2016-04-28 REPORTS: OK/TX

[Quincy Vagell]

Today was a classic panhandle chase that also brought me into northwest Texas and others into southwest Oklahoma.

Structure was the key word tonight. As with many storms this season, the supercells tracked just could not put down a conclusive tornado, despite displaying rotation and occasional funnel clouds.

I watched two supercells develop and initially stuck with one that passed near Turkey, TX. The storm was really slow to organize and from my vantage point, I did not see anything particularly interesting.

Like other recent chases, I worked my landscape/scenery game to try to grab the most compelling photos, even if the storm wasn't producing anything too exciting.

I had the option of either sticking with this storm or dropping south to a developing supercell near Floydada. Considering that the downstream environment for the lead (northeastern-most) cell was somewhat less unstable with increasing CINH, I made a move south toward a familiar location, Floydada.

Despite displaying a hook on radar and showing some modest rotation, this storm also struggled to produce. I had a brief visual on a funnel cloud, but then the storm kind of went flat. I stuck with it for a while and near Matador, I witnessed a few short-lived horizontal funnels. The low clouds were visibly churning and rotating, but probably due to meager moisture and limited low-level shear, they couldn't put down a tornado.

A short time later, as I was pulled over, all of a sudden I saw a vertical plume of dust lift into the sky. Although my eyes tried to play tricks on me, it was just inflow related. The next image is a screengrab from a Periscope broadcast, so the resolution is poor.

The storm matured and probably reached it's peak intensity a short time later, to the east of Matador. There was a vivid view of a brush fire against the storm with attendant inflow. It was quite a sight and made for one of my favorite pictures so far this chase season:

I stayed with the supercell right through sunset and although there were additional glimpses of structure with funnel-like appendages at times, the chase was quickly winding down. I knew today was going to have the potential for a photogenic supercell or two and that's exactly what the setup produced.

I'm sure others can chime in, but the lead supercell that I sighted went on to put on quite a show up near Childress and over into the Oklahoma border.

 

[B Doss]

This was a very impromptu chase for me today as I was scheduled to work this afternoon and evening but was called off at the last minute. So after a late lunch with a friend I jumped on the closest cell headed east out of Lubbock, TX and saw most of the same things nicely summarized above.



Hail fog 2 miles south of Floydada, TX.



Broadly-rotating rain free base arrives in Matador, TX.



Wall cloud and brush fire east of Matador, TX.



Nice structure approaching from the west near Paducah, TX.


Sent from my iPhone using Stormtrack mobile app

 

[Ethan Schisler]

I chased the Texas Panhandle on Thursday documenting 2 supercell thunderstorms. The first of which was near the Turkey area and the second of which was further south near Metador, Texas. The first provided me with some very interesting hail fog from copious amounts of quarter to golf ball size hail that fell. The second storm provided several photo ops as it took on a classic LP type structure before dissipating around sunset. It tried to lower in a couple times and we noted a high based funnel even, however moisture appeared to be lacking for this to produce anything of significance. Overall a somewhat disappointing day considering "what could have been" however I did come away with several "keepers" in terms of photos, so I guess not all bad!


Hail Fog outside of Turkey, Texas with the 1st supercell. Temperature fell to 48 degrees here. Quite impressive.


Golf ball size hail with the first storm.


Extremely high based storm near Metador, Texas.




One of the best attempts this storm made at "lowering in". There was a modest amount of rotation, however it quickly became under-cut by outflow


My best photo from this chase as the storm took on a spectacular structure near sunset

 

[T Farncombe]

I was out guiding for Silver Lining Tours and enjoyed this chase day over all others on the tour... Like Quincy said, it was just a classic Panhandle chase... Little chaser traffic, great terrain and gorgeous structure! Full account here: http://highwaysandhailstones.com/storm-blog/april-28-2016/

 

[Mike Marz]

This was by far my favorite chase day of my season so far. After being in Missouri the day prior, I woke up again in Kansas and headed southwest for Texas. As two cells developed and became dominant on this day, I decided to go after the southern cell. This is the cell that would affect the Paducah, Texas area. Long story short, this storm provided multiple attempts at wall clouds/funnels early in its life cycle, and then again later in its life before it died. Some awesome structure and hail as well. Most of the video that I have included down below features footage from this day. It was also great meeting @Skip Talbot, and @Daniel Shaw during this chase. Two chasers I have been a huge fan of for years, and have always hoped to meet out in the field. I was able to talk to both of them for prolonged periods of time underneath the updraft base of this storm. What a good day this was.

Sent from my iPhone using Stormtrack mobile app

 

[Jeff Duda]

Summary: intercepted two supercells in northwest TX, each of which displayed impressive visual structure in a unique way.

I figured the lack of moisture along with the very strong shear would allow for the possibility of incredible structure, but it was seeing upper 50s dewpoints reaching Wichita Falls by midday that really got me out the door. I had been skeptical of the NAM's progged moisture return, but after seeing 12:00 obs, I started to think it might be right.

