Pokin’ to Punkin Center
12 Jun 9
Punkin Center, CO
SHORT: Observed a couple hours of a high based, outflow-ish supercell in east CO. Heard later about weak nocturnal tornado that hit our property back in Norman.
LONG:
Too far from the central OK target area after our PUB-LAA chase the previous evening, we let others play that. Instead we decided to head toward my in-laws’ place outside DEN to position ourselves for weekend chase potential nearer to there. If we saw Palmer Divide storms along the way…great!
We stopped to photograph the abandoned 1899 Star School W of LAA (window shot), and spent a couple hours exploring and doing photography at Bent’s Fort (to be posted later). From there we cruised N out of Ordway toward the projected path of a small young supercell that had formed along the Palmer Ridge SE of DEN. When we let the storm pass to our N and then to our NE, at Punkin Center, it blasted us with a cold, wet RFD — one that surged well S and SE of the main updraft region. We played with that high based storm for a couple hours as it moved slowly ESE past US-287, observing intermittent wall clouds and a couple of cold outflow surges. Mostly the storm was rather high based and featureless while we were on it, and was surfing above its own outflow.
My chase desires gave way to my wish to be a good husband, so we broke off and headed to nearby DEN to see Elke’s mom. Along the way we got a fine rainbow 8 SE of LIC (17 mm wide-angle, and on the other extreme, 600 mm zoom), a CG barrage along I-70 from elevated storms near Bennett (no photos), and some non-critical but needed automotive maintenance slated for the following day.
It was shortly after we arrived that I found out about the supercell that has sprung up over Norman and quickly produced a tornado…which passed over my house. I’ve written about that entertaining saga in a Weather or Not BLOG entry!
Colorful Stormy Skies, Day and Night
Southeast Panhandle of TX
12 May 9
SHORT: Mostly multicellular storms observed from Matador to Memphis TX by day, yielding fantastic sunset scenes, then a brilliant and long-lived electrical display after dark.
LONG: My forecast target was the Caprock area somewhere near its prospective intersection wit the warm front, which looked most likely to be along or just S of the latitude if CDS, and N of the latitude of LBB. I wasn’t expecting raging supercells given the weak effective shear and lack of more robust midlevel winds; but I thought we at least had the possibility for brief ones. The very stout cap was a huge concern too, so I also was hoping for a little dollop of good ole Panhandle Magic (As Bobby P has been wont to say, “It’s May, it’s the Panhandle…chase!”).
Elke and I left Norman after a rather late lunch, confident that the capping would hold off initiation in that area until after 1700 CDT. It doesn’t always happen; so I love it when a forecast comes together.
Along the way, we stopped to photograph some abandoned structures, walls constructed of native Cambrian granite cobbles that basked in muted sunlight, surrounded by wheat fields, with the backdrop of the Wichita Mountains for texture. I didn’t stay long to appreciate the scene or do more close-up photography, though. Despite the mid-afternoon sun and stiff breeze, dozens of fat and ravenous mosquitoes swarmed me with a speedy and bloodthirsty attack every bit the equal of their notorious cousins in the Everglades or the Minnesota North Woods.
By the time we approached from the E, as if on cue, turkey towers started bubbling over Turkey TX. Although these attempts didn’t survive, thicker clumps of towers did to their SSW, in Motley County (see towers and flowers). Consider the cap broken! We hung out at some picnic tables in Matador for at least half an hour, eating Allsups burritos, watching assorted other chase vehicles pass through, and waiting for the rather messy, multicellular convection to become better organized. It did, but in a linear sense, and began to accelerate NE toward the CDS-Memphis area.
Off we went the same way, passing right by the same Stitch Ranch entrance that Rich and I used as a staging point for observing the April 29 eastern supercell. Nearby, I stopped to photograph a thick, partly rain-diffused shaft of sunlight beaming through a cloud gap and onto the distant rolling prairie, an orphan of brilliance amidst the stormy shadows.
The messy structures continued until shortly before sunset, when Elke and I decided to move from front to back side of the complex for photographic reasons. We grabbed a quick dinner in Memphis then headed E on TX-256, past some other chasers, to a pleasantly lonely, gravel side road near the Hall/Childress county line.
What a marvelous setting! Warm tones of the low sun painted a brilliant rainbow segment across the deeply bronzed west wall of the storms. The freshly soaked ground gave off that earthy, moist aroma of a formerly dry land newly satisfied. Bird calls of all kinds carried across the cool breezes. Two bobwhite quail carried on a conversation past us as we admired the fiery sunset scene in the western sky; while in the south, varyingly colored low clouds drifted before a canvas of a higher deck with a different hue still (wide angle and somewhat later).
There’s no experience quite like a Great Plains sunset right behind storms. I hope those photos convey at least a small measure of that.
Then came a dazzling display of atmospheric electricity on the back side of the complex, from the southeast Panhandle all the way across southwest Oklahoma and back to Norman. Lightning filaments raced through a mammatus canopy that spread upshear of the complex, giving many storm observers (from us to the V.O.R.T.EX.-2 crews in CDS) a memorable show. We stopped near the TX/OK border to shoot a little of the action, with Elke capturing one of the most crisply defined sets of nighttime mammatus I’ve seen in a photo. This nearly daylight-bright discharge spread overhead and beyond, raising a distinctive, simultaneous crackling noise in some nearby high-voltage power lines. We soon headed home, content to watch occasional flares of electrical brilliance across the rainy night sky.