In The Vortex

Category: Extreme Weather

All things Extreme Weather!

  • 04/28/09 Chase Forecast

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    Nice setup in place for this afternoon/evening in eastern New Mexico, southwest Texas and the Texas South Plains.  Not one of those highly advertised severe events, but rather one of those days that can produce some real surprises.  While winds speed shear isn’t crazy, it’s sufficient, but even more importantly is the directional shear, which right now is analyzed to be greater than 90 degrees.  We could see some great wind sculptures in supercells today!

    Cloud cover is the fly in the ointment today, which is still covering the area here at noon.  I am seeing some clearing west of Odessa along the Pecos River valley in southwest Texas, and I suspect storm will initiate first there along the edge of the mountains.  If we don’t get some clearing further north soon, that could greatly inhibit our storm chances further north.

  • 04/25-26/09 Storm Chase Recap

    Saturday ended up with a big chaser convergence in Shamrock, TX meeting old friends while we sat around waiting for things to fire off.  Got on the first storm that fired off the triple point, that was very high based, but eventually caught us by surprise with a weak tornado spinning up in the field directly beside us, crossing the road just yards in front of Ben Holcomb, and then into the field on the other side stampeding the cows.  Unfortunately when it crossed the road it only had some grass in it, so it didn’t pick up on the camera well.  I would have thought this was a gustnado had I not been filming a very intense circulation in the base directly overhead.  Over a dozen of us that saw this agreed on tornado.

    Later on we ended up seeing an incredible wall cloud rotating furiously, but it never produced.  Not much else came from that day.

    Sunday, we played the odds and got on the long lived supercell coming out of Texas in to Oklahoma, intercepting it south of Vernon, TX.  Despite several attempts it never could produce a tornado, but twice if came VERY close, once with a giant wall cloud, then later as we fled to get away from the circulation as it moved over Carnegie, OK and sirens were blaring!  That town just narrowly missed a bullet.

    Today has some potential for a sleeper even in eastern New Mexio, more on that in another post shortly.