Day 1 - TX pandhandle

Having flown from Heathrow to Dallas on Sat 13th May, we began today in Irving (TX) and headed northwest to Amarillo where it's likely we could be near for several days based on how the forecast looks. The SPC had issued a Marginal risk of severe storms in the TX panhandle, nothing majorly exciting but a nice little storm would be a great way to begin this year's chase.

Our first McDonald's of the trip was Childress (TX) for lunch, before continuing to head to Claude (TX). En-route, a few isolated storms had formed on the dryline, struggling to organise themselves - we opted to drop south to intersect a few that had formed near Happy (TX) and were heading generally in our direction.

First McDonald's of this year's chase at Childress (TX)

Towers attempting to grow, but struggling initially

We saw several flashes of lightning, constant grumbling of thunder as they approached and began to line-out. Once the storms had passed east of our location they became severe-warned for hail and wind - the main threat being strong outflow winds. It went from 32C and near calm at our location, to 20C and buffeting winds picking up dust and tumbleweed in a matter of minutes.

Rainbow in a hail shaft of a marginally-severe thunderstorm

The line of storms became severe-warned (yellow polygon) as they passed to the east of our location (blue circle)

We eventually headed back to Amarillo (TX) and booked a hotel - the others then went to the Big Texan steakhouse, I made the hard decision of staying at the hotel and going to bed as I was really struggling to keep my eyes open! (as it was technically 3am in the UK at this time). Looks like a few days of active weather coming up in the general area.

Day 1 GPS Tracker