West Texas: April 22, 2019

I woke up very early today. I couldn’t sleep and I was on the fence about chasing, but I rarely back out of a chase unless the setup completely falls apart.

Going into today, I realized that relatively weak low-level wind fields and a tendency for storms to move onto the cool side of a frontal boundary would somewhat temper the severe thunderstorm threat. With that said, 40-50 knot deep layer shear and dew-points in the upper 50s over the southern High Plains was enough for me. 

I left Oklahoma City before 6 a.m. and headed toward a target in West Texas. I arrived in Snyder, TX by early afternoon with time to spare. It was a waiting game and the longer that time passed, the more that persistent cloud-cover was an issue. Convective temperatures were around 80F, but Snyder was struggling to get above the lower 70s, meaning that thunderstorms might have trouble initiating.

Around 5 p.m., convection managed to initiate over the higher terrain near the NM/TX border. This was west of my favored target area, but I had to assess the storm chase prospects.

That storm did not look well-organized on radar, it was moving northeast into an area of decreasing instability and was going to put me over six hours from home. It was either go all in with that storm or abandon the chase. Without a visual, I reviewed satellite imagery and noted that the storm appeared to be organizing into a supercell, so west I went. 

As I got closer, I had a visual on a grungy cloud base and it looked like the storm was near-surface based. The storm went tornado-warned, but most of the rotation was in the mid to high levels, suggesting hail as the main threat. 

I watched the storm for a while about halfway between Seminole and Lamesa. It was gradually turning right (east) and it’s base reorganized a few times, nearly right overhead. For a few moments, a modestly rotating cloud base lowered, but a cool east to east-northeasterly inflow wind (around 10 knots) with temperatures in the mid-60s and dew-points in the mid-50s wasn’t going to do much to sustain a surface/near-surface based supercell.

I stayed with the storm until just about sunset before starting the drive back to Oklahoma City. Patience paid off and real-time analysis helped pick out right storm, even if it wasn’t in the most favorable environment.