The Tour 1 guests arrived on May 3, and we hastily made our way west out of DFW by early afternoon, as supercell potential appeared fairly high in the Abilene to Lubbock vicinity. Much to our enjoyment we were treated to a fantastic supercell which seemed to sit nearly stationary over Kent County for a good portion of its life cycle. What a fantastic day for what was supposed to be simply the arrival day, not a chase day.
On May 4th we tracked a potentially tornadic supercell from Garden City, TX to near Mertzon. We spent a good portion of the chase attempting to navigate around the storm, and arrived back in good position right at dusk and in time to witness a partially rain wrapped tornado near Mertzon. I have no images of this storm as most of my time was spent driving. See Brian Morganti's account on his website: http://www.stormeffects.com/recent_events.htm
May 5th gave us the best setup for tornadic supercells in far SE New Mexico into far SW Texas. We followed a supercell from Hobbs to Seminole, to near Patricia where the storm produced a couple tornadoes. We witnessed the development of the first tornado as a strong dust whirl on the ground until it became rain wrapped, then we witnessed an anti-cyclonic tornado moments later as the cyclonic circulation moved off to the east. I did not capture any stills of the anti-cyclonic tornado...I will post video captures as time permits. For now, check out Brian Morganti's video captures of the anti-cyclonic tornado Patricia Anti-Cyclonic 1 & Patricia Anti-Cyclonic 2. Gene Moore later confirmed for us that this was in fact a legitimate anti-cyclonic tornado. As the sun began to set, we let the storm move ahead of us and we were treated to fantastic rock-hard convection as dusk neared.
On May 6 we witness a few sub-severe storms in Texas hill country. I captured this image of a rainbow and departing storm clouds near Fredericksburg:
On May 7 we were again near Patricia, TX, this time to witness the birth and rapid death of an LP updraft. We later intercepted a couple severe storms near Midland and were treated to a fantastic display at sunset (again, for more images see Brian Morganti's site).
On May 8th we made the haul from Big Spring, TX to near Kalvesta, KS (~550 mi) to witness a nice supercell, which for most of it's life had a very difficult time containing it's outflow.
May 9 was a potentially explosive day in E. OK. Explosive supercells developed, but the relatively weak winds aloft mitigated any significant tornado potential. The best mid-tropospheric flow was suggested by the models to be in NE Texas near dark, this is exactly where a strong tornado did significant damage just NE of the DFW metroplex. No images as much of my day was spend navigating the hills and jungles of E. OK.
May 10-13 were all down days. We spent these days doing classroom type activities such as teaching guests how to analyze surface maps and skew-t diagrams.