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).