5/26/2014 - Big Spring and Sterling City, TX Supercells

This would be my last chase day of this trip ... we woke in Brownfield and targeted the area just to our south near Lamesa. By early afternoon, convection was already billowing near Hobbs and moving east. The storms slowly organized, producing an HP supercell northwest of Big Spring. The storm was big and meaty, but lower tier in terms of structure. We let this storm go near Big Spring and shifted southwest to another supercell moving across I-20 near Stanton. We stayed well ahead of the storm as it traversed the Texas scrubland north and west of Sterling City. The storm finally put on a structure show just as it fizzled south of Sterling City. We watched the death of the storm before turning east for Brady, our overnight location.

First supercell northwest of Big Spring.

First supercell gets "wet".

Second supercell near Sterling City.

Lapse sequences.

Trip 2's route.

5/25/2014 - Carlsbad to Hobbs Supercell

We woke in Odessa, TX with another southern High Plains slight risk. As with the previous day, overnight convection had muddied the mesoscale, so target areas were scattered and questionable. Two areas that seemed interesting included the area near the David and Glass Mountains, which featured a poor road network, and the area from Kermit, TX into southeast New Mexico. We spent a bit of time in Monahans, TX trying to figure out which target to go after. A storm fired off the Glass Mountains and was exhibiting supercell characteristics, so we started to head south. As we made it to Ft. Stockton, it was clear the cell was going to die as it moved east into the cooler air and low-level stratus just to the east of the mountains. So, we shifted back north again toward an area of persistent convergence and cu in far southeast New Mexico near Eunice. We sat under this convection for a couple hours, but each time it would shoot up, it would orphan. Some storms were starting to strengthen north of Roswell, so we began hedging north just in case they matured. However, as we slid just north of Hobbs, a storm rapidly erupted near Carlsbad. This storm appeared initially to favor the left mover, but quickly reorganized and produced a nice right mover. We turned our attention to this storm, intercepting it between Hobbs and Carlsbad. We sat in the same spot for what seemed like an hour, watching the storm evolve and producing an amazing display curling motions and rainfoots to make even an amazon storm proud. We jumped east for one more shot at twilight before driving to Brownfield, TX.

   

Lapse sequences.

5/24/2014 - Carlsbad Storms

The original target region of western Texas was hosed early on due to the extremely cold outflow from convection to the east.  The day was about as muddy as it gets, unless you played the convection to the southeast near Big Lake ... which we didn't. We spent a large part of the afternoon sitting in the Pecos, TX Holiday Inn Express lobby watching the god-awful movie Armageddon. That movie sucked. Anyway, some storms finally blossomed along the Guadalupe Mountains late. There were two cells, and we picked the southern one due to its proximity to Pecos. Naturally, the storm to the north was better. All of this started to get going as the sun set, so timing was a bit too late to make a play on the storm near Carlsbad.  So, we just found a random hill in the beautiful area along Texas 662.  From our peaceful vantage, we watched the storm in the late evening light put on a nice convective show, complete with lots of anvil and tower zits. It was rewarding after a somewhat frustrating day.

Crap "storm" south of Kermit, TX put out a few mammaries.It is amazing how many empty beer bottles are scattered across the Texas landscape. Virtually any place you stop along the road, you'll find dozens. Ultimate form of recycling, I guess.

Huge oil flare northeast of Kermit, TX. This thing was huge!

5/23/2014 - Rock Daisy Road Supercells

The first of many slight risk days across the southern High Plains featured just enough flow from the upper level low to the west, weak to moderate instability, and terrain (Sacramento Mountains) to promote severe thunderstorms. We left Trinidad fairly early and made the drive south through the the beautiful eastern New Mexico High Plains-mountain interface, lunching at the wonderful Chef Toddzilla's in Roswell, NM. After the hamburger, we were torn whether to head east toward some severe storms near Eunice, NM, which was away from our target region. We debated and even hedged a bit east. However, the storms continued to pulse over in that area so we waited a bit in the midst of an oil field east of Artesia. Storms were bubbling on the Sacramentos, but were struggling to move east. We finally committed west,, sliding down US 82 west of Artesia. Naturally, the storm near Eunice (in the opposite direction) started to look good on radar. Yet, we had shifted west, essentially hedging our bets on something moving off the Sacramentos. We finally got a visual of these storms west of Hope, NM. They looked okay, but nothing great initially. We then moved south on a gravel to the midst of nowhere, NM. The tail-end storm started to exhibit some nice banding and was taking on supercell characteristics about 30-40 mi southwest of Artesia. We stayed ahead of this nice supercell as it continued to evolve -- this required us to traverse Rock Daisy Road, which, uhhh, wasn't built for a Chevy Cruze. We continued ahead of the storm, grabbing pics every so often. Eventually, another storm to the southwest of the initial storm developed and became supercellular. We ended the day surrounded by these two supercells to the northwest, and a fast-moving left split slamming in from the south. This was a truly remarkable scene in the evening light -- supercells in all quadrants! Heaven for this structure freak. We even got to see a neat hail fog and flash flooding in the arroyos. We followed the storms to Hobbs, NM, where we overnighted at the Hampton Inn.

It was as if these cows were asking us -- "uhhh, are you SURE you want to go down this road in a Chevy Cruze?" 

picaboo!

An oil truck passing in front of these "sisters".

Lapse sequences.

