6/1/2012 - COD Trip 3 Day 8

Day 7: We left Abilene late morning Thursday and targeted the area southwest of Ft. Stockton. After we ate lunch, we decided to pull the plug on the chase as conditions seemed too marginal for organized severe. Since this trip has been travel-heavy, we were happy to let the day's marginal opportunity go and head to Lubbock for the evening. Once in Lubbock, we relaxed for a bit at the hotel before heading to Cagle's for steak.

Day 8: On Friday, we targeted a forecast northwest flow event in the panhandles, extreme southeast CO, and northeast NM. We paused in Amarillo for lunch, before sliding north and east to Borger, TX.  We sat in Borger for only 10 min or so and began to see convective initiation occurring back to our southwest near Amarillo. We dropped south and got ahead of the storms near Claude, TX, where we witnessed an intense CG barrage. The storms struggled for a while; however, by the time they got over or just south of the Palo Duro Canyon the southwest storm began to show signs of rotation. This was just as we were considering making an effort to go after a storm moving south out of Dalhart that looked quite impressive. Ultimately, our storm tried its best and managed to maintain mid level banding, keep its outflow in check for a while, and even some slight low-level rotation. The supercell eventually became dominated by outflow. After driving through some neat dust-filled outflow, we called off the chase near Tulia, TX and proceeded to Amarillo for the night. Below are a couple stills, panoramics, and time-lapse video.

CG as storm begins to strengthen over Palo Duro Canyon.

Panoramic of storm near Vigo Park, TX