2014-05-24 REPORTS: NM/TX

[Hannah.Taylor]

Had the pleasure of once again chasing with Marcus Diaz, James Siler and Marcus' girlfriend Jamie.

Began our day heading towards Lubbock with the intent of heading south towards Midland/Odessa area. However, the early morning rains continued and to much convection along with the early MCS was begging us to reconsider. Upon reaching Lubbock, we decided to head for New Mexico. A quick stop in Livington to check models told us all we needed to know. New Mexico had a lot of CAPE and shear to play with and the environment was much more favorable for supercell development. We headed towards Roswell and were soon rewarded with a gorgeous anvil topped supercell building just north of Roswell. As we drove towards it we watched the south side of the anvil go vertical straight up, then it would billow outward as the inflow helped push the anvil up and out. It cycled new towers on the backside continuously and was just amazing and enthralling to watch.

This was a slow moving beauty, and it was easy to follow and fun to watch. It began spitting out pea size to quarter sized hail. We ended up running into Skip Talbot and Jennifer Brindley Ubl out there, we exchanged pleasantries and conversed for a few minutes before parting and continuing the chase.

As the sun faded we captured some fantastic supercell shots and lightning. Finally called it a chase and headed for Amarillo. I have to say, despite no tornado (although it was tor-warned at one point early in it's life cycle) this is one storm that will remain a beautiful memory in my mind for a long time. It did everything BUT tornado.

Structure, definition, shear and one of the most beautiful anvil topped supercells I have ever witnessed. What a storm! What a chase! What a day!

and the prize of the day. I nabbed one of my dream shots yesterday evening. Standing in the center of the road in the middle of nowhere, somewhere NE of Roswell, I took this shot with my Canon 7D and 8mm Rokinon. It's a given this beauty is getting blown up on a poster, framed and mounted on the wall (when I have a wall to mount it to that is, lol).

 

[JamesCaruso]

My chase partner Steve Komie and I left Lubbock around 10:30AM for a target area roughly centered on Monahans TX and bounded by Kermit, Pecos, Odessa and Crane.

At Midland, we checked surface obs. Based on the continued southward progression of the cold pool / outflow boundary, we decided it was more important to get south than continue west. However, one exit later we saw the black smoke of a massive gas fire that had literally just happened. The southbound road, 349, was blocked. So we hopped back on I-20 to Odessa and took 385 south.

We finally broke out of the cool and cloudy conditions and could see cumulus bubbling on the outflow boundary and storms were already developing west of Crane. We waited in Crane for the first storm to approach us. It was a relatively disorganized, large HP storm that kept expanding and was outflow dominant but being our first chase of this trip we enjoyed the views offered, particularly as the storm passed over a wind farm.

The storm ultimately became more compact and a tornado warning was issued. We drove up FM 33 out of Big Lake to take a peak, with radar indicating a notch and couplet just to the west of the road. We were not going to try to get into the notch, and had no road options to do so anyway. We had to backtrack south to Big Lake because there was no east road for 30 miles and continuing north would have put us on the northwest side of the storm as it continued moving east. So we bailed on this one and waited at Big Lake for the next supercell to come up from the southwest. Took some structure shots of this one, which was also tornado-warned and outflow dominant. Once it, too, went into the no man's land of no roads between FM33 and routes 67, 158 and 163, we bailed on it and headed south for the next cell down the line, which was also tor-warned at this time I believe.

However, that southern storm continued to propagate to the south; it would have taken another hour to get to the southeast flank so we decided to backtrack to the north and northeast and re-intercept the previous cell. Nothing had a tornado warning at this point. We played cat and mouse with the storm as we drove to San Angelo, where we had already booked rooms for the night. We watched the shelf cloud approach the outer loop of the city and then had dinner at Logan's Roadhouse as storms continued to train through the area all night.

Tried to upload pics but on the ST website via my laptop it just keeps freezing, and on my iPad via Tapatalk it crashed my whole iPad twice. Maybe files are just too big??



Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Hannah.Taylor]

Tried to upload pics but on the ST website via my laptop it just keeps freezing, and on my iPad via Tapatalk it crashed my whole iPad twice. Maybe files are just too big??

try uploading to facebook or flickr or photobucket or some external location. right click image, copy link location, then

 

[joel ewing]

The photo where you're straddling the yellow lines on the road and shooting at that collapsing storm is definitely worthy of an expensive frame and a highlight spot on your wall. Nicely done! Man, that area sure looks dry. Some of the wildest storms I've ever witnessed have been in that area. Anybody remember the "Amazing Earth-Eating-Incredible Inflow Speeds-Tornado-Warned-For-Hours" storm of 2002 (are you reading this, David Drummond)?? lol.

 

[joel ewing]

Were any of these storms you're speaking of anywhere near the tiny New Mexico town (in the extreme southeastern part of the state) of Jal? (pronounced HAL). I saw reports that a tornado touched down near there. It's strange how some towns always seem to get actual tornado touchdowns seemingly year after year....ie: Okla. City, Grand Island, Nebraska, Great Bend, Kansas, etc. Believe it or not...Jal, New Mexico is one of those towns. Makes one want to know why, exactly...doesn't it?

 

[Hannah.Taylor]

The photo where you're straddling the yellow lines on the road and shooting at that collapsing storm is definitely worthy of an expensive frame and a highlight spot on your wall. Nicely done! Man, that area sure looks dry. Some of the wildest storms I've ever witnessed have been in that area. Anybody remember the "Amazing Earth-Eating-Incredible Inflow Speeds-Tornado-Warned-For-Hours" storm of 2002 (are you reading this, David Drummond)?? lol.

absolutely! 20x24 or 24x36 is what will be printed and then framed. I've taken some good shots, but this is the first one I've ever felt was worthy of being printed and framed.

