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 |
.jpg)
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) |
No comments:
Post a Comment