2012-04-11 Reports: TX/NM/CO

[John Farley]

Caught a rather large gustnado about 20 miles west of Channing, TX a little after 3 this afternoon. It lasted 2-3 minutes, lofting dust at least 100 feet in the air with very strong swirling at the surface. It was a somewhat unusual gustnado, as it occurred on the warm inflow side of the storm along a surface boundary where warm inflow was hitting rain cooled air. Definitely a gustnado, though; formed surface-up and never any associated rotation or funnel in the clouds above.

Some very good storm structure, too, as this storm - the next one northwest of the one that flooded the highway south of Dumas and produced the huge hail drifts - tried hard for a while to be a supercell. I knew the next storm southeast was better, but doubted I could catch it given my position and the limited road network. But my storm, though less intense, offered up some good stuff, too.

A few pics at:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3720792822237.170599.1348315565&type=1&l=cee868e6d1

Hope this works. When time permits, I will post a full report and maybe some video of the gustnado.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

I left Amarillo around 3:45pm north up HWY 136 towards Fritch. We stopped on a hill and observed the storm for a couple hours. It would produce a wall cloud and spit out a funnel from time to time, but nothing on the ground. After the storm crawled east of the highway, I decided to punch the core, because at the time that was a great idea. As we drove the hail ranged from quarter to golfball sized, and was accumilating on the highway. We passed an accident scene where someone had rolled into the ditch. As we drove through Fritch the hail was still coming down, and street flooding was an issue. After finally punching through we went to Borger and dove south again to catch some amazing supercell structure. By far some of the best structure I've witnessed here in the panhandle. As the storm approached it went HP again so we decided to punch into the hook as the storm went briefly tornado warned. We observed some brief rapid rotation but nothing too special. We ate there in borger and called it a day.

Storm on HWY 136, where it stalled for a couple of hours.

Golfball sized hail south of Fritch.

As viewed from south of Borger.

 

[John Farley]

My full report, with a few more pics and a short video clip, is now posted at:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase41112.htm