.  We saw a supercell near Springfield, CO, on April 26; a brief tornado near Council Grove, KS, on April 27; nice night lightning near Benjamin, TX, on April 28; a nasty supercell near Lubbock, TX, on April 29; and another fierce supercell in the eastern TX Panhandle on April 30.  Check back often for updates!

This page is for the Memphis-to-Wellington, TX supercell and likely tornado on April 30.  We are relatively certain that the strongly rotating whirl that evening was a tornado —- check out the pics and video (video link is above).   Below is my chase account written shortly after the chase for the chaser community.

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My apparent “no brainer” forecast for the western end of the high CAPE lobe near the dry line NW of LBB did not pan out very well. We sat near Littlefield watching towers go up and down — mostly down. A large CB was visible towards AMA, but was soft for the most part from about 4 to 5 p.m. A much better and beefier CB exploded to our SE, near Post. I briefly considered blasting SE 70 miles for this, but did not. With my forecast target area falling apart, I elected to head east towards a towering cumulus cloud that was near Kress. If it did not impress, then I figured that it wouldn’t be too difficult to latch on the AMA area storm(s), which continued to have issues.

The Kress updraft poofed out but a new strong storm tower quickly developed not too far north of it. We blasted through Silverton and towards Memphis in order to get good position on it. Meanwhile, a left-split from the Post-area complex was headed NNE and was on a collision course with our increasingly impressive Clarendon supercell. Area dew points were lower than I would have liked — in the upper 50s — but low-mid 60s were waiting in SW OK. We finally got in good position a bit NNE of Memphis, and viewed some fairly impressive structure including a large low-level inflow band and occasional wall cloud. Disaster struck, though, when we got stuck trying to turn around (3-to-7-or-more-point turn) on a soft and sandy side road. Fortunately, Brian Morganti was now with our group, and his 4WD helped to straighten us out and get us out of the mess. We would have been pummeled by 2 or 3 supercell cores had he not just joined us at Kress!

6507 below is of the left-split supercell that was heading NNE towards our nearby developing storm.

We were skirted by the core of the lead supercell west of Wellington and received a few dime and nickel hailstones. The left mover to the south weakened just as it neared, and the remains were ingested into our nearby supercell. We headed south on U.S. 83 out of Wellington to take a look at the front end. Structure was quite nice with a low-hanging action area to our NW, though contrast and light conditions were poor. While some 8 miles S of Wellington (near the county line, I think) a good-sized dust whirl was viewed to the NW. It persisted for at least a couple of minutes, with some rotation in the clouds above. It approached quickly and a wide swath of dusty outflow was soon descending upon us. We got out of there in a hurry! The dust whirl did not seem to be associated with the primary action area of the mesocyclone, but it was fairly strong and long-lived —– a very strong gustnado or weak tornado hybrid, I guess.

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***May 1 UPDATE!!***   Upon review of our images and video 24 hours after the event, we are going with “tornado” for this tight and strongly rotating item.  Wide video shows a nicely persistent and rotating cloud above the whirl.  The tornado event was from about 8:29 to 8:32 p.m. CDT, and was a mile or so west of U.S. 82 and about seven miles south of Wellington.  An RFD was kicking up dust to our SSW during the event, and though the tornado was not back in towards the old action area near the core, I think a new meso near the leading edge was developing and was responsible for the tornado.  The “tornadic” circulation appeared too strong, too large, and too persistent for “gustnado” status.

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With little light remaining we got out ahead of the cell a bit along 62 on the way to Altus and made a few stops to admire the view. Plenty of dust could be seen beneath the updraft base, but it was impossible to ascertain if any legitimate tornadoes were in progress.

I went to bed very happy — the Kings beat the Blues 5-2 in Round Two, Game Two in St. Louis to take a 2-0 lead in the series.

Link to NWS Amarillo page for April 30, with radar image of Wellington storm

While is the midst of a lame weather pattern like the current one, the tour tries to make up for a lack of storms with pretty scenery.  We left Raton, NM, and headed to Taos, NM, for lunch.  Our route to Taos was through spectacular Cimarron Canyon.  At one point in the canyon, where the sheer cliffs tower hundreds of feet above the Cimarron River, a sign says that you must have a permit to stop along the turnout and view the canyon area.  A ranger drove by, stopped in the middle of the road, and yelled “YOU GOTTA BUY A PERMIT”!  Right — we are gonna buy a permit to stop here for five minutes to admire the surroundings.  Silly.

