Pleasant Supercell near Goodland…
…Goodland Texas, That Is!
1 Jun 2007
SHORT: SE-moving supercell eastern NM into TX South Plains after bull snake adventure.
LONG: Elke and I puttered around the central Panhandle for part of the day trying to figure out what to do with a dizzying array of low level boundaries and possible convective initiation areas. Somewhere on the E side of Amarillo, we resoundingly rejected stern-chasing that early, horrendously messy, gigantic HP monstrosity near Childress as a viable option. So we wandered southward toward Lubbock (LBB) — and the most prominent boundary — while the atmosphere sorted itself out.
Tag-teaming with the crew of Jersey-Smackmaster Fogel, his huge dog “Thunder” and his old human friend Roman (Two Dudes and a Dog, Edition 2007-A), we slithered about the flatlands like that big fat bull snake I accidentally ran over near Tulia. Somehow I didn’t kill or even appear to injure it. We poked the rotund reptile with a stick for awhile, making it an intensely ill-tempered varmint. Finally, the snake made a beeline straight for the undercarriage of DF’s rental vehicle and crawled up into the catacombs of linkages, nooks and crannies. We never saw the hissing serpent again…for all we know it’s still coiled up somewhere under there!
Finally I decided we should head W toward towers that were going up near the W edge of the outflow boundary (OFB), NW of Clovis (CVS). Although the mid-upper level winds weren’t ideal, the moist axis, stronger upstream E-SSE flow vectors and mentally-drawn streamline axis went straight into that area, implying a convergence max; and the backed (easterly) winds we were feeling along the OFB implied enlarged hodographs. So maybe something could rotate for a little while and put on a structure show before retching a load of outflow.
W of CVS near Cannon AFB, we found a baby mammatus field nestled amongst multiple updraft regions and cores, the most intense of which became the southern storm, to our W. Doesn’t look like much yet, right? Hey, it was New Mexico, and the storms would get more interesting.
Our storm turned hard right and was looking promising on DF’s Mobile NetThreat software and GRLevelX display. We spent the next couple hours staying just ahead of the storm as it churned SEward over Portales, catching up to Brian Curran and Ed Calianese between Rogers and Causey NM.
A couple of times this storm developed a wall cloud and a small occlusion clear slot, the most promising of which slowly rotated NW-W of Portales. But it was high based the whole time, and didn’t seem to have time to tighten a good cloud-base circulation before being undercut by shots of its own outflow.
This is when we blasted straight to Goodland TX. Somewhere near there we stopped to look at the storm and chat, and BC and DF decided to discuss the intricacies of the interrelationships between food and flatulence. Unlike them, I believe in action more than talk, so I silently strolled over there just upwind from them and…well, suffice to say DF soon was gagging and BC ran like hell back to his vehicle.
To escape the storm’s low theta-e rear flank outflow and a human form of high theta-e rear flank outflow, we hauled SE through Morton. During those few occasions when we got far enough E to see it, the storm structure was beautiful, with bands, tiers, and at one point between Morton and Whiteface, intersecting visual lines of a distinctly architectural flavor. Meanwhile, other storms that had formed in the central Panhandle were backbuilding and merging into the NE side of ours to form an MCS.
Along the leading edge of the outflow appeared a non-rotating, false-tornado dust column to our N (actual and enhanced photos), a feature that more careless or excitable observers might claim in undue haste to be a “gust front tornado”.
Wanting to beat the storm to our supper destination, we finally called it a day and headed into LBB for a fine steak dinner to celebrate the previous day’s tornado near Guymon.
BTW… Looking off to the distant SE, after we dropped S from CVS through Portales, we had a great view of the mid-upper levels of the Martin County storm, and I did take a few stills. It had multiple vertical walls, deep convective “fist of god” pulses with corresponding overshoots, and shortly before sunset, a pretty little “rings of Saturn” formation of concentric anvil layers off the W side of the updraft wall. I was driving through most of the “Saturn” stage, but maybe bc or EdC got some shots then.
All in all, another fun and worthwhile chase day out on the Llano Estacado…
Oklahoma Panhandle Did It Today!
31 May 2007: Tornadic HP Supercell between Keyes and Guymon
SHORT: Mostly HP storm observed in OK Panhandle, beautiful storm structures with tiers and striations, short lived smoke tracer. Caught brief glimpse of elbow-shaped tornado rope stage.
LONG: Elke and I left Norman a little later than we wanted after my daughter’s elementary school graduation ceremony, but a parent must keep priorities in mind! The target area was the western Oklahoma Panhandle, where initiation off higher terrain prospectively would move into richer low level moisture (and hopefully, before becoming an HP mess or gusting out).
