5/10/2009 – Marathon, TX High-based Supercell

On Sunday, we targeted the area between Ft. Stockton and Big Bend National Park with the hope that convection would fire off the Davis Mountains and progress eastward into our target region. The day featured a stout cap with moderate instability in a lightly sheared environment. We were not sure that the cap could be overcome, but the mountains did the trick.

Anyway, we drove from Junction, to Ft. Stockton, and then down to Alpine, TX, which is home to Sul Ross State University. We spent most of the afternoon hanging around the student union at the university, where we took in games of ping pong and pool. We kept an eye on the convection bubbling along the Davis Mountains as we enjoyed the air conditioner and wireless at the union.

The group enjoying some free entertainment at Sul Ross State University.

Gif animation illustrating the convection firing off the Davis Mountains.

At about 5:30 pm, we pulled the trigger and headed off towards the Davis Mountains on a scenic road north of Ft. Davis. The storms where very high based (as expected), but picturesque. Our storm slowly waned and we set our target on a more-developed storm off to the east. We backtracked to Alpine, and then over to Marathon, where we intercepted a high-based supercell that was prompting t-storm warnings. In fact, a sheriff reported a tornado with this storm in Marathon, which caused the NWS to issue a tornado warning. Unfortunately, this sheriff failed to understand that rotation must be connected with the cloud base for tornado consideration – the cloud bases on this storm were in 10,000 ft+ range. Sorry, sheriff, there was no tornado … only dust kicked up along outflow. We drove south of Marathon along U.S. 385 where we enjoyed the beautiful, slow moving storm at sunset. We were even visited by the Federales (U.S. Border Patrol) as they probably don’t get too many storm chasers down here and were wondering just what the hell we were doing. We ended up being cored by the storm about 10 miles south of Marathon as darkness filled in around us. The Professor did a hell of a job pulling the minivan up under a roadside picnic shelter to prevent hail damage to the rental. We had ping pong to walnut sized hail, which we reported to the NWS. Some locations along the road were covered with up to 2” of hail fall. After a good 25-30 minute coring, we headed back to Alpine, where we crashed about midnight.

First storm along the Davis Mountains.

Second storm just west of Marathon, TX.

Looking west along the tracks in Marathon.

A nice shot by Adam illustrating a bit of the electricity in the Marathon storm.

Benton captured this view of the so-called tornado -- as you can see it is nothing more than winds kicking up some dust. Bad sheriff, no donuts for you.

Marathon storm really starts to wrap up in the mid and high levels. Looking north on U.S. 385, ten or so miles south of Marathon.

Enjoying the view as sunset begins.

U.S. Border Patrol stops by to make sure we aren't up to no good.

Another bolt from the Marathon storm.

You don't need a raging tornado-producing supercell to be satisfied on a storm chase trip -- a view like this is more than sufficient.

Hail covering the road later that evening.

Base reflectivity (248 nm) illustrating the core of the Marathon storm and our location (circle). We recorded ping pong to walnut sized hail at about this time.