2013-05-08 REPORTS: TX, OK, KS, CO

[Marcus Diaz]

Lots of supercells on radar this day. Curious to see what all the other storms did. James Siler and I were close to home and chased the storm that was south of Memphis, TX. The storm took on supercellular characteristics before shrinking away. After that we tried catching the storm that moved south of Paducah towards Crowell before it too died off, so we ate in Childress and came home. We went into the area and reported baseball sized hail SW of Memphis. The hail pic was from an earlier point where it was mostly tennis ball sized. Overall not a bad little panhandle day.

Also I was wondering if y'all could help me out identifying this feature in this video. Since the storm was sitting over HWY 287, we opted to stay north of the storm until it moved on. So we stopped just on the northern outskirts of Memphis when I saw this. It was north of the main updraft base (seen to the far right) and was weakly rotating. About the time this feature looked the best (@ 5:22 pm), we had a ground circulation just in front of us. At the time I thought maybe it was a hybrid landspout/gustnado that quickly spun up. But I'd like some professional opinions on what it might be. Note that I'm using a 0.43x wide angle lens, so the circulation looks far away, but was literally almost overhead.

Watch video >

 

[Joshua Nall]

I got on the storms near Childress but they were rather short lived. Dropped down to the storm near Crowell I think it was, but that storm died out as I got to it. Here's a few shots of an interesting feature on the Childress storm as it started to weaken.







Anvils

 

[Stephen Levine]

Report, Texas 2013-05-08

Departed the far north Dallas area around 12:30 p.m. and headed northwest towards the Panhandle. Approached our target storm east of Childress around 5 p.m.
As the following photos show, it produced a magnificent wall cloud. When the wall cloud disintegrated and moved on, we moved southeast towards the spectacular looking supercell east of Paducah. The trip provided spectacular views of the towers, and we saw circular striations across the towers indicating storm rotation. By the time we moved to striking distance, the storm had disintegrated but still left us with a beautiful rainbow.

This photo was taken about 10 miles east of Childress





Cropped photo of the wall cloud. For a full photo report of the journey, feel free to log into and hit the "Storm Chase Log" button

 

[StephenHenry]

We had a rather grueling but definitely fun day, as we left from and had to return to Albuquerque within 24 hours. By lunchtime we were in Amarillo fretting about going northeast towards the low or southeast towards the moisture. In the end, I liked how the HRRR had slower storms near Childress that hung back a bit further west (for getting-home purposes), which proved to be exactly what happened. Seems like we were on the same couple cells as a lot of others (Memphis and then Paducah). I was initially worried about how photogenic the day would turn out, as there was a high milky haze most of the afternoon. But as the storms intensified that seemed to clear out and we ended up with some nice views.

Watch video >

 

[Paul Knightley]

Lots of supercells on radar this day. Curious to see what all the other storms did. James Siler and I were close to home and chased the storm that was south of Memphis, TX. The storm took on supercellular characteristics before shrinking away. After that we tried catching the storm that moved south of Paducah towards Crowell before it too died off, so we ate in Childress and came home. We went into the area and reported baseball sized hail SW of Memphis. The hail pic was from an earlier point where it was mostly tennis ball sized. Overall not a bad little panhandle day.

Also I was wondering if y'all could help me out identifying this feature in this video. Since the storm was sitting over HWY 287, we opted to stay north of the storm until it moved on. So we stopped just on the northern outskirts of Memphis when I saw this. It was north of the main updraft base (seen to the far right) and was weakly rotating. About the time this feature looked the best (@ 5:22 pm), we had a ground circulation just in front of us. At the time I thought maybe it was a hybrid landspout/gustnado that quickly spun up. But I'd like some professional opinions on what it might be. Note that I'm using a 0.43x wide angle lens, so the circulation looks far away, but was literally almost overhead.

Watch video >

Without wanting to trash the reports thread I just thought I'd add my thoughts to the question above: to me, it looks like the cloud-level circulation is an anticyclonic rotation, most likely a left-split from the main storm. The ground level circulation could conceivably be a weak tornado from this circulation, although some kind of outflow spin-up might be a more plausible explanation.

 

[Albert Rodriguez]

Here's my highlights of the day. Possible funnel near Paducah
Watch video >

 

[Skip Talbot]

Jennifer Brindley Ubl and I chased southwest Kansas on May 8. We got on a couple of budding cells southwest of Pratt hoping for a spout with the impressive low level lapse rates. Then we chased a more robust, albeit cold and outflowy supercell toward Medicine Lodge. Lots of pretty structure and I have several nice time lapse sequences from the event I'm still working on and will post later. Here's a lucky lightning capture from one of my still sequences:

 

[Tim Carley]

I started the day in Dodge City and moved south into West Oklahoma. These pictures are near Fairview OK. The storm had some rotation but was quite the hail maker.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/alH7O1d.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/RbvZaGE.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/qPuqsE3.jpg[/IMG]