We started yesterday in Amarillo with a fairly ambiguous forecast for the day, no obvious target and not an awful lot to get excited about.

Initial target was Childress TX, but on the way we ran into what would normally be a fairly uninteresting storm, but with little else to chase we decided to have a play and see what we could get. What we got was about 5 hours of solid stormchasing in return!

We left I-40 and decided to head South East on 287 towards Jesly TX to stay on the drier side of the storm that continued to gain momentum. By 12.30 we even had some structure.

We turned back towards I-40 where we found a great spot on a hill just off the highway. I definitely remember some words of advice about hills and lightning storms…

Once again, my photo skills have failed to capture the moment but we were treated to some brilliant lightning just outside of Alanreed TX. Multiple bolts hitting simultaneously.

Most of the ingredients were there, but lack of lift and weak winds meant this storm just couldn’t quite get organized.

Without one dominant cell, there were multiple smaller storms traveling in pretty much every direction. The result was some heavy precipitation with very neatly defined boundaries criss crossing the highway. It felt like we drove through all seasons of the year every few miles!

Having started at 11.30 and almost immediately on the storm we decided to wrap up the chase by 6 as the storms lost what organization they had and head to our stop for the night in Childress TX. Mondays forecast is a crapshoot with low potential for something from NM to Oklahoma.

Kudos to Dan once again for finding the action in a difficult forecast on Sunday!