If this west Texas cloud formation resembles a snowplow to you, that’s not entirely accidental. Both represent a heaver, denser mass (cold slab of outflow air, plow blade) lifting lighter material (warm inflow air, snow). Of course, here’s where that superficial similarity ends: the snow ultimately falls aside, whereas the inflow air rises to form the shelf cloud, then enters the storm’s updraft area. This had been a cleaner supercell as seen from the distance, across the Permian Basin’s vast expanse, but transitioned quickly to an outflow-vomiting, heavy-precipitation structure full of heavy rain and severe hail by the time we were close enough to get a decent slide. Turquoise-colored cores often indicate large hail. This was no exception, based on a couple other reports. We didn’t care to take the vacation rental car into a core like that for the second consecutive year. The outflow surge and expansive convective cluster would catch up to us at our lodging for the night in griddle-flat Odessa. As heavy, flooding rains made mayhem with traffic and some homes outside, we unknowingly flipped on the TV in time to catch a historic event: the last time Johnny Carson hosted the Tonight Show.
4 ENE Barstow TX (22 May 92) Looking WNW
31.4776, -103.3205