What an amazing Saturday!

Here is the text to go with the pictures from yesterday.

I just saw the most amazing storm structure I might ever see in my life.

Yesterday was a day without much expectation. There was a strong cap over most of South Dakota and by 4:30 pm it didn't seem like that cap was going to break anytime soon. That's when we noticed a tower going up to our northwest. One tower after another continued funneling into the storm and it quickly began to strengthen on radar. We decided to go for it and drive north to intercept the storm. We arrived about 3 miles south of Bowdle, SD and got out of our cars. Almost immediately someone noticed the large cone tornado in the rain wrapped wall cloud. The contrast was not very good, so it was hard to get pictures, but we could see with our eyes as it turned into a wedge north of Bowdle.
A storm began to develop to our south and we had to get out of there before we lost a windshield. Even with leaving early we still got hit by some pea/penny sized hail on a storm which had just developed. We started heading east to intercept the storm again when we noticed another storm developing to the south and increasing intensity rapidly. We decided to go south on 45 to intercept that storm instead of going north on 45 to intercept the rain wrapped tornado.
This decision was well worth it as we set up on a hill and watched the storm develop into the most picturesque storm I have ever seen. First there was incredible mammatus overhead and then striations began to develop in the storm as multiple mesocyclones began to develop. We watched 2 funnel clouds begin to drop before pulling back up. As the low-level jet kicked in, the storm developed into one large mesocyclone with striations, a hail core, and mammatus that I have only seen in textbooks.
If I had the choice of seeing this storm or the tornado on Tuesday and I could only see one, this would have been my choice. I could not stop taking pictures. I also took a lot of video which I will have to go through and post once I get home.

In the end, this was the best day of the chase thus far because expectations were low, but we ended up seeing the best structured storm of the whole trip.

Today showed what can happen when a 6000 CAPE + environment, a strong cap, and strong low level vorticity all come together. We could have had nothing, or we could have had the best storms of the year. We were fortunate enough to have the latter.

Monday, May 17th

What a change in terrain! We left Missouri in dense coniferous forest and ended the day in the desert of New Mexico. We also went from a few hundred feet above sea level to a couple thousand feet above sea level by the end of the day. It was beautiful to cross the landscape of our heartland and see the northern Ozarks, the rolling hills of eastern Oklahoma, the flat plains of western Oklahoma, the cap rock of the Texas panhandle, and finally the semi desert climate of eastern New Mexico.

When we stopped for lunch in Oklahoma city we saw several vehicles with dents and broken windows from the softball sized hail yesterday. We spoke with a reporter for a news station in Oklahoma City and he showed us pictures and talked about how bad the storm was.

We drove straight past our hotel in Amarillo and continued west to a dairy queen and shell station in Vega, TX. The 150 dollars or so we spent at that dairy queen was probably equivalent to the daily sales there. This town seemed to be in poor shape with a very small population. It is nice to bring some revenue to these small towns who are just struggling to get along.

We drove west into eastern New Mexico to see some storms which had begun to strengthen south of Interstate 44. Once the Low Level Jet formed the storms began to strengthen considerably and approached 70 dBz with quarter dollar hail reported. We were in our first severe thunderstorm warning of the chase, and saw incredible structure. We were fortunate enough to watch the storms from the top of the caprock out over the lower terrain in northern New Mexico. This was the most incredible way to view a storm. We also had some wind turbines on the ridge of the caprock which were picturesque as well as logical. This area is quite windy and when the LLJ kicks in they will generate a lot of power.

We saw a rain free base form on the southernmost storm and at one point it even seemed to show a hook echo. The lightning was the real show with these storms. Cloud-to-Ground (CG) lightning increased rapidly as the LLJ strengthened the storms. Everyone managed to take many nice lightning shots as the sun went down.

We are now on our way back to Amarillo to sleep for the night with an impressive lightning storm at our back. We are planning to meet at 8:30 in the morning for a discussion and then leave by 9:00 am. We will either stay in the same area, or head further north into Colorado depending on what tonight’s models prog.

Instability seems to push further north tomorrow into Colorado with dewpoints in the middle to upper 50’s which is plenty enough in Colorado. At the high terrain those dewpoints are equivalent to dewpoints in the lower 70’s at low elevations. Shear is more favorable further north as the upslope flow combines with a jet streak coming in over the intermountain west. More dynamic lift will be present tomorrow due to some CVA and the left exit region of a 90 knot jet streak. This negatively tilted upper level trough will slowly move into the plains and set up a more significant severe weather outbreak on Wednesday. I hope to write an update after the morning discussion.

Hopefully we can see some good storms tomorrow.