Tag Archives | April 2023

April 25th Sweetwater, Texas Stunning Supercell!!

April 25th featured a short wave trough approaching Texas. This lead to a surface trough in eastern New Mexico that helped bring moisture northward from the gulf of Mexico. Southeasterly surface winds raced northwest towards a dryline in west Texas where a weak low had developed. Models were fairly consistent developing storms, some supercells, near the Snyder/Sweetwater area and they nailed it. We approached Sweetwater later in the afternoon as cumulus towers were seen. A high based severe thunderstorm produced a couple shear funnels due to strong motion at cloud base. This storm became a prolific hailer as it moved towards town and eventually to the southeast.

South of town, the structure was magnificent! A sculpted updraft with striations showed just how well organized this supercell was. As darkness fell, the storm maintained its intensity as it moved southeast. Lightning illuminated the structure in the dark and made for quite the scene. Finally, about 10pm we let it go as it weakened and we drove towards Abilene where we spent the night. We came across copious amounts of hail, some close to tennisball sized.  A fun day and it’s always amazing to see nature’s artistic side in a gorgeous sculpted supercell! Enjoy the pics!

April 22nd Doole, Texas Potentially Tornadic Supercell

An interesting set up with northwest flow aloft on April 22nd. A weak low along with a sharpening dryline and warm front, set up a triple point northwest of San Angelo, Texas. Moisture would be the issue as dewpoints were in the 50s. Shear was good and convergence at the triple point would fire off a storm that became a long lived supercell. As the storm turned along the boundary, it started spinning strongly. After an interaction with another weak cell which it destroyed, it developed intense rotation, and on radar a classic scorpion tail hook echo formed with a good velocity couplet. RFD dirt was seen wrapping around the southern periphery of the storm and soon a large dirt bowl formed and persisted for about 5 minutes. Tornado? Possibly. But the storm also had hail the size of softballs. It soon moved east into less unstable air with lower dewpoints and it slowly decayed over the next couple of hours. A GREAT way to start the 2023 official tour season with Tour #1, the Close Encounters tour, witnessing this supercell. Enjoy the pics!!!

April 14th Medicine Lodge, Kansas Severe Thunderstorm

April 14th had plenty of shear, decent instability and a dryline in place. However, moisture was lacking, but enough of present to fire severe storms along the dryline late afternoon into the evening. I took the group the furthest south we could to get closer to better moisture, but still have enough forcing to help maintain storms as they moved off the dryline. Several storms formed and most went severe warned. However the tail end storm, as is often the case, became the strongest. Near sunset it started producing numerous lightning strikes, some starting fires. The structure was pretty good with the shear in place and it gave us a nice show as it rolled east towards Wichita. A fun day, we got about what we thought we would and had some very pretty scenes in the gypsum hills south of Pratt. Enjoy the pics!

April 4th Pleasantville, IA Tornadic Supercell

April 4th was a complicated day. A powerful upper level low would pivot out onto the plains late in the period. Low level moisture was fairly shallow for a big event, with pockets of dry air mixing out the better moisture. It seemed like two areas would be the best targets: 1) southwest Iowa as the forcing came out, however moisture was forecast to mix (and did!), 2) southeast Iowa and western Illinois in the free warm sector. We sat in Ottumwa for a couple hours waiting for one target to become clear. It never really did. A cluster of storms formed in eastern Missouri and consolidated into a few supercells as they moved into western IL. We started to head that way to chase, but it would have been a long way back to Kansas City that night as several guests had to be back in Denver by late afternoon the next day. Shortly after we headed out to go to IL, the Iowa play started forming. A line of storms, now severe, formed along the dryline west of Osceola and moved east. The tail end storm really started getting it’s act together so we quickly turned around and headed toward Pella (where we saw a tornado 2 years ago!).  As we approached Pella, a tornado warning came out with a confirmed tornado towards Pleasantville, which was another 15 miles west. We did all we could to get there, but were only able to get a glimpse of the pretty tornado before it dissipated. We stayed with the supercell as it approached the warm front and became tornado warned again. A brief spin up happened south of Malcom. The storm continued its path across the warm front, weakening in the colder air.  Here’s a few pics of what we saw with the supercell, distant tornado and the second spin up. Enjoy!!!!