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MIDLAND, TEXAS SUPERCELL
28 MAY 2001
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From: "Amos Magliocco"
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| Data problems prevented us from posting a
forecast yesterday morning, mainly because we had to make it up as we went along. Grabbing maps here and there over cell phone and relying on nowcasting helped us make the decision to chase the intersection of the dryline bulge and outflow boundary south of LBB. It was a tough choice between this and the Colorado setup, and, in hindsight, I suppose those on the front range had better luck, but we liked the stronger cap and more than twice the instability to maximize our chances for isolated supercells. We assumed the front range convection would be LP, and we've seen plenty of nice LP's this week. Our boundary was very evident on imagery as we approached LBB around 6:00 PM, showing as a solid line on radar in the county just south of the city. Nowcasting had told us that a persistent cu field was in this area, but by the time we arrived, these had dissipated. What we saw was a large storm developing near Midland. Steve Miller informed us that this large storm had split and was practically stationary, so we drove south to intercept. The storm developed a dramatic backsheared anvil with strong knuckling on the underside and a smooth, taut updraft column wall. MAF issued a SVR on the storm, with a state trooper reporting golf ball hail as we approached, but our presence snuffed out the updraft and the storm dropped below severe limits before we could core punch it. In fact, the core disappeared so fast that we had a hard time discerning exactly where to intercept it. We turned around and drove back towards ABI, stopping once to turn around and film some of the new ceonvection developing far to the west. We spent the night here in Aspermont (again) and we're trying to make sense of this morning's convective mess. Thanks to Phillip Flory and Steve Miller for nowcasting yesterday. Amos Magliocco |