Left-Mover from High on Scotts Bluff
Scottsbluff, NE: 5 Jun 2007
With an eye toward better storm potential the next day in western SD, we left Denver with hopes of seeing an interesting, high-based storm somewhere along the way to our destination of Chadron. Along the way we decided to sample the Wildcat Hills and/or Scotts Bluff itself (the geologic feature overlooking the town), as time and storm initiation allowed. Scotts Bluff National Monument offered a chance to hike around, do some photography, see interesting strata from 22-33 million year old ash/sand/lime beds, get several stampings for our national park stamp books, plus enjoy a great view of the surrounding high plains and hills…so there we went! It was a colorful treat to get up there at the right time to see the wildflowers and lichens in their fully rich tones.
Just before ascending the bluff, we noticed a fuzzy storm initiating to our distant WSW, moving E, and decided to keep an eye from atop. The base was mushy and unimpressive, in an environment of weak moisture and marginal shear for a right-moving storm; but a left-split which calved off to its NE grabbed our interest. While hiking and exploring, we watched the anticyclonically rotating storm and its precip shaft (which apparently was warned and generated a marginal severe hail report) move to our W and NW.
This view, from the bluff top to the WNW and up the North Platte valley, reveals an inflow tail curving clockwise with inward extent, along with precip shafts of richly varying backlighting and opacity.
The storm dissipated soon after we got off the bluff, and we headed through its dying carcass of light rain along the way to Chadron for dinner and lodging.
Mostly by fortuitous circumstance, we’ve spent the night of three of Elke’s last four birthdays in Chadron. This time we got a free dinner entree for her at the Country Kitchen, directly across the parking lot from the Best Western motel where we usually stay.
It was a fun, easygoing semi-chase day where we picked a spot in a target area and watched the storms roam about from up there. If you’ve got a storm potential in the southern part of the NE Panhandle, some time to kill, and a national parks pass, the top of Scotts Bluff is a great place to park and watch for a spell.
Storms over the Green Volcanic Grasslands
Filed under: Summary
Capulin, NM: 3 Jun 2007
With the flow aloft weakening over the southern Plains and a couple of rather benign days in the forecast for decent supercell potential, Elke and I decided to leave Dalhart and head for some R&R at her mom’s place outside of Denver. Along the way, near Capulin NM, we were treated to a splendidly textured convective sky, thanks to the usual early-afternoon eruption of storms along the Raton Mesa and Cimarron Canyon areas.
We’ve long admired the beauty of the northeast New Mexico grasslands, especially in a wet year such as this when the volcano-studded carpeting seems to saturate itself with rich color and texture. To put some high-based storms over that grand landscape added to its already alluring visual mystique, with a wonderful interplay of light and shadow amongst the hills and flatlands. In addition to the shot above, which exemplified this as well as any two-dimensional image can, we’ll also share a wide angle convective shot and one of several faint lightning strikes that I managed to capture.
We had been up on Capulin’s peak, but once the convection started to erupt in earnest, we got down in a hurry. The photos were shot from a lava plateau on the SW flank of the volcanic cone, looking S through SW.
NW Panhandle and NE New Mexico Nontornadic Storms
Filed under: Summary
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.