Were any of these storms you're speaking of anywhere near the tiny New Mexico town (in the extreme southeastern part of the state) of Jal? (pronounced HAL). I saw reports that a tornado touched down near there. It's strange how some towns always seem to get actual tornado touchdowns seemingly year after year....ie: Okla. City, Grand Island, Nebraska, Great Bend, Kansas, etc. Believe it or not...Jal, New Mexico is one of those towns. Makes one want to know why, exactly...doesn't it?

not sure on Jal. that was my first time chasing in New Mexico, and rest assuredly, it won't be my last! No doubt, why does OKC/Moore always have a bullseye on it? and Yazoo City, and those other areas you mentioned. pretty crazy stuff. either it's bad chance, or there's something geographical about the area and how it interacts with that atmosphere there that makes it prone to tornadic development. I wouldn't be surprised of something like evapotranspiration is somehow a factor in that process (which would make a lot of sense).

 

[JamesCaruso]

Saw an SPC tornado report for just northwest of Mertzon. Based on a RadarScope image that I happen to have saved during the chase, we missed this by about 10 or 15 minutes - as noted in my report above, we had made a run at a more southern cell, realized it had propagated south and out of range, and returned to this cell. We actually made an approach coming out of Mertzon but it was at least 10 or 15 minutes after the time of the tornado report. Wondering if anyone saw this tornado? Did we miss much? I assume it was brief and/or rain-wrapped...

Jim

 

[JohnHuntington]

We too ended up down in Fort Stockton, took a loop down through the fog and then headed back up to SE NM, and got on that beautiful storm near Carlsbad which eventually went severe...

I seem to be having some upload problems but here's a couple links to a couple quick photos on twitter:
https://twitter.com/jhuntington/status/470799377674420225
https://twitter.com/jhuntington/status/470799152956182529

It was a really beautiful storm!

John

 

[Greg R]

Just sharing a pic from one of the cells in west TX... think this was from one of the cells east of Kermit. Didn't snap a pic of the radar and too many storms in recent days for me to remember exactly! Bad Greg.

 

[mw174620]

We set out around noon from Dallas with our initial target being Midland/Odessa area. By the time we reached Sweetwater (100 miles east of Midland) around 6pm the storms had already initiated over Midland and were slowly moving east. We decided to re-position just west of San Angelo, TX. By the time we had reached that area there were two tornado warned cells heading towards the San Angelo area.

We headed southwest out of San Angelo down 67, by the time we reached 163 the warned cell to our northwest had started to develop a small hook. We took 163 north and stopped along that road to take this shot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA4txVY4tvc I am still in my learning stages of severe storms, but that lowering looked to be a wall cloud to me. It was right in the direction of the rotation and was clearly defined from the large shelf heading towards us.

We then headed north to the only eastern route for a while, at FM2469. We took that east back towards San Angelo and stopped just southwest of the city where we took this time lapse of the shelf approaching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGHCfqymcK8 The radar stilled showed some good rotation and a very large hail core, but the warning had expired by this time.

Overall not the most eventful day, but that great view we got of the warned cell definitely made the trip worth it.

Radar data and GPS track: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=7E9B47C460A2EEBB!1100&authkey=!AJKBaP3xQxtvpeU&v=3&ithint=photo%2c.jpg

 

[Marcus Diaz]

My original target was around the Hobbs-Midland area for this day. I figured the outflow boundary would sit there most of the day. However, the OFB ended up traveling much further south than anticipated thanks to the morning precip. I knew this was going to make tornadoes less possible since the better shear was going to push into central and eastern NM. We arrived in Lovington, NM for a recheck and knew there was a storm brewing in the mountains northwest of Roswell. So we decided to go after those since the better shear was right there. We got up onto the storm in a rural area atop a hill thanks to a dirt road for a cell phone tower (which luckily for me, was a Verizon tower). By about that time, we had a great view of the storm and it went tornado warned. Called up the NWS in ABQ to tell them there's no immediate danger of a tornado, since that storm was in a bit of a radar gap. They said it was a pre-cautionary thing. As the storm approached HWY 285, we decided to get right under it and get some hail action. Some golfballs were noted, and we continued on HWY 20 to get cored again. Hail covered the ground but quickly melted. Looking towards the SW side of the storm proved to be very photogenic. We went up the road and met Skip Talbot and Jennifer Brindley Ubl getting some timelapse shots. The storm put on a great color display as the sun went down. We stuck around for some lightning coming from the south before heading home after the sun went down. Not a bad chase in what wasn't exactly the main target.

Storm about the time it went tornado warned:

Gotta love the SW side of a storm especially near sunset:

Full 360° panoramic taken with my phone:

For the rest of the pics taken by my chase partner and girlfriend, click here.

 

[Skip Talbot]

Brindley and I hung out near Roswell all day waiting for cells to come off the higher terrain in central New Mexico. We tried to go for Tail End Charlie on a one lane ranch road but were blocked by a flooded creek crossing the road. We waited for the cell there, and to our astonishment it picked up a tornado warning and the curling northern end of the RFD clear slot went directly overhead. This was probably our most enjoyable and photogenic day of our extended upslope chase trip. Also nice meeting Marcus Diaz, Hannah Taylor, and James Siler. Full log, map, stats, and photos:

http://skip.cc/chase/140524/

Photography courtesy Jennifer Brindley Ubl

I have a whole bunch of still sequence time lapses that I'd like to assemble into a nicely edited video production. It might take a few weeks for me to finish that though. This day in particular was really great. I fired off about a thousand stills from our spot in front of the flooded creek as the storm approached and went overhead during the course of a couple hours.