May 24, 2023 Supercell and Tornadoes

Tucumcari to Clovis, New Mexico

We found a beast of a storm with a couple tornadoes and incredible HP structure.

Our group photo next to the broken KFDX radar (they were repairing it when we visted).

Towers building west of Tucumcari.

First storms initiate as we wait in Tucumcari.

A tarantula crosses the road as our storm develops. We helped it get across.

Our storm develops just northwest of Tucumcari.

Multiple updrafts make the initial storm type multicellular. That would change.

A little farther east on U.S. 54 toward Logan. Still multiple updrafts.

Looking south, there were new updrafts developing and merging into our storm.

A capture with my iPhone.

Radar showed the merger of storms from the southeast, but the main storm was about to really get its act together.

Once we climbed the Caprock south of San Jon, the storm began to look a lot meaner.

A large mesocyclone is present on the west side of the storm. Clouds are rotating fairly quickly.

Looking more north into the notch of the storm, there is a pronounced inflow tail.

We stood our ground as the mesocyclone drew closer.

Farther south, just north of Grady, a new area of rotation develops directly to our north.

The inflow banding is now to our east.

The base is lowering and approaching more quickly. This is the mesocyclone that produced our visible tornado.

Meanwhile, a mesocyclone to the northwest has some strong rotation and a suspicious lowering.

After the brief tornado, this forward flank downdraft and weak shelf cloud started racing to the southwest. I was wondering why there was no tornado at this point.

Tornadogenesis is in progress as the inflow band races southwest (right) while a rain-filled rear flank downdraft rotates outward toward us.

Another shot as we race southward to get out of the way.

Somewhere I did a screen capture of radar to show what we were trying to escape.

Here's an animation of radar along this stretch of our chase.

We drove south from Clovis toward Portales to avoid the large hail and high winds that hit Clovis.

Looking northeast toward the eastern part of the storm.

The group in the van somewhere around the end of the day's chase.

Our route for the day. 304 miles.

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