Good Storm Pics

[silver_pilate]

These aren't the best as they were taken from my phone. I was out in the shop this evening when a supercell blew by about 1-2 miles north of the shop. It was pretty localized, so without precip, I had a clear view of the business end of the storm. The amount of energy going into this storm was pretty intense. At one point there was about 60 mph winds going TOWARDS the storm as it drew in energy. It was fun watching my car bounce up and down in the wind like I was hitting the hydro switches.

These shots were after it had blown by. There was a good roll cloud off the front of the gust front as well before it went by:

These shots show the base of the storm and part of the flanking line. This is where a tornado would be most likely to form. In fact, in one of these pics, you can see a small funnel (second pic below this sentence), but it never got going:

If you've never seen it before, those white streaks falling from the back of the storm is hail. This one never turned turqouise or green, but it definitely dropped the hail. Around 1-1.5" diameter according to spotters so far. The base of the storm never got real organized into a wall cloud, but I did spot 2 small and very brief funnels that never got more than 1/10th of the way to the ground.


These pics are of some mammatus clouds on the back end of the storm. These can also often be seen in the anvil of the storm and are formed by strong updrafts. Imagine how strong an updraft has to be to repetitively loft a piece of hail enough to turn it into softball size.

Nothing too intense, but some ok pics anyway. That's one thing that's nice about West Texas, the flat land gives you great views of the weather. I hated it when the farmer west of our land planted corn. It took away my western horizon...something very important in tornado country. This would have been an amazing sun set against this storm, the the sun got blocked out by a second storm behind this one.

--nathan

 

[indian george]

Damn!!! That looks bad.

 

[R. Mark Lee]

Hello Nathan,

Thanks for the pics, brings back some old memories. I went to school at Tech and remember watching the storms blow in. Got caucht out jogging when a dust storm blew in one time, not fun. Where'd your grow up. I had friends from Perryton down to Winters. Spent a few night in the "town without a frown" (Happy, TX), my wife's best friend is from there. By the way, like the bowie you have going over on ST.

 

[silver_pilate]

Thanks, Mark. I grew up in Hale Center just up the road from Lubbock. I lived about 5 miles north of town and West of I-27 in the middle of a cotton field. Our nearest neighbors were half a mile away and after that, another mile. Made for great storm watching as the tallest thing around for at least half a mile were the two trees we had in our front yard. I knew a few folks from Perryton as well. The Copelands. I went to undergrad at Wayland and then grad school at the Texas Tech HSC in Amarillo for 3 years. I worked in Plainview on the weekends, and so I made that 90 mile trip through Happy every Friday and Sunday for 2.5 years before I finally quit the job. I was just making gas money, really. I always referred to Happy as the "armpit of the earth" as it smelled like $#!t and I always lost phone and radio reception going through there. In fact, I drove through Happy about 15 minutes before that tornado did about 6 years ago. It worked out that I split right between those two supercells and made it to Amarillo without a single hail dent.

IG, looks worse than it was, though it had some pretty strong winds with it. Broke some power poles here and there. I was really hoping the sun would backlight the storm as it set, but maybe next time.

--nathan

 

[R. Mark Lee]

Hey Nathan,

Sounds like where I grew up but in South Texas. I remember my grandfather talking about working in a cotton gin in Hale Center when he was a young man. I was in a wedding in Perryton (usher I think), but can't remember the girls last name right now. I just remeber playing golf with the groom and party and having the Burrow owls watching us from the prairie dog town next to the golf course. There was a cool set of photos in the civil engineering build at Tech of 10 tornados that touched down around Pampa one spring.

 

[C.Edmondson]

Thank Nathan for posting the pictures! I am fascinated by bad weather but it also scares me to death!!! Tornadoes scare me more than anything in this world!! I was in one at Fort Jackson, SC in the woods, bad bad bad night. You guys in Texas and Oaklahoma have to put up with them all the time!