NW Panhandle and NE New Mexico Nontornadic Storms
2 Jun 2007
Two potential plays turned into three on this day. We stubbornly forged to the northern one near Raton Mesa because of its greater certainty of storm initiation, despite knowing the dew points (and CAPE) would be less there.
First, we blew off the old outflow boundary down in the Wasteland near Midland (from the previous day’s storms) before leaving Lubbock, where we had a good time eating lunch John Moore, Matt Crowther and the original Twister Sisters (Linda and Kathy). While in Amarillo (AMA), we noted an E-W line of shallow Cu along a weak confluence line. Not confident enough that this would initiate (but with a gut sense that it could — the gut sense I probably should have listened to), we kept going NW toward Dalhart. Shortly after leaving AMA, we saw vigorous convective towers rolling into an anvil to the distant NW — the certain CI rolling off the mesa.
Somewhere W of Dumas, we saw the TCu thickening along the confluence line to our S (near I-40). I rationalized away from that boundary, thinking, “Oh well, even if it does go, I’m already 60 miles N of the development and it’s likely to right-move S.” These are the self-deceptions that often lead us astray afield! Matt was in phone contact, was still a county or two S of us, and agreed to go after that activity and report back.
Meanwhile, the convection to our NW still looked robust, with the potential for bases to lower if it could avoid outflow dominance in intervening time. It didn’t, but in the meantime we had some peace and quiet in the NW corner of the Texas Panhandle, stopping to watch a high based line of multicells approach, listening to meadowlarks chirp and the thunder roll, and photographing some uniquely Great Plains scenery.
This activity backbuilt into a strung-out line of mainly junkus, dropping copious quantities of marble hail on us in Texline. Meanwhile the mushroom cloud could be seen out of reach, distant SSE, destined to become the south-moving storm that produced a rain-wrapped but visible tornado or two.
A discrete cell went up E of the original line, E of DHT and N of Dumas, in higher theta-e surface air. This storm briefly showed some promise with a flared base and inflow stingers. Alas, after we got SE out of DHT, it shriveled into nothing.
Elke and I did take some consolation in watching and photographing the Hereford storm from way up here near Perico, and getting some of my favorite kinds of shots at 250-300 mm. Belligerently intense updrafts, overshoots and backshear glowed brilliantly in the sun, with a farmstead and windmill silhouetted beneath.
At one point we had a view of four supercells at once, in different directions, each in the distance: the supercell SW of AMA, another in 40s dew point air N of TCC (barely could see the base in the far SW distance), the short-lived storm N of Dumas, and a pretty little LP digging S out of Baca County, to the N. We were between it all, and the closest supercell was the dying one.
So we got a room in DHT shortly before sunset and headed a few miles NE of town to a dirt road, watching leisurely as the LP slowly approached from the N. Meanwhile, Elke spotted several burrowing owls that were using roadside burrows in loose, sandy soil, as well as the unfarmed corners of center-pivot acreage, for habitat and hunting.
Although shaded much of the time by a big shield of mammatus-bearing anvil debris from earlier junk storms, we could see vigorous convection above a bowl shaped, flared, tiered updraft base still over Cimarron County. The base lowered and developed a ragged, rotating wall cloud, and (according to David Fogel and Keith Brown, who blasted N to get under it) “tried” to become tornadic with a couple occlusions. We could see scud forming near ground and rising up into the area of low level rotation (zoom), but it didn’t look tornadic from a distance either. The storm came closer, exhibiting a broad, blocky wall cloud for about 20-30 minutes, before it finally weakened and shriveled up. This one was fun to watch, because we just sat there for an hour and let it drift right toward us, watching it spin and spin along the way.