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April 22, 2015 - TX Panhandle Supercells

A rather local chase for me. A triple point was setting up in the western TX Panhandle with some modest bulk shear over the area. The first storm fired in western Deaf Smith county and rolled through my hometown of Hereford. I was slightly concerned the storm might ramp up and drop a tube, but luckily it didn't. Just a lot of wind and hail luckily. We followed the storm while playing cat and mouse with the RFD all day long until we got to northern Floyd county. By this time I was tired of running from the wind/hail and decided to bail south for some structure. Then this small supercell near Lockney decided to go bonkers. So we started to drive west when it decided to drop a small brief tornado. We stayed for a bit to watch the structure before diving south. The storm looked messy but dropped the weakest tornado known to man north of Floydada. Afterwards it was apparent the storm was done. We celebrated with some food and beer in Plainview.
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Now southeast of Hereford where the storm began to accelerate and reorganize.
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Now southeast of Hereford where the storm began to accelerate and reorganize.

  • Storm starting to ramp up north of Hereford.
  • Beginning to grow it's mesocyclone out with some small scud tags under the base.
  • Chaser convergence was awful.
  • Storm started going through a gusting out phase near Hereford.
  • Now southeast of Hereford where the storm began to accelerate and reorganize.
  • South of Happy looking north. No way of seeing what that wall cloud was doing unless you didn't care about your windows.
  • This was pretty much how the day went. Drive southeast, get blown around by the RFD, and repeat. The storm was still monsterous, but the wall cloud/base never seemed to organize well enough.
  • Now due east out of Tulia, looking north-northwest. Suspicious lowering while the radar had an impressive velocity couplet. Too far away to know if this was on the ground or not.
  • Still a decent wall cloud, but I was getting exhausted of this storm. We bailed south shortly after this.
  • This was the tornado west of Lockney on that small storm. The associated wall cloud was rather small, and not much to it.
  • Dust getting kicked up a little better now.
  • Just after the tornado has lifted. Really wish we could've been on the other side of this storm.
  • Now SW of Lockney. Amazing inflow tail!
  • Untitled photo
  • This was about a minute after the tornado report SW of Lockney. Despite being only 2 miles south, we didn't see the tornado. Likely shrouded in rain somewhere to the left.
  • 5 photo panoramic stitch.
  • Just north of Floydada, and the storm still looks amazing. But definitely not looking as robust.
  • You can barely see the dust in the center of the screen. This was underneath a rotating portion of the storm. Right where the inflow tail was being pulled in. I suspect this messy wall cloud just caught enough vorticity to spit that little guy out briefly.
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