{"id":1001,"date":"2008-04-26T03:18:48","date_gmt":"2008-04-26T03:18:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/2008\/04\/26\/april-26-2008-san-angelo-tx-supercell\/"},"modified":"2008-10-15T06:31:13","modified_gmt":"2008-10-15T06:31:13","slug":"april-26-2008-san-angelo-tx-supercell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/2008\/04\/26\/april-26-2008-san-angelo-tx-supercell\/","title":{"rendered":"April 26, 2008 San Angelo, TX supercell"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is chase season again on the Great Plains!\u00a0 I abandoned Los Angeles on Friday, April 25th, and stayed in Las Cruces, NM, on Friday night.\u00a0 The outlook for severe weather looked decent in West Texas on Saturday.\u00a0 Kirstie Johnson and I targeted the area from about Midland to Sweetwater to San Angelo.\u00a0 By mid-afternoon we were in Midland, looking for a wi-fi hotspot to fine tune the forecast.\u00a0 We were beneath a moist tongue of air with some strato-cu and cumulus….but where along this long SE-NW tongue should we be?\u00a0 The wi-fi\/data search failed, and I phoned Brian Morganti.\u00a0 His excellent diagnosis of the current weather led us to Sterling City, which is between Midland and San Angelo.\u00a0 A couple of strong cells evolved out of the cumulus field not too far south of Sterling City just as we arrived!<\/p>\n

A strong cell split and spit out some hail as we watched from Water Valley, northwest of San Angelo.\u00a0 It was high-based and relatively slow to move east-southeast.\u00a0 As it approached San Angelo it strengthened quite a bit, and the cloud-to-ground lightning activity increased dramatically.\u00a0 We placed ourselves several miles east of San Angelo for about an hour to photograph the storm and the lightning.\u00a0 I wasn’t particularly lucky on capturing the most impressive bolts, unfortunately, but I caught a few decent ones.<\/p>\n

The storm was working on dew points near 50F when it went up northwest of San Angelo, so the tornado potential was very low.\u00a0 As the cell moved east of San Angelo, the dew points came up to near 60F, and the cell was tornado-warned as it moved into Concho County, near Eden, after dusk.\u00a0 Small hail fell on us in Eden, and I elected to continue east of Eden to escape the larger stuff that was certain to clobber the town (I later learned of hail to 1.75 inches in Eden).\u00a0 The supercell’s base lowered and the CGs increased to our south.\u00a0 We stopped in light-moderate rain to view a sculpted base, and thought we caught a glimpse of a funnel-shaped thingie sticking out of the base.\u00a0 It did not persist, but the tornado warning did.\u00a0 The road network was somewhat sparse, and we continued into Brady and then southwest from there to try to get another look at the updraft area, but the rain was too heavy north of Hext, and we turned around.<\/p>\n

This was a really fun chase!\u00a0 Thanks to Brian and Martin Lisius for the forecast help.\u00a0 We were flying blind, with only NOAA wx-radio onboard for weather info.\u00a0\u00a0 We are in Arlington currently (Monday, April 28), awaiting the beginning of Tour 1 on Wednesday.\u00a0 The weather pattern on the Plains has been quiet Sunday and Monday, and will be on Tuesday, too.\u00a0 Severe weather returns on Wed\/Thu for the start of the tour.<\/p>\n

\"08apr26_san-angelo_tx_0671.jpg\"<\/a>\"08apr26_san-angelo_tx_0674.jpg\"<\/a>\"08apr26_san-angelo_tx_0677.jpg\"<\/a>\"08apr26_san-angelo_tx_0679.jpg\"<\/a>\"08apr26_san-angelo_tx_cg_0968.jpg\"<\/a>\"08apr26_san-angelo_tx_0684.jpg\"<\/a>\"08apr26_san-angelo_tx_0691.jpg\"<\/a>\"08apr26_san-angelo_tx_0694.jpg\"<\/a>\"08apr26_san-angelo_tx_0696.jpg\"<\/a>\"08apr26_san-angelo_tx_0701.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is chase season again on the Great Plains!\u00a0 I abandoned Los Angeles on Friday, April 25th, and stayed in Las Cruces, NM, on Friday… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16,11],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1001","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-5","7":"category-lightning","8":"category-supercells","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}