May 23, 2002 Texas Panhandle Mothership and Tornadoes

The 2002 Reunion Tour was designed to celebrate the many wonderful people that give life to our tours. Much to my internal angst, we began the tour with a very lean weather pattern. The low-level moisture so crucial to severe storms was removed from the plains this year by strange, highly amplified and persistent recurring upper-tropospheric waves over the Gulf of Mexico and Carribean. This tour was starting during one of the longer stretch of days suffering from nomoisturitis. As always, perseverance paid off and we got some incredible storms, including this one near Pampa, Texas. We began the day in Salina, KS initially targeting southern Kansas/northern Oklahoma. However this target soon soured and we re-adjusted to the Texas Panhandle - hard driving! After first agonizing over whether to target an LP storm on the Caprock or patiently stay with multicellular storms forming east and northeast of Amarillo, we decided to do...both! We targeted the LP near Silverton and as soon as it crapped out we blew it off and went pell-mell to the north where we ultimately caught up with the high-plains beast shown below. This was one of the most striated well-structured storms I'd seen in a while. It even managed to produce tornadoes, one of which was high contrast albeit weak and brief.

Our first view of the storm reveals a highly striated "mothership" storm.	Mid-level spiral inflow bands wrap cyclonically around the updraft!	The leading edge shelf cloud is visible beneath the storm. Note the scuddy "teeth". Also note the multiple tiers to the storm updraft.	Lightning arcs within the vault region between the updraft and rainy forward flank downdraft.
It is all the wide-angle lens can do to get the whole convective structure into the frame!	An anvil lightning bolt arcs outward into the vault.	More lightning.	Note the laminar inflow band feeding the storm from the right lower side and the lightning arcing horizontally beneath the vault.
Flared base sloping outward to the mid-level collar cloud is an awesome site!	Right side of same view shown to the left.	Another bolt streaks out just above the beavers tail.	One of the tornadoes the storm produced. This one was close and quite visible despite impending darkness!