April 24, 2022 Supercells

West Texas

With the northern portion of the week's main weather system getting a bit far east for us, and the southern part essentially staying in place, we found a target area not too far from the previous day's chase. We had ended up in Wichita Falls for the night, and we needed to drive somewhere into West Texas to find a storm today. The SPC had parts of Texas outlooked, and we liked the southwestern area better than the area in north Texas because we thought the prospects for discrete supercells were better.

The SPC 1630 Day 1 Outlook.

The SPC 1630 Day 1 Tornado Outlook.

We drove southwest and encountered some initial, junky storms between Big Lake and Eldorado. Since I was driving, I really didn't capture much from this part of the chase, and nothing stands out as particularly interesting. Later, however, some more interesting storms appeared a bit farther southwest, so we drove south to hop on I-10 at Ozona and drove west to catch them as quickly as we could. On the drive there, we were treated to quite a nice mammatus display, and there were two supercells in view (as I recall). One was to the northwest, and the other was to the west-southwest. Hills obstructed visibility a bit, so we couldn't see the base of the storm until we climbed out of a valley and found a viewing spot at an exit with relatively light traffic. The storm looked very sculpted as we approached, but when we stopped, it weakened and lost much of its structure. It was dropping south, and we started after it for a bit, but it was getting dark, so we came back to the interstate and began driving west toward Fort Stockton to stay the night. We stopped for a little bit to attempt some night sky photography, but it was somewhat difficult because of a nearby flare that burned very brightly.

My first pictures of the well-sculpted storm. It was already starting to lose its structure at this point.

We set up a little farther southwest and attempted to capture some lightning after sunset.

Some night photography with skies illuminated somewhat by a flare (lower left).

The route travelled for the day.

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