Anyhow, we found a delicious Mexican Restaurant in Taos (Randy’s?), and the food was good there, too.  Enough monsoon-like moisture at mid-levels was in place for mountain storms in the area.  One of these was back to our east a little, so we headed back through the canyon, past the spot where we saw some deer on the way in, and observed a high-based junky thing that bordered on interesting and pretty.    This was around Springer and Wagon Mound, along I-25.

The weak convection dissipated towards sunset, and I was able to grab some nice sunset stills while we headed north back to Raton.

Later that evening, I took several of the guests some 15-20 miles east of Raton (via Yankee, NM) to view the nice, dark starry skies.  Despite an elevation of about 8000 feet, the weather was quite mild and the winds were calm—quite unbelievable for late April!

I saw this strong wind event unfolding several days ahead of time, and arranged my work schedule so I would have December 1st off from work.  I wasn’t really interested in “chasing” a Santa Ana wind locally.  I was thinking about heading up into the Owens Valley and perhaps even a little farther north of Bishop to chase a “Mono wind” event.  A Mono wind event is associated with very strong east to northeast winds through Mono County and downstream from there towards the Sierra Nevada and Central Valley.  Sometimes spectacular (lenticular) wave clouds develop in these situations.  I yearn to photograph a massive standing lenticular cloud in the lee of the White Mountains, or Inyo Mountains, or anywhere in and around the Owens Valley or Mono County!

Charlie Bustamante elected to join me for the one-day jaunt, and I picked him up in Pacoima before sunrise on the 1st.  The news radio stations were all over the local wind storm damage and consternation some 10-20 miles to our east.  The winds had subsided substantially, though.  There was little reason to mosey on over to Pasadena and to fight morning rush hour traffic, unless we wanted to see a lot of horizontal tree stumps and slow-moving vehicles.  We headed up Highway 14 to the Antelope Valley and beyond.

With the upper low deepening a little and remaining near Needles today, flow aloft on the north and northwest side of the low would continue strong in and around the Owens Valley and the southern Sierra Nevada.  There was enough moisture near the center of the low to cause snow in the Big Bear area, but skies north of the Tehachapis were mostly clear, except for the lenticulars!  The wind through the Antelope Valley and western Mojave Desert was moderate, with gusts perhaps to 40 mph.  Skies to our east looked rather dusty as we chugged northward past Lancaster and Mojave.  The NOAA weather radio forecast for the Owens Valley mentioned wind gusts to 70 mph, and as high as 85 or 90 mph for the Eastern Sierra!  That’s what we wanted!  The Mono wind event seemed to have peaked the night before, when northeast winds on the top of Mammoth Mountain reached at least 150 mph!  (Several peak gusts of 150 mph were recorded there—if Mammoth’s wind instrument was subject to an even higher gust, the measurements were not shared.  Steve Johnson found that gusts of greater than 150 mph here are reported as 150 mph.)  Anyway, we could monitor satellite pics and weather obs on Charlie’s phone to see if it might be worth heading as far north as Bishop and Mono County.

We stopped at Red Rock Canyon (about 30 minutes north of Mojave) for about 30 minutes to stretch and to admire some of the bleak and stark landscapes.  The light was fabulous when I was here near sunset in March of 2010, but it was not fabulous on this morning.  Some messy lenticulars were overhead and to the east, but the sun was behind clouds and the light was poor for photography.

It looks like a little wall cloud was protruding from the base of one of the clouds near Red Rock Canyon.  We didn’t stick around to monitor for rotation.

After a stop at an Olancha convenience store to stock up on junk food, we headed northeast on 190 towards Keeler.  Ah, yes, it was great to be in the Owens Valley and its wide open, empty, desolate spaces, sandwiched between the steep slopes of the Inyo Mountains and Eastern Sierra!  And, something was definitely afoot weatherwise over Owens Lake.  Parts of the lake are covered with water now to help reduce the airborne dust during windstorms, but a large plume of dust was obvious towards our northeast, towards Keeler.  And, a massive low-to-mid-level cloud was hanging right over the “dry” lake.  It wasn’t really going anywhere, so it was a standing wave cloud.  Strong northeasterly winds were barreling down the east slopes of the Inyos, were kicking up dust along the east side of Owens Lake, and were causing this thick, black beast of a cloud to hover right over much of Owens Lake.  The cloud was perhaps more of a SCSL (stratocumulus standing lenticular) rather than an ACSL (altocumulus standing lenticular).

Charlie and I stopped about halfway from Olancha to Keeler to shoot the scenery.  It was quite chilly and the wind was blowing, but wasn’t too bad.  The gusts here were no more than 35 mph.

The view is to the north and NNE in the last two images above.  Below the dark base of the low-level lenticular is the plume of blowing dust.

