This day we targeted Childress. There was a moderate risk of severe storms forming there in front of the approaching cold front. At first we looked for a nice vantage point, but we ended up chasing a nice dustdevil. We let it pass right over the car.
Pretty soon after that we saw storms forming to the southwest. The storm became severe in a short time, but there were many other storms forming. We couldn't find a nice updraft. The storms were merging into a large complex. In about 1.5 hours time a congestus cloud became a large MCS! We encountered hail again, but the storms didn't look very well organised. It was just one line of storms from north central Texas all the way north to Nebraska. We tried to get to the tail end Charlie, but it looked like it would die soon. We should have stayed with that one! Instead we picked a cell in southwest OK. Near Altus it did form a wall cloud with all kinds of scud clouds. Sometimes it looked like it dropped down a tornado, but I can't really confirm that.
At sunset we photographed the most amazing mammatus clouds I have ever seen. Not the colour, but the forms were amazing. And the whole sky was one big mammatuswonderland. Truely wonderful! |
