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)

Chase Day 10 - SE Colorado into Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles

FRI 06 JUN  

Difficult decision today - two target areas, very similar to the previous day. We could stay down near Lubbock (TX) and aim for a preliminary target of Levelland, about an hour from our hotel in Plainview (TX), or drive 3 hours north into SE Colorado with an initial target of Campo (CO). 

SPC forecast issued 16:30Z 06 June 2025

Given late initiation in both targets we sat in Plainview for a while to contemplate, taking into consideration the flooding of last night and the impacts that may have on the dirt roads. There was also an element of "we played down here yesterday, might be nice to try somewhere else" too. In the end, we made a last-minute decision to try Colorado instead so headed north and arrived at Campo with a nice supercell already underway to the west near Kim (CO). 

View to the NW just south of Campo (CO)

Due to limited road options, we waited a fair while for the storm to get closer, and so began several hours of tracking this discrete supercell progressively southeastwards across the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles. There were a few brief tornadoes with this storm, but we struggled to see them due to a combination of being on the move at the time of occurrence and/or being obscured by rain in this high precipitation storm. 

We heard the tornado sirens as we drove through the towns of Texhoma, Gruver (TX) and Spearman (TX) in advance of the storm, and once south of Spearman ran out of road options so had to let the storm pass to our north and clear away to the southeast. We sat and watched the constant lightning for a bit, then headed to a hotel in Guymon (OK) for the night - only to arrive as another tornado-warned storm arrived! In the end this produced a bit of wind and hail, but nothing severe for the town.

Chase Day 9 - West Texas

THU 05 JUN 

What a day... my personal best chase day to date. We left our hotel in Canyon (TX) late morning and ambled south, through extensive stratus, mist and drizzle, to sit on an old outflow boundary at Brownfield (TX). Any supercells that can latch onto pre-existing boundaries can ingest enhanced low-level vorticity which can increase the probability of tornadogenesis, so we were keeping a close eye on where this boundary was located at a given time. 

SPC forecast issued 16:30Z 05 June 2025

After grabbing some lunch, we nudged gradually northwards and westwards to keep close to the boundary, whilst keeping an eye on a couple of storms that were developing in the vicinity of Portales (NM) and Dora (NM) to our northwest. Eventually these storms started to gain strength on radar, and we decided to jump on the southern one near Dora (NM) as this would likely become the dominant cell given it was impeding the inflow to the storm to its north. We didn't have to wait long for the first tornado to develop near Garrison (NM), albeit reasonably brief, and watched it rope out. 

First tornado near Garrison (NM)

We then followed the storm progressively east-southeastwards for several hours as it moved from eastern New Mexico into west Texas, producing a multitude of tornadoes - many were reasonably short-lived, but a much more significant wedge developed near to and passed just north of Morton (TX), shrouded in significant amounts of dust. Away from the main tornado, numerous small, brief circulations developed closer to us, including a weak anticyclonic tornado that moved northwards across the road immediately in front of us.

New tornadoes form SE of Maple (TX)

The beginning of the Morton (TX) wedge

Given the amount of dust that had been kicked up, making it hard to get a visual of the large tornado northeast of Morton, we decided to make faster progress southeastwards to get further ahead of the storm and then park up and let it get closer to us. 

Dusty tornado continues to trundle to the east of Morton (TX)

Once we managed to get a visual just north of Smyer (TX) it appeared there was no tornado on the ground initially, however with time several brief, smaller tornadoes developed with eventually a new wedge forming. 

New tornadoes form just north of Smyer (TX)

As we nudged a little bit further east, a separate satellite tornado became visible to the east of the main wedge. At this point, knowing this storm was heading straight for the Lubbock metro area, we decided to get ahead of the storm once more and drove round the southern side of Lubbock before stopping on the SE side (to avoid the traffic during the storm). The mesonet weather station reported a gust of 101 mph at Smyer, but it appeared the tornado risk was reducing with the storm as it moved through Lubbock so we opted to park up under a shelter in Slaton (TX) and let the storm move over us to see if we could find some hail. Roads soon became rivers, and once the storm had passed we headed north to Plainview (TX) to find a hotel for the night, knowing that there would likely be issues with hail damage and flooding in Lubbock.