Start: Clinton, OK
Lunch: Canadian Restaurant
End: Tucumcari
492 miles
Chase account by TT guest L. Ryan
The best place for severe storms and tornados today looked to be around central Texas, along the southward-moving outflow boundary. Shear was modest, but instability was excellent. Our Tour 6 group was to meet up with the mini B group (coming from Denver). Since the next two days looked active back up here, north of I-40, I decided to forego the long drive south and then back north again and to play the forecast high-based storms in northeastern New Mexico. Bill S. and the mini B folks could easily catch up with us there. (As it turned out, the central Texas play was a dud tornado-wise. We likely would have wound up on a supercell near Mertzon, a bit southwest of San Angelo.)
From Clinton, we headed north to look at some tornado damage from the prior evening near Putnam. The damage looked like EF-1 to EF-2 or so to a couple of homes.
We made our way into the emptiness of northeastern New Mexico, from Mosquero to Trementina. There were a few ho-hum cells, including one that was severe-warned. It never looked very interesting, and I was disinclined to photograph it. Towards the end of the chase day, a strong storm or two developed just south of I-40, east of Santa Rosa. The road network did not offer direct access to the storm that might have been worth chasing (it was drifting to the SE), so we settled for the rainbow show near Newkirk (west of Tucumcari).
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