May 6, 2008 Southern TX Panhandle storms

On this Tuesday we hit the road a little on the early side (from Dodge City), as we needed to be in the Lubbock, TX, vicinity by mid-afternoon.  Some chasers were targeting the eastern TX Panhandle, but by late morning it appeared that the western Panhandle, perhaps west of Lubbock, would be best.  While coming out of Guymon, OK,  a cop pulled over our media person, a French film maker named “Felix”.  Felix had exhibited some dubious driving maneuvers during the tour, so it wasn’t particularly surprising that a law enforcement person witnessed an infraction on his part.  I had to keep going, as we could not risk being late for the show in West Texas later on.  I figured that Felix could call me later to find out where we were.  But, son of a gun, there was Felix right behind our tour group some five minutes later, as the cop had allowed him to continue on almost immediately!  Felix said that the cop had seen him drifting about in the lanes in town or something, and I guess he wanted to see what Felix was up to.  Whatever Felix said, it worked, and the cop laughed and waved goodbye. 

 
Storms went up several counties to the south as we drifted south of Dimmitt and into Lamb County.  We were patient and watched a couple of storm towers develop southwest of Amherst, about 30 miles WNW of Lubbock.  (Meanwhile, the tour director of another storm chase tour company was arrested while watching a storm from a rest area in Crane County, TX, south of Odessa!  He failed to follow the orders of a Texas cop, apparently.)   Our storm blew up very quickly and had a strong updraft and impressive anvil, but then seemed to struggle a bit as it pulsed and teased us with lowerings.  Another cell just to its northeast (and beneath its anvil) went up quickly and was soon better looking than our western cell.  We went after it and soon were under some crazy skies with plenty of swirling and intimidating lowerings.  Nothing was tornadic.  Just as it appeared that one or both of these cells might organize to the point of tornado-making, a “left-mover” from a splitting cell in the next county south came crashing into our storms.  Game over.  We watched a nice lightning display to the east from a high spot on Route 86 east of Silverton, and reached our rooms at the Days Inn in Childress rather late.  564 miles.