It was good to see Rocky at our gas stop in Woodward, and we proceeded on to Guymon (GUY). The condition of the U.S. highway, 412, has become absolutely shameful for the highway department of Oklahoma! Even though I had new shocks installed less than two months before, the rhythmic bumps and numerous warps in the road surface rattled everything in the car hard and incessantly, throttling us nearly senseless. This was the same road surface I had traveled in 1991 and 1987, and it showed. The constant shaking, squeaking and bouncing was very aggravating, and possibly harmful to sensitive equipment. Fortunately the road became somewhat less rough after GUY, and we proceeded onward to Keyes.
Several cells formed in SE Colorado as we headed out of GUY, and by the time we got to Keyes, we could see the nearest one as a distant base and core affixed beneath the S side of a rather extensive, collective anvil canopy. Meanwhile our good friend, “Joisey Boy” and fellow storm observer David Fogel called us from some of the more northern cells, where he had seen a wall cloud or two, and we decided to stick with the southern storm for its more optimal long-term inflow possibilities.
We had stayed a mile N of Keyes for quite awhile, enjoying the shaded inflow and singing meadowlarks, before deciding to move N toward the CO border to get a closer view of the storm, now moving just S of due E and beginning to acquire more interesting, supercellular cloud structures.
Interestingly, I recognized the very spot where we stopped, just S of the state line, as the one from which Rich Thompson and I observed my very first storm-chasing tornado (after 5 years and over 60 chases of tornadic shutouts) on 11 May 1991! The title line above came straight from a Jim Leonard video quote, uttered in excitement as he and Richard Pasch drove toward that same tornado north of Boise City over 16 years before. It would become a most fitting line for this fine storm observing day as well.
Though contrast still was poor, we looked to the NW to see a pronounced lowering with slow rotation located NE of the core (actual view and enhanced), intermittently shaped like a fat bulbous funnel, albeit from a lofty ambient cloud base. This high-based circulation persisted for over 25 minutes, sometimes with or without good cloud definition, while overall contrast and structure view improved across the fields of blooming yucca (looking W then back toward the NNW).
The storm crossed the Oklahoma-Colorado line at an oblique angle turned a little more toward the ESE, sending the core directly at us and forcing us back through Keyes…but not before some parting shots of the structure (looking W and looking NW).
he next hour or so was spent staying ahead of the supercell, intermittently stopping to admire the storm’s ever-evolving and always fascinating interplay of cloud structure, light and coloring (views at 1859, 1918 and 1922CDT), while zig-zagging along Oklahoma Panhandle roads that were becoming increasingly populated by chase vehicles of all sorts. I pulled up a nice dirt road viewpoint to find Howie and his mobile radar truck, and we exchanged pleasantries while shooting photos not only of the storm but of each other shooting photos of the storm (looking N).
The supercell painted a marvelous palette of pastels in the sky for us, from core to striated cloud bands, changing by the minute as the storm moved to our NNE. Yes, that’s a smoke plume in the inflow region, emanating from fire ignited by a hot CG several minutes prior. It made a great parcel-trajectory tracer being drawn inward and upward. The anvil CGs well ahead of the core got prolific for awhile and I was afraid someone amongst the gathered throngs would get popped.
While driving E on 412 near a place-name called “Muncy,” we saw the last 2-3 minutes of a longer-lasting tornado, by now a narrow, elbow-shaped condensation funnel that emerged from within the rain to our WNW, ending at 2016 CDT. I barely had time to find a place to pull over, safely stop the car, get out and shoot a photo before it vanished. Unfortunately I didn’t do a good job with the exposure in a difficult photographic situation requiring quick reaction in low light. David Fogel, who by now was following us for awhile, also saw the tornado, and his driver and old friend Roman might have gotten brighter photos than mine.
The storm seemed to gust out more after that, practically latching onto our bumper for a hair-raising ride through GUY. From just SW of the “Capital of No-Man’s Land,” we watched a new occlusion become rain-wrapped across the N and E sides of town before letting the storm go.
Motel rooms in GUY were very hard to find. We saw numerous chasers and tour groups congregating in front of two places, and others we called were booked full. We landed at a beat-up old local motel which (most importantly) had wireless connection, then ate a late chasers’ dinner at the local Sonic because all the decent places in town were closed. A celebratory steak dinner for (barely) seeing a tornado would have to wait at least one day!
The Keyes-Guymon supercell would turn out to be one of the more splendid visual delights of our entire storm observing vacation, and it happened our very first day out on the Great Plains.
May 31 thru Mid June Storms — Soon to Appear!
I’ll probably post a lot of the summaries for the storms of May 31 through mid June in another couple weeks, after returning home, catching up with necessities there, getting numerous large digital images from our cameras backed up on redundant media, selecting some for online use, then processing and uploading them. I’ve already written the bulk of summaries, but we want to have photographic accompaniment to the stories at the same time the stories appear…hence the delay. Suffice to say the storm observing excusrion has been a grand adventure as usual. Thanks for your patience…
===== Roger =====