Today there was a slight risk area over the Midland - Odessa TX area and further east. We went south over I-27 and US87 and stopped at a picnic area near Garden City to wait. Shortly after, storms formed west of Odessa. We drove 50 miles to the targeted storm, which was severe and had flanking towers on the northwest flank. When closing in, this storm split into a leftmover (the flanking towers) and a precipitation storm which moved off southeast. We started chasing the latter, driving around to view the west flank.
An ill-formed wall cloud was present here. We received severe-storm warning for storm south of this storm; since our target was a rightmover, it merged into the storm south of it, forming a multicell with supercell characteristics. Saw nice rainbows, flash-flooding, and hail on the ground while chasing this to the east. We tried several times to reach the southeast flank to see a possible wall cloud (since a flanking line was present, and downdraft was in the way, looking to the southeast.). Around sunset, we finally reached the updraft area from the other side, but no organized mesocyclone was present. This storm now behaved as a HP supercell, but with a poor structure. The flanking line was very long, however.
When the sun set, we drove north and after 21h we photographed nice CG, CC,CA and IC occuring in and under the updraft tower. This chase was 864 miles long. |
