4/20/07 REPORTS: TX/NE

[Ryan Pfannkuch]

4/20/07 REPORTS: NE

Just rolled into Goodland for the night...and needless to say feeling a bit frustrated right now for missing the night tornadoes in NE.

I left Hastings at 245pm with the plan of simply driving to Goodland and seeing if anything interesting happened along the way. I honestly had very little confidence in supercell initiation today given the limited forcing aloft and limited convergence along the DL. Well, much to my amazement...just west of McCook I noticed an areas of towering CU about 20 miles to my SW so I pulled off onto a gravel road near Trenton and literally watched several small storms initiate all around me for the next few hours. Bases were very high, but the storms had great structure and made for some nice eye candy. I wandered north into Hayes County keeping just behind the dominant updraft...but at sunset I decided to call off the chase and head for Goodland to start getting in better position for Saturday. As though I even have to mention it...as soon as I got about 50 miles away from the storms I had earlier watched initiate around me...the cluster evolved into a large supercell in northern Frontier Co. and started dropping reportedly large TORs after dark. Amazing.

Now I understand these TORs apparently happened after dark, but the truth is I NORMALLY do chase after dark if storms are discrete. In this case, I just got too focused on getting into position for Saturday and talked myself into letting them go...after all...there had been no large dominant supercell up to that point. To further add to the insult, at least one of the TORs was reported in western Dawson Co., which is my own NWS CWA (I hate missing stuff in the "home CWA", always have). Anyway, sorry about the frustration, but hopefully this day serves as a reminder for all of us to stay focused on the present situation and not worry about the next day until "all is clear."

Hopefully some of you on here scored the NE TORs and can fill me in on exactly what happened after dark...as I was caught napping on the tornadic potential today.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Chased the cells that were firing to the south of Amarillo. Just a short jog between Canyon and Happy. The storm that was to the west was the more dominant storm so I just sat and watched it for a few minutes. It developed into an LP supercell with a very nice striated mesocyclone. CG's were popping pretty good and I even got into some nickel to quarter size hail. Not a big chase for me, but since it was close to home, I thought I would go out and see what the storm had up it's sleeve. I was happy with what it gave me. Sorry for the blurry pic of the meso...I forgot my tripod. Now, I rest up for tomorrow!!!

View of storm as I'm leaving Amarillo

View of Meso looking SW about 10 miles south of Canyon, TX

 

[Mike Umscheid]

I intercepted a marginal LP-ish supercell in the Happy, TX vicinity. My target was much farther north, and I had to drive quite a ways south after 630pm after nothing was happening in the northern/central TX PH. I decided to head east then south for the intercept, but the initial storm(s) weakened with additional development back on I-27, so in turn I ended up being too far east. In retrospect, I would have been better off just continuing south on I-27 from AMA... but then if I did that, I would not have had a beautiful photographer's "golden hour" opportunity right before and at sunset in the Caprock Canyon on Hwy 207 northeast of Wayside. I stopped at a pull-off in the beautiful canyon terrain with the sky on fire. A decayed storm's virga "bomb" was absolutely on fire with incredible oranges and pinks...with brilliant orange/red hues of the canyon terrain. Awesome! After that, I decided to continue west and south a few miles to intercept the updraft region of the storm in the remaining twilight. I found a spot between Wayside and Happy as the storm pulled off to my north-northwest. The storm revealed some good structure with some slight rotation... some low-end LP supercell structure with small bell-shaped base and a lowering. Lightning illuminated skeletal updraft structure against a clear twilight sky with the crescent moon and Venus made for a perfect skyscape composition.. Awesome!! I learned about the SW NEB tornado shortly afterwards, but I don't care... I had a fabulous evening of photography of small but beautiful severe LP West Texas storm.

 

[Jimmy Deguara]

20th April 2007 - LP supercells south of Amarillo, Texas


More pics here http://australiansevereweather.com.au/photography/photos/2007/jd20070420.html