5/22/2014 - Byers, CO Supercell

The 22nd featured another slight risk play for the central High Plains. Shear and instability were weaker compared to the previous day.  We slid east from our south Denver hotel, waiting in Benton, CO before continuing further east and south to the Deer Trail area. We watched as a storm initiated, slowly strengthened, and put on a neat cloudscape with a mixture of high-based textures and elevated convective undulations. We sat well east of the cluster of chasers, focusing on some structure and enjoying the tranquility under the evolving sky. Eventually, the storms congealed and weakened below severe threshold, so we drove to Trinidad, CO, which put us in better position for the next day's target in southeast New Mexico. Overall, a beautiful and peaceful chase.

Initial storm south of Byers.

Interesting case of elevated convection feeding into an already established, high-based storm.

5/21/2014 - Adams County, CO Supercell

We left DKB at 3:30 am to make the target of Denver-Limon by initiation time on this slight risk day. Despite this early leave, we were still late since a storm formed near Denver very early in the afternoon. We made it to the storm as it rotated east of Denver International Airport. It featured a rain-wrapped low-level mesocyclone that shrouded any tornadoes that may or may not have been inside. We planted to the northeast of the storm for structure shots and to stay away from the green ants. The storm wrapped up a few times, even putting on a very convincing looking tornado show once. Eventually, we shifted south to get a bit closer to gas along the interstate. Unfortunately, as we did that, the RFD surged just as we neared US 36. You can see this surge on the radar animation here. This was bad timing as that surge coincided with a mass of chasers heading east to get out of the potential wind driven hail and circulation. It made the decision to get the hell out of there and grab some gas along the interstate easy.  After the gas-up, the storm congealed with other convection moving in from the southwest and took on a less organized appearance on radar. We peeled off and headed to Denver to overnight.

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Our view, from the northeast looking southwest, as we approach the rain-wrapped mesocyclone

5/20/2014 - DeKalb Severe Storm

On a day between trips ... go figure ... a severe storm at home. Chase and I ate dinner quick and then headed south of town to photograph a severe storm that moved across DeKalb. It was a fun, little chase with my future navigator. He was a great lightning spotter and even tried to photograph the storm with the iPad. Glad we missed the potential hail damage to my vehicle! DeKalb had quarter to golf balls, with a lot of wind damage on the south side of town. A nice summary of the event from the NWS office in Chicago is available here.

High-based beast munches DKB.

Chase shows off some melted hail.

5/18/2014 - Northeast Wyoming Supercell

Sunday would be Trip 2's last chase day due to the extremely long ferry ride back home on Monday.  We sat in Lusk for a good portion of the afternoon waiting for storms to form off the higher terrain in Wyoming.  An initial storm formed south of Buffalo, which ended up being the storm pictured below. Initially, we were reluctant to go after this storm since it looked multicellular early on and the rather poor road network ahead of the forecast path.  In addition, a storm was forming near Torrington, which kept our eyes to the south.  And, even worse, models continued to hint at supercell development in our area. We were clearly torn. After much hand-ringing, we decided to go north for the storm near Wright since it had perked up and looked much better on satellite and radar. We had a visual quite early on approach, with storm exhibiting an interesting fat-ish, barber pole appearance at times, with a massive visual vault. It was very high-based, but exhibited dramatic rotation. We managed a few closer stops to fire of a few rounds of pictures before the storm disintegrated. I only wish I had made the decision to head north earlier.

A couple brief lapses.

5/13-17/2014 - COD Trip 2 Sightseeing

With a high pressure firmly in place across traditional chase territory, we turned our attention to taking in some of the sights around the central and northern High Plains, including: Badlands National Park, Deadwood and Lead, SD mining towns and the Black Hills, Mount Rushmore National Memorial, Devil's Tower National Monument, and the Big Horn Mountain Range. We also spent some time investigating the devastating 1972 Black Hills flash flood.

Unusual contrail formation by military aircraft (large transport or bomber-types)

Mount Rushmore.

Some of the usual suspects at Mount Rushmore.

A large pile of rocks that looks like mashed potatoes.

Trip 2 participants at Devil's.

Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, SD

High atop the Bighorns.

The beautiful Badlands.

Early-morning shower passes near Wall, SD.

Conditions were (barely) supportive of severe convection near Cheyenne on the 17th. We intercepted a severe storm that evening. Beyond the penny hail, the storm was not much to write home about. Despite the lack of thunderstorm ingredients across the Plains during this window of time, we made the best of it ...

Odd to chase with snow on the ground.

5/12/2014 - Southeast Iowa Supercells

Monday featured a slight risk ahead of a strong cold front progressing through Iowa.  Ingredients that were maximized the previous day were now marginal for severe storm organization. Despite the low chances of tornadoes, we made a chase of it, targeting the area of southeast Iowa.  We intercepted a storm moving out of Missouri south of the town of Bloomfield, IA. We happened to time it right as it seemed to wrap up and strengthen as it passed to our west. Unfortunately, the strengthening process produced a surging RFD, which caused the storm to choke. Luckily, a new storm developed behind the initial storm and, as with the previous, seemed to intensify as it neared us (near Mt. Pleasant). We followed this storm to Wapello, IA, where it sent out a bomb of cold outflow.  Thereafter, we called it quits due to lack of bridge crossings along the Mississippi, heading back to Des Moines for the evening in "preparation" for a number of down days due to the cold, dry air across most of the U.S. Radar animation of the day is available here.