05/14/08 Chase Summary

After an exhausting quick trip back to west Texas from where I started in Mineral Well, I intercepted a supercell just north of my target of Big Spring. At first there was a lot of outflow undercutting the base, kicking up some impressive gustnadoes underneath some scary looking dangly, outflow oriented clouds. Unfortunately, someone reported those as tornadoes when they weren’t, even though a couple of them were impressive, including the very large one pictured above.

After some repositioning and a little hail trying to get ahead of the gusting out, the cell managed to get it’s act together right before merging with a couple more cells, and produced this really nice lit tornado, and then later a persistent funnel cloud.

After the cells merged, they were off like a rocket, and while tornado warned for the next 3 or 4 hours, no matter how hard I tried, I never could get ahead of them, so I finally called it off around Commanche, TX.

There are some benefits to being behind the storm however.

Written by David Drummond on May 15th, 2008 with no comments.
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