There was a moderate risk area over the TX Panhandle. We stayed home until 14h, when storms near Vega TX started forming. We targeted these storms, one of which was severe for short period of time. When it weakened we saw more cells building to the southeast, of which one showed an overshooting top.
Then we drove to eastside of Amarillo TX to another line of storms. We saw a shelf cloud with noticeable turbulence; also a couple of ill-formed rotating wall clouds. Severe-storm warnings and even tornado-warnings were issued on an hourly basis by NOAA; but the storms did not seem to develop persisting mesoscale rotation.
Around 18h, we targeted yet another storm near Claude, which had a wallcloud and tailcloud; but because of the Palo Duro Canyon roads were not suitable for a fast route to the updraft area. We did several core-penetrations of this storm, unsuccessfully trying to get to the updraft area. It was a big HP-storm and it was hard to stay on the road. Then tried to get ahead of the storm, but gave up and drove back WNW (over US287). On our way home, we photographed mammatus near Clarendon./TD> |
