"Outflow-dominant" isn't a popular term anymore with respect to supercells, but I don't care. I'm using it. This was one. That is why. A supercell can be outflow-dominant and still maintain an existence, albeit a tenuous one, as most such storms ultimately lose a direct vertical pipeline of surface-based inflow air and either shrivel, merge with nearby storms and expand upscale into a wind … [Read more...]
Almost
On the first supercell of the day that I intercepted, a broad, scuddy, poorly defined wall cloud narrowed and tightened up noticeably just a mile or two to my west, about the time a radar-based tornado warning was issued. It assumed a tilted, somewhat conical shape with peak low-level rotation strength right at this time, and I was watching the ground beneath closely for evidence of debris that … [Read more...]
Transitions
A storm evolving from a nearly tornadic supercell to an outflow-driven multicell passed over an uneven landscape transitioning from the southeastern Great Plains to the northwestern Hill Country, during the change from day to night. Right before sunset, the filtered warm rays caught the inner rim of a shelf cloud that still had convective elements, thanks to a remnant midlevel mesocyclone still … [Read more...]
Brownwood Fooler
The year's second trek to the Edwards Plateau and Hill Country (still more to come in June) yielded a big, messy supercell that passed right over Brownwood, with baseball-sized hail and separate measured gusts of 65 and 64 knots, 13 minutes apart. While trying to stay ahead of the gnarly storm, which seemed increasingly outflow-dominant, I made a wrong turn southeast instead of east in town. … [Read more...]
Layers of Cloud and Wind
A persistent, spectacular, nontornadic supercell spun its way from the dryline west of Hereford and over town, then past this wind farm and onward to a splendid sunset in the Tulia/Happy area. Along the way, it offered outstanding, multilayered structure like this. Our attempt to get ahead of it shortly after this shot was thwarted by a deep flood over an unpaved backroad shortcut, so we had to … [Read more...]
Early Brady Supercell
June 2023 was an unusual month, featuring multiple days of supercells in central Texas, well south of the climatological norm for that time of year. The moisture (and haze!) almost always is there in June, within a couple hundred miles of the Gulf—just not the strength of flow aloft. In this period, we could thank an unusually intense, northward-shifted, deep, mid/upper-level, westerly, … [Read more...]
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