April 21, 2018 (Brief) Supercell

Mineral Wells, Texas

We were on our fifth day of the chase tour and had yet to have a severe-warned storm anywhere we were chasing.  With a slight risk outlined by the SPC for today, things would hopefully be different.  We began the day in Lubbock and proceeded eastward to a target area about 50 to 100 miles west of Fort Worth.  At Aspermont, we stopped for a brief break and were thinking about stopping for Lunch, but a storm quickly developed just to our west, so we grabbed some snacks and headed for the storm, which we could see about 20 miles to our west.

 

First storm with a wall cloud.  This storm was not severe.

The first storm struggled to become very large, but it was isolated and fun to chase (had some rotation for a bit).

We continued to chase the first storm for about an hour or two. We made a pit stop in Albany, TX then looked back west to see that the storm was dissipating. There was another storm only about 20 miles to the north-northeast that we could catch pretty easily, so we targeted that one.

Possum Kingdom Lake was in the way, and we have to navigate around the south end to reach the storm, but soon after we arrived (viewing it from the parking lot of a Catholic church), it intensified and became severe. While we were at the parking lot, some ladies were bringing in food for a church banquet, and they either did not notice the storm much or did not particularly care about it, because they did not move very fast.  We left before they got all the food inside.  I'm hoping they did before it started to rain.

Second storm of the day develops a large anvil.

This is my version of going to church today (a Saturday).

We drove away from the church and found another place to pull over a bit farther to the southeast. While we were there, a wall cloud organized and started to slowly rotate. Although I did not think a tornado would form, things were certainly becoming a bit more interesting. We continued east and southeast.

A wall cloud develops with some rotation.

We looked back to observe the rotation, but it looked not quite strong enough to produce intense rotation at the ground. We snuck through Mineral Wells with the storm behind us and then drove through Weatherford. By this time, a lot of other storms had developed, and the complex of storms was starting to resemble more of a squall line. We continued to zig zag south and east to stay ahead of the action, and we looked to the west and saw distinct wall clouds on occasion. Eventually, we decided to call it quits and drove back to Cleburne, where we ate at La Fiesta Mexican restaurant, and we slept at the Quality Inn (elevator was broken).

HP supercell with a wet RFD.

South-southwest of Weatherford, another area starts to surge ahead of the line.

Electric driving would, again, have been difficult as we were nearly constantly on the move, and we put a total of 433 miles on. There are not really any charging stops except for an RV park just southeast of Lubbock. There were a couple other level 2 spots along the route while the severe storms were ongoing as well as a high speed DC (50kW) charger just east of Weatherford.  I probably would have stayed somewhere other than Cleburne in order to find a charging station for the night.

Our route for the day.

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