Day 3 - Texas Panhandle

WED 27 MAY

Left San Antonio TX at 09:00 for a long (6 hour) drive back north to the Texas Panhandle. Stopped briefly for lunch at San Angelo TX, and arrived in Plainview mid-afternoon. Remnant MCV over the Panhandle to the north, near I-40 and northwards, was creating a favourable environment with low-level shear / vorticity ideal for funnel clouds / low-level rotation. Indeed a couple of funnel clouds were reported, but the depth of convection was limited, with a lack of strong winds aloft to aid deep layer shear, so nothing ever became particularly organised.

Eventually some cells started gaining more strength near Clarendon TX, so we hopped onto these at Estelline and followed them for a few hours down Highway 285 to Childress TX and Quanah TX, stopping several times to take photos. Some blowing dust was evident at times, and we let the outflow hit us each time before sliding a little farther southeast each time. A few chasers on this storm, but all-in-all quite a pleasant evening chase with relatively quiet roads.

Once darkness fell, given they were sub-severe, we decided to let them pass to the south after giving us some heavy rain and lightning - that's when the fun and games began trying to find a hotel room. Most hotels within a 90 minute drive from us were fully booked, with only one offering a single room (not enough for the three of us) for an extortionate $250! We decided to book something cheaper in Wichita Falls TX and headed that way instead, arriving around 22:30.

Sub-severe thunderstorm near Childress TX

Sub-severe thunderstorm at sunset near Quanah TX

Day 2 - Mexican Border

TUE 26 MAY

We left Roswell NM at an early 8am and drove for hours through SE NM into west TX, stopping briefly for lunch at Fort Stockton TX. We were trying to catch up with a line of storms that was moving about 20-30 mph. Eventually we cut through the line around mid-afternoon as we ran close to the Mexico border. A quick stop for fuel at Del Rio and a cell went up over our heads, dropping numerous close range CGs! By this stage two supercells over the border in Mexico were slowly approaching the Texan border, one produced a very photogenic tornado in Mexico (we couldn't see it as too far away / behind the rain curtain). As these storms came into Texas they evolved into a bowing line, with a substantial read inflow jet to our north (radial velocities around 80 mph which apparently was backed up by a surface wind gust of 79 mph). We kept up with the leading edge of this for a few hours, which exhibited some nice structure at times, and a brief period of rotation as a lone cell ahead of this line was scooped up and absorbed. As darkness began to fall, we tried to go after a separate supercell to the east but this soon died, so we called it quits and aimed to get to our hotel in San Antonio TX before the squall line to the west caught up with us. As this approached the metro a couple of brief spin-ups became apparent in radar data, and a tornado warning was subsequently issued.

Severe thunderstorm near Crystal City TX

Day 1 - Travel Day through Colorado into New Mexico

Mon 25 May

Not much in the way of severe convection, at least not within a drivable distance today, so the plan was to amble southwards into New Mexico to get closer to Tuesday's risk area (in W/SW Texas). Somehow spent 90 minutes in Walmart in Denver before eventually getting on the road and heading south on I-25 through some beautiful Colorado scenary at the foot of the Rockies. Numerous pulse storms had developed by late morning and into the afternoon, producing some occasional rain, lightning and gusty winds. 

Grabbed some lunch in Trinidad CO before crossing the border into New Mexico, enjoying several CGs from sub-severe storms in the vicinity. Eventually reached our hotel in Roswell NM in the evening.

Video still of CG lightning near Wagon Mound NM

Day 0 - LHR to DEN

Sun 24 May

Hot day in London, reaching 32°C in the afternoon. Hoppa bus didn't turn up at our hotel, so we had to make our way to Terminal 3 through a different bus to T5, and then the Heathrow Express, which delayed us for bag drop. Quick bite to eat, and then it was time to board - this was delayed due to the plane overheating, and then when we were eventually allowed to board we had to sit for the best part of 1h30 on a plane with no air-conditioning (it was over 30C on board) whilst engineers outside tried to fix it - very uncomfortable is an understatement!

