James Gustina
Summary: This was a day that had considerable draw early when it began popping up on the models at the end of the week in September. Ended up catching the supercells northeast of Lubbock after nearly conceding a bust due to the late timing of the trough. Three tornadoes and some awesome structure at dusk made this my second favorite day of the year.
The GFS wiffle-waffled on it numerous times during the first week of October but it was apparent about three days out that the Texas Panhandle would be the place to be for a possible early autumn tornado setup. I was having problems finding a ride out but Zach gave me the info of a friend that had seats open. I ended up chasing with Stephen Jones (who I can't thank enough for letting me come along), Jon Stone, and Zach Biggs. We met the morning of around 8 and were on the road after a stop or two to try and get the correct wrench for a roof-mounted HAM antenna.
There was a nice shortwave with attendant cutoff low that was moving from the California coast through the desert early on the 12th.
The 12Z sounding from Odessa, which was just south of the warm front at the time, showed a stout cap and not so good shear profiles due to the upper air support still being on the Arizona/New Mexico state line. Instability further north where the better dynamics were progged was the real question mark of the day. Most people were anticipating the best storms to go up within 50 miles of the warm front where the best shear would be.
The SPC went with a broad slight risk across the western Texas panhandle and eastern New Mexico with a 5% tornado risk over the NW panhandle and parts of eastern New Mexico.
We made excellent time and made it to Amarillo around noon for lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings. At this time the warm front was still sagging considerably farther south than previously anticipated, somewhere between Plainview and Tulia. We rolled out afterwards and headed for Plainview. We got off at Plainview and joined the chaser convergence at the McDonald's for about an hour. Got to see a whole host of people and enjoyed talking over the day's setup. Small high-based showers kept going up and collapsing in the northern half of the warm sector. The trough's late arrival spelled problems for initiation of sustained convection.
Around 4 we decided to take a jaunt up to Dimmit. Some small showers were forming further to the northwest. But after we decided to move they ended up toppling just like the rest.
We were beginning to contemplate around 6 either calling it a bust shortly after or going after a supercell that was going absolutely nuts on the nose of the jet streak near Carlsbad, NM. But just as we were about to head back to the interstate surface based storms initiated just outside Lubbock. They took on the look on radar and we quickly piled back into the car and blasted back towards Plainview. The storms looked great from a distance.
After getting to Plainview, we cut south towards Hale Center. After one storm split off of the main complex, it got a brief wall cloud going. Meanwhile the second storm began to turn right and after ingesting a smaller cell started rotating like mad.
We let the left split pass over and then after cutting down the interstate got off at Hale Center and came through the hook on the backside of the right mover. It had a nice beefy updraft and wall cloud. It also put down a brief, wispy bird fart.
The old wall cloud/mesocyclone occluded and a new meso formed up further to the northeast and spat out a tiny pencil tornado which would be tornado #3. The old meso had put out a multi-vortex bowl which ended up being #2 but I wasn't able to get a good shot of it since it was on the left side of the car.
The storm rapidly declined after the third tornado. It started to ingest cooler air but was still able to keep some nice structure to it heading into dusk/night. We stopped west of Floydada and took some lightning shots as well as some cool mothership structure shots. Pardon the grainy quality of the photos, my camera tends not to handle low-light situations well.
After that we called the chase and made our way back to Amarillo. Unfortunately the Big Texan was packed and about to close so we headed to the Waffle House and enjoyed some late night waffles. I got the chance to upload some photos and shortly after we made the drive back to Norman. All in all one of the best chase days of 2012 for me.
Chase Stats
Miles Driven: 904
Cost: $50
Tornadoes: 3
Hail: Penny
Winds: 35 mph inflow
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