Adrian supercell video

Our tour group had an amazing chase this Monday.  We began in Lubbock, washed the vans and had lunch in town midday, and headed northwest to Clovis, NM.  This put us in the middle of the south end of SPC’s slight risk area.  Flow at 500 mb today was marginal, NW at about 25-30 knots, and looked to be slightly anticyclonic.  Surface flow was S to SSE and fairly moist for northeast NM and the western TX Panhandle, with dew points roughly from 54F to 59F in the region.   CAPE numbers were near 2000 J/kg from about Tucumcari to Vega, TX.  Given the strong turning of the wind with height and the adequate instability, a decent supercell was quite possible.  I wasn’t sure exactly which area to focus on, though.  Some boundaries from morning storms were in the western part of the TX Panhandle, so the area along 385 from Hereford to Dalhart was considered.  We continued north from Clovis to San Jon, on I-40, and looked at radar, satellite, surface obs, the SPC meso-analysis pages, etc.  Given that strong cells were going up to our northwest (along I-25) and the best air looked to be in and around Tucumcari, I elected to head west and northwest.  A cell with a cloud top near 50,000 feet beckoned.  It was a little east of Las Vegas, NM, nearly 100 miles distant.  If it would move southeast in the northwest flow, then good supercellular stuff would ensue…I figured.

We went west on I-40 and north on 129 towards Conchas State Park.  Our Las Vegas storm still looked good on radar, but a new storm had quickly gone up between us and it.  Okay —- now we didn’t have to drive as far!  We set up on a hill along Hwy 104, a few miles west of 129.  Our new cell, west of Trementina, looked to have decent structure, but it was a bit distant and contrast was so-so.  Lightning was active in a cell to our south, and a new strong updraft was going up almost overhead.  We would have to leave soon in order to stay east of the new nearby activity, but low-levels were looking more interesting with the Trementina storm.  In fact, a good-sized lowering, or wall cloud had a funnel cloud sticking out of it that was about 3/4 of the way to the ground!  It didn’t persist, unfortunately, and we bailed east and south quickly thereafter.  Our Tempest Tours guide and driver, Chris Gullikson, has reviewed his video of the storm and it shows that the funnel cloud was in fact a tornado briefly.

We headed back towards Tucumcari and monitored the new convection that was just north of I-40.  It was not organized well at all, and it disappointed the heck out of me.  Why couldn’t this stuff get its act together?  There wasn’t anything to the south or southeast to interfere with it!  I called Brian Morganti, who was looking at some new storms in Oldham County, TX, west of Amarillo.  He wasn’t too upbeat about the look of the storm cells yet, but there was one that he couldn’t see too well that was looming behind the weak one that he could see.  This new cell was in western Oldham County, not too far from the NM/TX border, and it quickly had a good look on radar.  I decided to head east for it —- there was little reason to stick with the junk nearby.

The back end of the new supercell came into view for us somewhere west of San Jon.  The mid and upper part of the storm tower looked good, but not exactly atomic.  The storm was dropping slowly S to SSE, so I knew it was spinning nicely.  We just had to beat it to Adrian, where there was a paved road south.  On the approach to Adrian the sculpted low levels of the supercell came into view.  We had enough time to stop and gape for a few minutes at Adrian.  An active wall cloud teased us with a little funnel cloud or two.  It had that “look” that it really wanted to produce.  The storm’s updraft base was to our NNW now, and the precip core was not too far away to our north.  We stopped a mile south of Adrian, and then two miles south along FM 214.  The updraft base was in full “Mothership” mode by this time, and I needed all of my 16mm wide-angle lens to fit the thing in.  A wicked precip core developed, and intriguing shapes were barely visible inside or behind the core.  We thought that there might be a tornado inside there, but it was impossible to tell for certain.  Soon the storm became tornado warned, with confirmed tornado sightings!  I guess we did see a tornado—-we just weren’t certain at the time—-and a review of our stills and video suggest that one indeed was back in there behind the heavy rain curtain.  Chaser Jason Persoff reported that a large cone tornado was on the north side of the meso and it quickly became rain-wrapped.  This explains why we had little luck seeing it, as we were on the south side.

The structure and lightning with the storm were extremely impressive, tornado or no tornado.  We stopped a couple of more times farther south along FM 214.  Soon, the NM storms came rushing towards us and the supercell.  We were chased east towards Canyon, and the tornadic supercell was ingested and weakened considerably by the outflowing NM stuff.

Here are a handful of images of the Adrian Mothership Supercell —- more pics to come later.

By the way, I managed some great annular eclipse images from Jayton, TX, on May 20, and some very cool images of supercells in W OK on May 19.  We were close to the KS tornadoes on the 19th —- but had settled on heading down to OK instead.  We watched the storm towers that went up over Kingman from Pratt!  I hope to get the images posted soon.

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 hung out near Newton, and then Marion, for much of the early-to-mid afternoon.  We waited and waited for something to get strong and that wasn’t going to immediately blast north into murk north of I-70.  It looked like another case of ill-timed upper-level support, as the early morning upwards motions were now replaced by subsiding air.  The storms that did go up on the boundary to our west and southwest were not impressive.  And, a perusal of the SPC mesoscale page showed that any storm that did go up would not have much time to improve in quality air.  Hmmmph.

Finally, around 5 p.m. we committed to a couple of developing storms coming towards Marion and Strong City from the El Dorado area.  One was a bit east of 177, and the other one a tad west of 177.  These had relatively decent rain-free bases and were fed by nice and strong easterly inflow.  Organization seemed strange, though, and I had problems figuring out just what the heck was happening.  South of Council Grove, we observed a funnel cloud with the west cell (some five miles distant).  It persisted for a couple of minutes and quit. We lost sight of this base as we maneuvered through Council Grove and continued north on 177.  When we emerged out of the trees and river-bottom areas a few miles north of town, the base to our east several miles looked promising.  But, lo and behold, nice low-level circulation was quickly developing VERY near to our east.  A funnel developed, came halfway down, and a tight ground rotation was observed in the trees beneath it for about 30 seconds.  It dissipated somewhat quickly.  Our location was about halfway between Alta Vista and Council Grove, and I put the tornado at 6:00 p.m., maybe a mile-and-a-half east of 177.

We tried to keep up thereafter and slowly fell behind.  We found ourselves at Burlingame in time to watch a different storm get tornado-warned and scream off towards Topeka. It showed an “area of interest” on its back end, and some dangly stuff was teasing the ground, but rotation was non-evident.

There was little to nothing worth pursuing 45 minutes prior to sunset, and we headed to Emporia for dinner.  We were a bit lucky to be so close to one of the few tornadoes that did occur in Kansas today.  Given the expectations, the chase was a bit underwhelming and disappointing.

A youtube clip of the Council Grove tornado is here.

The first two images below were taken south of Council Grove along 177.  The third one (6344) was about a minute after the tornado dissipated, looking east from 177.

Photographer Kelly Delay was with our group, and he managed an excellent shot of the tornado.  Kelly’s images from the tour can be found on his Clouds 365 page, his Facebook page, twitter, Kellydelay.com, etc.

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.