I left Moore at around 1 PM with an initial staging target of Childress. On the way there a CU field developed over west-central TX and initiation had occurred near Plainview just before I reached Childress. From there I had to make a decision on where to go next. I needed to get west, but I could either go well northwest on 287 towards Amarillo, cut up 287 to TX-86 towards Turkey, or go south and west from Childress. Initial storm motion was NNE, but new storms were developing south of the existing ones, so I could've made either play really. I initially decided on the northernmost play to say in range of the first storm that was already looking good on radar northeast of Plainview. Before I reached the TX-86 intersection, however, I made a last second decision to go west towards Turkey as the northern storm made a hard right turn, but was just about to merge with the next storm down the line, which I figured would be fatal to it. The storms did merge as I headed west, but the merger was not fatal to the storms. A vicious looking supercell with very high reflectivity
emerged from the merger and was heading towards Turkey. Thankfully I was at least several minutes ahead of it and had time to stop and enjoy the view from just outside of Turkey before I saw the hail core moving in. I knew I had to bail south.


(Above) The outflow pushing away from this storm made rather obvious by very low scud well removed from the reduced visibility within the core.


Love the look of that base!

This part of Texas is not known for having a lot of roads. In fact, the road network in this part of the state is
about as bad as you can find anywhere in tornado alley. I only had three real options: 1) go south on TX-70 all the way towards Matador, which would give me just one brief glimpse of the storm crossing to my north before falling behind it and probably having to follow it on a hail covered TX-86 (no thanks); 2) Go south, then west on F.M. 97 towards new convection billowing to the southwest, which would essentially be giving up on an established supercell for an unguaranteed storm; 3) take a risk on an unknown F.M. 696 that went ESE from just south of Turkey. I went with option 3, and was delighted at the quality of the road and the visiblity. For the first 10 miles it was as flat and open as I could hope for. The only problem was there were absolutely no other thru roads in the event of a road closure or I otherwise got trapped. The road went far enough south, however, to keep me out of the core.

I enjoyed several views and stops along this stretch, watching a very impressive, wide, flat, albeit high based supercell base evolve as it moved east. It had that plaster-on-the-ceiling type structure indicative of a well established updraft ingesting parcels with low RH. The storm even put out an RFD surge that prompted a shallow wall cloud that probably rotated, although I couldn't see through the blowing dust for long enough to discern. At some point I measured 20-30 kt sustained inflow winds, but the amount of lofted dust made things difficult. After awhile I chose simply to go all the way east to Northfield before taking another look. A disaster (not really) - the road going east from the intersection with F.M. 94 was closed, thus forcing me to take one last gander at the stationary (not evolving) base of the first storm before bailing and heading southwest towards Matador, where the convection had developed into a second, and at the time, better looking supercell. I wasn't going to have any time to mess around on 94, so I booked it. I had about 28 miles to go before having any other semblance of an escape, and the storm was closing in on Matador. Thankfully, I made it in more than enough time.

I stopped a mile north of U.S. 70 where F.M. 94 hooks west towards town. There I met up with Nick Nolte, Brad Goddard, and Jonathan Williamson. They had been there for awhile and informed me I hadn't missed much on the second storm. We talked for a few minutes, noting some random CGs landing fairly close by, as well as behind us (so 40 miles ahead of the updraft).



I attempted some timelapse of the cell as it approached, but it never showed much in the way of further organization, and I began to wonder if I had made the wrong decision leaving the first storm, as it had a reported tornado (not verified, and I question its validity) and large hail, and seemed to look pretty good on radar. It had strong rotation in the mid levels, something I wasn't seeing as much indication of from the second storm. Also seeing the second storm was heading towards a region downwind of an 81/49 ob near Paducah, whereas the dewpoints upstream of the northern storm were holding in the low-mid 50s, I figured the second storm wasn't going to put on much of a show and decided to chase down the northern storm. So I flew east on 70 towards Paducah.

When I got to Paducah I was going to take F.M. 104 to continue to pursue the northern storm, as taking 62 back to Childress would not be good enough to get back ahead of it. On the way there, I looked back and noticed the storm I had left was starting to exhibit some rather impressive structure visually, and the northern storm was starting to look like it was losing its organization. So I cancelled my pursuit of the northern storm and went back through town to get on 62 north to get a better and closer view of the southern storm.


Northeast of Paducah.

North of Paducah I witnessed it drop a rather large wall cloud that persisted for several minutes. I couldn't tell if it ever rotated much. As it fizzled, I repositioned, then caught some excellent photos from Ranch Road 3256 with Jonathan, Brad, and Nick. The photos I got at this point were probably the highlight of the chase.



(NEED A WIDE ANGLE LENS SO BAD!!! )

However, the thermodynamics of the environment this storm was moving into was still an issue, and I figured the storm was going to begin dying, as little CAPE remained immediately to its east. Given it was starting to exhibit even more impressive structure, but being too close to fit it all in my lens, I bailed back northeast on 104 to try to do the same thing I did back on 15 April in the northern TX panhandle - get as far ahead of it as possible before it died or my view of it became blocked by precip.

I snagged a few final photos near the Pease River before being satisfied the storm had given me all it was going to. I called off the chase by the time I reached the turn east towards Quanah.



The funny thing about the end of the chase was that I had wondered how the northern storm had looked after I had left it. Throughout my time on the southern storm, I took peeks back to my northeast but saw nebulous cloud features. I figured I was too far away to actually see the northern storm. As it turns out, I was able to see the backside of the base of the northern storm the whole time! I just didn't recognize it as being the other storm. In fact, on the way north back into Oklahoma, I witnessed the northern storm's demise as its base gradually shriveled up and dissipated, even though it was probably at least 30 miles north of me. I can probably thank the high LCLs for that one.