West Texas Bust 05/25/2001

Ah... what an exciting day. Models all pointed towards severe weather around Junction,TX... but some predicted another interesting area NW of Midland, TX. Since we wanted to get near Amarillo, and this looked as good as anything else, we decided to head west from our start point in Kerrville. Plan was to go to Junction, TX and once again use their nice library. So... we did. Ran into Al Moller and John Monteverdi there... so we had a chaser convergence in the library. We noticed that the SE flow was setting up towards our target, as progged, and everything looked dandy, so off we went on the long drive to the Midland-Odessa area.

Funny thing happened on the way to convective nirvana (sorry, Bobby)... the Cu fields started flattening out... as we got to Midland they just plain vanished except to the SE. So we went E out of Midland to Sterling City. There... we looked at radar, saw nada even down by SJT, and called it a bust for the day.

However... we did see one interesting thing along the way... in Crane,TX. It was ... an affordable tornado shelter. Hence our wierdest picture of the chase below.

Off to spend tonite in Brownfield, TX.

AND THEN... As we get near Browfield, we spot a beautiful cell 100 mi to our north... too late to chase... sigh. Checked in to the motel, pulled up radar, and WOW. Just SE of AMA is a monster. We drove north of town to watch the lightning, but nearer clouds obscured most of it, as did light pollution from LBB. But then we noticed lots of other lightning NW, watched it for a bit, and back to the motel. Around midnight a nice rain and lightning storm appeared overhead for a while.

Below... Jim took the picture below from our motel around midnight: