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

This day began in Vernon, TX, and we targeted the warm front/boundary that was in the Lamesa area midday.  It lifted north a tad during the afternoon and convection began west and SW of Levelland late afternoon.  A supercell got its act going just north of Levelland.   A large gustnado developed to our south while we hugged a menacing wall cloud. The cell was a little outflowish with a large precip core, and RFD winds kicked up large dust plumes along Highway 114 east of Levelland.

An area of interest showed some promise just north of Smyer (along 114), but dust and poor contrast made it difficult to see exactly what was happening.  I elected to head east and north a little for some structure and maybe some back lighting, and this is when a new updraft went up quickly just south of 114, I think.  This one quickly strengthened, became the dominant cell, and developed a big hook and was tornado warned.  We zoomed southward around the west side of Lubbock on the loop, and had a good look at the supercell and frequent lightning to our southwest.  The storm turned to the ESE and headed towards the southern fringe of LBB.  We got east of the updraft in light rain and occasional small hail on the southwestern fringe of Lubbock, north of Slide.  We had a pretty good look into the notch area from some 5-8 miles away and saw no tornado, or good wall cloud for that matter.  Dust was a problem, it was getting dark, and lightning was not frequent enough to help out much.

Quarter-size hail chased us farther east and south along U.S. 87, and we let the thing pass to our north.  Again, it was difficult to discern much at low-levels due to dusty inflow.  We inched back north along 87 after the cell had passed by (or at least 80 percent of the core).  We stopped at the Lubbock/Lynn county line and picked up hailstones that measured up to 3 inches. Also, blowing hail fog made driving extremely hazardous —– it was the first time I had witnessed blowing hail fog!  We saw numerous vehicles off of the road with broken glass.  The bulk of the city of Lubbock dodged a bullet with this one.

We started today in Yuma, CO, and headed due south towards our target area — generally around Baca County, CO, and Cimarron County, OK. I liked this area a little more than the somewhat moister TX PH because it was closer to the axis of stronger WSW winds at 500 mb and closer to the sweet spot just northeast of the developing surface low near Raton, NM. The primary problems today —- the main upper-level trough was not timed very well (about 6-12 hours late) and low-level moisture was so-so. Strong southeast winds would blow through the target region all afternoon and evening, but dew points were generally in the low 50s. A lot of mid and high-level clouds were around during the afternoon, but they weren’t thick or prevalent enough to cause consternation by mid-afternoon.

After lunch in Lamar around 2 p.m., we moseyed southward into Baca County and saw some cruddy-looking convection going up about 30 miles to the west. Several weak cells lined up from west of Springfield to west of Lamar and moved northeast. I considered blowing this off and continuing to Boise City, but there was nothing happening in that direction. We elected to watch the cell at the south end of our line to the west. Soon, our cell and several of the cells were warned, and our tail-end one was the only one which was able to persist. I was surprised that this soft and junky cell quickly assumed supercell characteristics and managed storm tops well over 50,000 feet. The base became a bit rounded and a clear slot cut in, but then the cell struggled some as it crossed 385. Towards Two Buttes it regained strength, but the base was never again able to tighten up and get that well-organized rounded look.

The supercell continued somewhat slowly eastward towards Johnson, KS.  The base was rather high, large, black and a bit strung out.  Lowerings were few and unimpressive, except for a brief large but non-rotating wall cloud west of Johnson.  As sunset neared, another cell was charging NNE-ward out of the OK PH (a left-mover?) and just missed the Johnson cell on the east side. These two cells and two new ones to the southwest quickly fizzled thereafter.

We left Raton and had lunch in Trinidad, then made the short drive to the (almost) ghost town of Model, CO, for some photography in the warm sunshine.  There was a noisy dog there which took exception to our presence.  We went back into Trinidad and headed east on 160 to Walt’s Corner and Branson.  High-based cells produced a lot of virga, and little else, around Capulin and Branson.

On June 30, we began in Kadoka, lunched in Wall, and watched some stuff struggle on the north side of the Black Hills near Spearfish.  These cells never got very strong.  I booked rooms in Kimball, SD (east of Chamberlain), in order to be closer to our target area around Sioux Falls the following day.  On our way east after dusk, we were blasted by a severe squall at Murdo.  Wind gusted over 65 mph and knocked down some utility poles in town, and the heavy rain and wind forced us to come to a stop in Murdo.  I shot a little video of this severe electrical storm, but apparently took zero stills this day!