5/30/2012 - COD Trip 3 Day 6

We left OKC with an initial target of Elk City and thereabouts (mainly north of Elk City). Hope was that the outflow boundary from previous night's convection would assist in funneling theta-e into west-northwest OK; however, it became apparent that the theta-e axis had essentially two tongues -- one feeding along SE-NW line through Childress into the TX panhandle just south of the Red River, and another into SW KS. Our feeling was that convection that developed in KS would quickly grow upscale into southeast pushing MCS, and that the southern choice would offer potentially more isolated storms that could tap into much richer environment. It also seemed to be the alternative target, with fewer chasers (at least we hoped). We then targeted Childress at that point.  Shortly thereafter, the SPC day 1 update confirmed our call and tugged risk down to Childress. We began to see Cus and towers building on the dryline in the eastern TX panhandle.  Bases were high initially; however, the storm just northwest of Childress was already developing nice midlevel features (visual vault and midlevel banding).  The concern then became that storm to its south could cause problems as it had a northeastward drift to it and our better environ was to our south-southeast.  We needed storms to turn right to access that environ. As we attempted to avoid being hit by southern storm, our storm to the north seemed to get its act together and the southern storm pulsed down considerably. Yet, just as quickly, the southern storm rapidly pulsed back up and turned right. Tricky part then became “How do we get south and attack this new beast?” We decided to thread the needle on US-83, literally skimming the monster RFD and dodging hail until it moved off of 83 to the east. Thereafter, the challenge then became getting out ahead of it with limited road network. We finally got ahead of it finally between Guthrie and Benjamin. The storm revealed itself to be a beast of a bell/fat barrel HP supercell. It had fantastic striations along the tower, with banding. Spectacular mammatus fanned out from the top of the tower. Reports we were getting from the lab and our spotty radar data showed that it had strong low level rotation (which was obvious visually) and was most likely tornadic. Unfortunately, because of the limited road network, reports of softball sized hail, and the HP nature of the storm, we could not move ourselves into position to view the tornado. It was simply too dangerous and we would have lost view of the amazing structure. We chased the storm to Throckmorton where it began to weaken and become less impressive visually. Called chase and proceeded to Abilene for the night. [Evan Anderson contributed to the text in this post]

Initial storm northwest of Childress, TX

Mammatus "riblets" as we flank around southern storm.

Finally ahead of the massive HP, near Benjamin, TX

Panoramics

Time-lapse Video