Eventually, 2 hours after we should have departed, we were eventually on our way across the North Atlantic, via southern Greenland, to Denver. Fairly quick process through the airport, onto the shuttle bus and picked up our hire car - with a nice sunset over the Rockies to end the day.

Flying over southern Greenland

Landing at Denver

Day 16 - Cruise through Colorado

Small chance of a few marginal storms in eastern parts of New Mexico and Colorado today... given we needed to be in Denver tomorrow for our flight home, we opted to take a scenic amble northwards through the Rocky Mountains from Sante Fe (NM) into Colorado, eventually reaching Broomfield (CO) on the northwest side of Denver to find a hotel for the night. The route was very scenic with snow-capped mountains, including passing over Hoosier Pass at an elevation of 11,542 ft — nearly three times higher than Ben Nevis, the highest point in the UK. This point also crosses the Continental Divide. Plenty of mountain convection produced some fairly persistent rain later in the day, some small hail at higher elevations, and a few sporadic lightning strikes.

Sante Fe (NM)

Sante Fe (NM)

Snowpack at Hoosier Pass (CO)

View to the west from the foot of Hoosier Pass (CO)

View to the west from Breckenridge (CO)

Day 15 - Tourists in New Mexico

The trip is beginning to wind down now, with a slow trek back to Denver for our flight home in a few day's time. Given the lack of any severe thunderstorms in favourable chase terrain, we decided to be tourists for the day and visited the White Sands Missile Range Museum, followed by White Sands National Park (where it was decidedly hot, around 35°C!). We then began our long journey north towards Denver, punctuated by a few sub-severe storms, before stopping in Sante Fe (NM) for the night.

Chase Day 14 - Fort Stockton!

At last, we finally visited Fort Stockton (TX). This location is synonymous in the chase community with discrete supercells (and tornadoes), due to its location in proximity to high ground to the south and southwest, and also returning Gulf moisture; as such, it's often a fairly reliable secondary target on a given severe weather day in the central/southern Plains. However, it's a love/hate relationship with this town, as the chase terrain is far from ideal, especially south of I-10 with very few roads, and hills obscuring the view.

After grabbing some lunch in Fort Stockton, we drove to Alpine (TX) to catch a couple of severe-warned thunderstorms that had already developed over the Davis mountains. These cells were rather outflow-dominant, with a gust front migrating well ahead to the south - but spawning numerous gustnadoes, made visible by dust uplift. As new updraughts developed over this outflow boundary, a couple of landspouts were visible for a time, before the storm over Marfa pulled southwards and became tornado warned. 

Shelf cloud east of Alpine (TX)

Several ground circulations visible on outflow boundary to our south, east of Marfa (TX)

A few minutes before the storm became tornado warned, near Marfa (TX)

By this stage any tornado would have been shrouded by rain and dust, making it impossible to see, let alone many miles from any accessible road... but there does appear to be evidence in correlation coefficient radar products to suggest some debris co-located with a decent velocity couplet.

Lowered CC suggesting some lofted debris

By now it was becoming difficult to keep ahead of these storms given the very limited road options, so we decided to leave them and core punch a separate line of storms emanating out of New Mexico. Once again, as commented in 2019, this involved a drive up Highway 285 (nicknamed the Death Highway) which was heavily congested with oil tankers for miles and miles due to the recent boom in oil production in the Permian Basin. After letting the line of storms move over us, we found a hotel for the night in Carlsbad (NM).

Chase Day 13 - West Texas

Low expectations today, with a very unstable environment (4,000 J/kg MLCAPE) over west Texas but largely capped. An old outflow boundary from previous day's convection was evident from far SE New Mexico SE'wards into west Texas, and may provide the focus for a few isolated thunderstorms by evening... although most models suggested very few, if any, would develop. The main play was well into New Mexico, where convection was expected to develop over the high terrain and then drift into the eastern Plains whilst growing upscale - this was too far a drive for a minimal severe risk, so we opted to amble to Odessa (TX) and enjoy a sit-down meal for a change and just wait and see if anything initiated. 