We motored northeast to the 190/136 junction, and then went a mile or two or three northwest on 136 towards Keeler.  From here, we had a good look at the eastern side of the lenticular cloud, and a long-range view of the dust that was blowing beneath it on its eastern edge, very near Keeler.

We drove a few more miles towards the dust plume, and found a dirt road up an alluvial fan, east of Keeler.  The wind was quite strong here and we had a front row seat to the impressive dust plume and the rather strange cloud that was stationary over the lake, now to our west.  It was unpleasant outside—-in the low 40s with wind gusts over 50 mph with occasional dust.  Charlie and I braved the elements and documented the unusual scene!

The sun was just above the lenticular to our south, so we were bathed in nice bright sunshine.  I measured a gust to 56 mph with the hand-held Kestrel, and decided that was high enough!  Towards the northeast, a low layer of clouds appeared to be snowing on the Inyos…or at least was providing a massive snow virga display.

The next stop was Keeler, and that meant driving into the dust plume!  Keeler is known for its problems with dust and irritating particulates off of the nearby playa, but today the dirt and dust was getting whipped up off of the gentle alluvial fan slopes to the east and northeast.  One nasty dust-filled plume was blasting through a “lakeside” mineral business south of Keeler.  We drove around Keeler a bit to enjoy the wind and dust, and then north a few miles to Swansea.  I resisted rolling down the windows as much as possible…but couldn’t help myself from time to time.  I still have Keeler dust in my ears.

The wind and dust in the face became a tad tiresome, so Charlie and I headed into Lone Pine for lunch and a washroom.  After lunch we headed for more hospitable environs:  the Mount Whitney and Alabama Hills area west of Lone Pine.  A separate Stormbruiser page is devoted to the afternoon edition of December 1, 2011!

Charlie Bustamante and I moseyed on up to the southern Owens Valley for a day of wind and dust and photography.  The late morning hours were spent around Keeler and Owens Lake, and a separate Stormbruiser page was posted for that.  After lunch in Lone Pine, we elected to go into pretty picture-taking mode in and around the Alabama Hills, below Mount Whitney.  It was chilly and occasionally windy here, but not nearly as nasty as the conditions southeast of Lone Pine and around Keeler and Swansea.

The images above were a little west of the sharp switchbacks on the Whitney Portal Road west of Lone Pine, at about 8000 feet elevation.  The temperature here was about 28F, but the wind was light.  Mount Whitney itself was obscured by clouds.  We had driven beyond the official “road closed” sign (below the switchbacks), and came upon this part where plenty of rocks and dirt had descended upon the road.

The Alabama Hills are just west and northwest of Lone Pine.  Some clouds, including the large wave cloud that was over nearby Owens Lake, were shading most of the area; but, occasionally the sun emerged for a brief appearance and lit up our foregrounds.  The face of the eastern Sierra remained quite prominent and presented the usual fantastic photo ops:

From here we poked around the Owens River east of Independence, and came upon an old railroad station called “Kearsarge,” and an abandoned mining operation.

After one last stop to image the Eastern Sierra around sunset, we headed back south towards the real world.  I’m ready to go back already.

We are leaving VTN currently. VTN and vicinity may well be where we want to be towards sunset, but for now we are being pulled west and perhaps north a little, towards an apparent mesolow near the Black Hills. The RUC shows a nice tongue of high CAPE along the SD/NE border to our west. Shear and instability look very good later this afternoon between VTN and the southwestern edge of the Badlands area. The latest satellite pic shows a cu field near CDR.

With plenty of time to kill, we roamed off of the beaten path (U.S. 20) and checked out the little hamlet of Eli, Nebraska.  There isn’t much there except for a few houses and a church.  I photographed Chuck driving his tractor back home from midday mass.

From Eli we drifted towards the northwest and into the Badlands of SD.  A handful of cloud towers tried to go up around Batesland and Wounded Knee, but the cap held strong, to our chagrin.  We killed some more time on the southern fringe of the Badlands, near a dinky place called Rocksprings.  Some activity to the west, near the Black Hills, looked good briefly but then shriveled.  I led some of the tour guests to a hilltop, where a circle of rocks marked an alien spaceship landing site.  Storm clouds percolated in the distance to the southeast, near Valentine.  Super.

Well, it was getting a little too late to go on a wild goose chase back to VTN.  We waited near Sharps Corner for some new activity that was approaching from northwest Nebraska.  These cells threw a big anvil and some mammatus overhead, but the general trend was weakening and blah-blah-blah.  I managed to get a lightning image and a few other so-so pics, including the “kiss of death” cloud.  Our beds for the night awaited in Kadoka.