Day 11: Show Me the Way (to San Angelo)

We woke up in Lubbock, TX this morning to the MCS that developed over western Texas on Monday. In an effort to get ahead and outside of the heavy precipitation, we set course for San Angelo, where we ate a delicious lunch at Paisano Restaurant. From there, we stuck around the San Angelo area and just east in the hopes of observing discrete storms south of the MCS we had just seen.

We crossed an east-west oriented outflow boundary laid down from the morning MCS and observed a stark wind shift from due north to due south over less than 10 miles.  Directly above the wind shift, we observed a line of growing cumulus clouds and some "attempts" at storm formation...however the early rising clouds were being diluted by dry air higher in the atmosphere.  While moving back north across the boundary, however, we finally got a sustained storm to form about 30 miles west of San Angelo near where the surface dryline intersected our boundary providing an augmented source of lifting.  We went full speed toward it and were rewarded with beautiful views of a rotating supercell (not obscured by blowing dust!).  We followed the storm into San Angelo and then bailed east to another storm forming along the old boundary that developed strong rotation and prompted the issuance of a tornado warning.  

As late afternoon transitioned into evening, the initially discrete storms forming along the boundary congealed into an eastward/southeastward moving line which offered some dramatic sky scenery to us as we made our way toward Waco, TX.

Near Goldthwaite, TX, in the early evening, we made a few stops on the side of the road to watch the storm approach, just before saying "Gimme Shelter" when the winds became too much to bear outside the comfort of our van. There's something really amazing about watching an anvil grow and spread across the sky just as the sun is starting to set.

We also, by the grace of LCDR Burich nearly losing his SWIFT ballcap, were able to feel the effects of a squall, as what had been rather calm conditions picked up to 60+ mph winds nearly instantaneously. This put us "Under Pressure" to get on the move!

Allowing the storm to follow us on toward Waco, we made our way to In-N-Out (I had no idea Texas had these!) and further to our hotel for some much needed rest.

This was our last chase day in Texas, and the SWIFT team could not be more grateful to have observed the beautiful sky we did this afternoon, as we reach the close of this adventure.