Our day started out in Del Rio, Texas where we began driving north to our target area just south of Midland and Odessa, Texas.
While on our way there we crossed over the Pecos River Bridge just north of Del Rio. There was a beautiful canyon there but the water level is very low thanks to the persistent drought in that part of Texas.
From there
we had scattered showers develop around Fort Stockton, Texas around 12:30 this afternoon as we continued northward. We intercepted the strongest shower just north of Fort Stockton and chased it for what ended up being the entire afternoon. It quickly ramped up into a full-fledged severe thunderstorm with frequent lightning and incredible amounts of hail. While the largest hail size was only about nickel size in this storm, it put down so much of it near Crane, Texas that it covered the ground! You'll also see in the background of the picture to the right that we also saw a pronounced rain foot. This is when rain and the cool air around it spread out horizontally as they hit the surface. This was about the strongest storm in the state of Texas today, and we were on it!
As storms began to mesh together (due to poor wind shear) into a line we began to head toward Midland, Texas. You can't really chase a line of storms since there's not a lot of storm structure to see and they tend to be weaker overall. While traveling north we stopped to look at the storms a bit and I happened to get a great lightning photo. What a lucky shot! You can click the image to the right to see a better view (the lightning strike in question is on the right of the image). Below is a slideshow that has 15 of my best photos from today.
Tomorrow we'll likely be in Texas again. The Storm Prediction Center's latest outlook has a 5% severe risk area over the Eastern Texas Panhandle into parts of West Central Texas. Tomorrow isn't really looking like a tornado day much like today, but we could see a few good storms and possibly a supercell storm or two. Wind and hail will again be the main threats with storms tomorrow. I'll have a detailed chase briefing in tomorrow morning's post!
Ryan Hoke
The way the picture looks right below the one that has you looks wicked. Almost like clouds touching the ground? Was that just heavy rain, down draft? what the heck.lol
These pictures are awesome. Just do not get blown away trying to get them and come back in one piece.
Posted by: Rainbowwheels | May 14, 2013 at 09:49 PM