6/16/2012 - The Shelf Blob

Snapped this quick lapse of the poleward end of a shelf cloud as it scraped the far southern sections of DeKalb during twilight on Saturday. The ISO was a bit screwy as I was unprepared and hurried.

6/12/2012 - Northeast New Mexico Storms

Victor Gensini and I headed out for a bit of chasing this past week. Despite thousands of miles of driving, we saw few storms. Alas, we did see some beautiful countryside, including: Teddy Roosevelt National Park, Pikes Peak, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Sangre de Cristo Mountains, Collegiate Peaks, and Capulin Volcano National Monument. We had blue-sky busts in the midst, but did manage to latch onto a couple severe storms on 10th near Pierre, SD (nocturnal), and the 13th in beautiful northeast New Mexico. Below are a few pics from the trip, as well as a lapse from the New Mexico storms.

 Sunset in Teddy Roosevelt NP.

Great Sand Dunes NP.

 Rural northeast New Mexico cemetery.

 Storm and attendant needle funnel northeast of Springer, NM

 As we drive east, storm wraps up, producing clear slot, funnel, and cyclonic/anticyclonic couplet along RFD.

 Storm near Mosquero, NM

6/2/2012 - COD Trip 3 Day 9

We decided to take a chance and chase a marginal situation in the extreme northwest TX, OK panhandle, southeast CO, and northeast NM. The setup was essentially a low shear, moderately unstable upslope setup under west-northwest, upper-level flow that showed some potential for isolated convection near the Raton ahead of convection coming off the mountains to the west. This verified for the most part; however, storms were lackluster and quickly went outflow dominant, undercutting themselves. Nevertheless, the Cimmaron Canyon/Black Mesa area provided a nice backdrop for even sub-par convection. We followed the storms into southeast CO, but eventually broke off the chase to head to our hotel and bring ourselves a little closer to home. On Sunday, we ferried to Glen Ellyn, IL to conclude the trip. Trip total was 5400 miles. Thanks to Leon, Ryan, and Evan for driving/assisting on this trip. Also, thanks to all the participants -- it was a blast!

 2012 COD Trip 3 in Boise City, OK -- Image courtesy of Laura Hedien

6/1/2012 - COD Trip 3 Day 8

Day 7: We left Abilene late morning Thursday and targeted the area southwest of Ft. Stockton. After we ate lunch, we decided to pull the plug on the chase as conditions seemed too marginal for organized severe. Since this trip has been travel-heavy, we were happy to let the day's marginal opportunity go and head to Lubbock for the evening. Once in Lubbock, we relaxed for a bit at the hotel before heading to Cagle's for steak.

Day 8: On Friday, we targeted a forecast northwest flow event in the panhandles, extreme southeast CO, and northeast NM. We paused in Amarillo for lunch, before sliding north and east to Borger, TX.  We sat in Borger for only 10 min or so and began to see convective initiation occurring back to our southwest near Amarillo. We dropped south and got ahead of the storms near Claude, TX, where we witnessed an intense CG barrage. The storms struggled for a while; however, by the time they got over or just south of the Palo Duro Canyon the southwest storm began to show signs of rotation. This was just as we were considering making an effort to go after a storm moving south out of Dalhart that looked quite impressive. Ultimately, our storm tried its best and managed to maintain mid level banding, keep its outflow in check for a while, and even some slight low-level rotation. The supercell eventually became dominated by outflow. After driving through some neat dust-filled outflow, we called off the chase near Tulia, TX and proceeded to Amarillo for the night. Below are a couple stills, panoramics, and time-lapse video.

CG as storm begins to strengthen over Palo Duro Canyon.

Panoramic of storm near Vigo Park, TX

5/30/2012 - COD Trip 3 Day 6

We left OKC with an initial target of Elk City and thereabouts (mainly north of Elk City). Hope was that the outflow boundary from previous night's convection would assist in funneling theta-e into west-northwest OK; however, it became apparent that the theta-e axis had essentially two tongues -- one feeding along SE-NW line through Childress into the TX panhandle just south of the Red River, and another into SW KS. Our feeling was that convection that developed in KS would quickly grow upscale into southeast pushing MCS, and that the southern choice would offer potentially more isolated storms that could tap into much richer environment. It also seemed to be the alternative target, with fewer chasers (at least we hoped). We then targeted Childress at that point.  Shortly thereafter, the SPC day 1 update confirmed our call and tugged risk down to Childress. We began to see Cus and towers building on the dryline in the eastern TX panhandle.  Bases were high initially; however, the storm just northwest of Childress was already developing nice midlevel features (visual vault and midlevel banding).  The concern then became that storm to its south could cause problems as it had a northeastward drift to it and our better environ was to our south-southeast.  We needed storms to turn right to access that environ. As we attempted to avoid being hit by southern storm, our storm to the north seemed to get its act together and the southern storm pulsed down considerably. Yet, just as quickly, the southern storm rapidly pulsed back up and turned right. Tricky part then became “How do we get south and attack this new beast?” We decided to thread the needle on US-83, literally skimming the monster RFD and dodging hail until it moved off of 83 to the east. Thereafter, the challenge then became getting out ahead of it with limited road network. We finally got ahead of it finally between Guthrie and Benjamin. The storm revealed itself to be a beast of a bell/fat barrel HP supercell. It had fantastic striations along the tower, with banding. Spectacular mammatus fanned out from the top of the tower. Reports we were getting from the lab and our spotty radar data showed that it had strong low level rotation (which was obvious visually) and was most likely tornadic. Unfortunately, because of the limited road network, reports of softball sized hail, and the HP nature of the storm, we could not move ourselves into position to view the tornado. It was simply too dangerous and we would have lost view of the amazing structure. We chased the storm to Throckmorton where it began to weaken and become less impressive visually. Called chase and proceeded to Abilene for the night. [Evan Anderson contributed to the text in this post]

Initial storm northwest of Childress, TX

Mammatus "riblets" as we flank around southern storm.

Finally ahead of the massive HP, near Benjamin, TX

Panoramics

Time-lapse Video