On arrival we discovered we had a puncture, so spent a few hours killing time getting the tyre fixed. By late afternoon a few thunderstorms had rapidly exploded just to our northeast towards Stanton (TX), so we went for a little chase for a few hours during the evening after a discrete supercell. Some fairly impressive structure developed, and there were reports of very large hail in the core. A lightning strike well ahead of the storm set an oil well ablaze, with a thick smoke plume then visibly drawn into the inflow of the thunderstorm.

Once darkness fell we opted to core punch the storm, but it fizzled on approach to us, so we headed back to Odessa to core punch a separate supercell approaching from Andrews (TX). This storm produced numerous close range CGs, with power flashes / transformers blowing in our vicinity.

Chase Day 12 - Texas Caprock

Today was likely to get messy fairly quickly, with the expectation of scattered initially discrete supercells upscaling into a bowing MCS / derecho by the overnight period. This made it difficult to pick a specific target given potential for quick upscaling and then needing to outrun an accelerating thunderstorm complex. An old outflow boundary was draped NW to SE through the Texas Panhandle, and given a semi-consistent signal in CAM guidance for a long-tracked supercell in the vicinity of the Caprock we chose Clarendon (TX) as our initial target.

When staying in Amarillo (TX) it's almost compulsory to visit the Big Texan Steakhouse, so today we opted to have brunch here before setting off for Clarendon. After waiting a couple of hours for convection to initiate, we hopped on a storm that erupted just SE of Amarillo near Claude (TX). Unfortunately, the canyons in this area make road options very few and far between, and we had to choose a route south of Clarendon which meant being quite far away from the storm for a while before it made better progress SE'wards towards us. It became tornado-warned at times, and despite having some interesting lowerings from our vantage point we couldn't see much evidence of a tornado. By the time the supercell was closer to us it was rather outflow dominant, with a lot of hail and strong winds - gusts up to 90 mph were measured by mobile mesonet stations, and hail up to 4.25 inches in diameter by other chasers in the core.

By the time we made it to Turkey (TX) we decided to leave the storm as the storm motion and road network weren't particularly favourable to keep up with it. We headed back to Clarendon — noting wind damage along the way with twisted street signs, bits of metal sheeting and agricultural sprayers — west to Claude and then south to Lubbock to see if we could jump on any other storms, but most were behind a stout outflow boundary and not especially severe. Frustratingly, a separate discrete supercell in the far western Oklahoma Panhandle produced a series of photogenic tornadoes, but we shan't talk about that...

Chase Day 11 - northeast New Mexico

As the drive to our target of Clayton (NM) was less than 2 hours, we had a leisurely start to the day visiting Walmart and eating at Pizza Hut in Guymon (OK). Eventually we got on the road, and as we arrived at Clayton a splitting supercell was underway to the northwest of town. After briefly bumping into some other British chasers at a petrol station, we followed the right-mover southeastwards for an hour or so, with some nice structure at times, before it weakened as it approached the Texas border. 

      Splitting supercell NW of Clayton (NM)

As luck would have it, a second supercell had developed some ways back to the northwest, and was already tornado-warned... although from our vantage point the base was fairly high, but due to the poor road network we ambled back north to park up and watch it gradually get closer to us. By chance, we stumbled across some hail from the first storm still left on the ground, some pieces up to ping pong ball size. 

Hail besides a Quarter coin (24 mm diameter, suggesting hail was >30 mm in diameter)

We spent the next hour or two watching this nicely sculpted low-precipitation supercell gradually approach us from the northwest... the structure was incredibly, especially when combined with the increasing orange light as the sun began to set. 

Incredible supercell structure near Amistad NM

We let the storm pass over the road to our north and east, and then followed it back southeastwards into the Texas Panhandle as darkness fell, stopping to take a few lightning pictures along the way, before checking in to a hotel in Amarillo (TX) for the night.

Lightning under moonlight, west of Channing (TX)