Unlike most days out chasing storms we started Tuesday with stormy weather as a Mesoscale Convection System (MCS) moved over us during breakfast. We were enveloped by heavy rain and surrounded by lightning strikes. As this system moved through Dallas it produced damaging hurricane force winds that caused significant property damage and power outages, a sobering reminder that what we are here to witness while awe inspiring has a very real impact on those who live here.
After breakfast we headed to our target area for the day in West Texas. As we drove through the MCS lightning continued to strike around us.
After a straightforward set up drive the first super cell of the day popped up and the chase was on.
Our first storm of the day was severe warned, but kept changing in intensity, with the base forming and reforming multiple times.
As this storm started to weaken we selected a new target slightly North West of our current location that was moving into good air and had just received a severe warning.
There was a risk of tornados in the region we were in, but hail was the biggest threat from most of these storms with hail up to 5 inches being indicated.
The Time-lapse above shows the strong updraft and winds wrapping around the storm.
After repositioning a few times on this storm it started to go into outflow dominant after dropping it’s hail and rain, so it was time to select our 3rd target for the day.
Wanting to avoid damaging hail meant we had to relocate often on our 3rd storm. We played a game of cat and mouse, getting close to the storm and then retreating as we entered the edge of the precipitation.
We had one of our narrowest escapes getting away from 3 inch+ hail by a matter of seconds as the storm continued to move East.
After getting the most we could from this storm it was time to head to Amarillo for the night where we would have another display of nature at its most awesome.
As we got close to Amarillo our stop for the day we had the most incredible lightning show. We extended our storm chase into the evening and in return got to experience an incredible lightning display with huge bolts striking around.
A fine end to a brilliant and long, storm chase.