This wild formation had origins worthy of a swashbuckling meteorological adventure tale. A young, small supercell formed as a surface-based storm and quickly began rotating, in the moist, helicity-enhanced inflow region of a larger, older, established supercell. The newer storm produced some severe hail as it merged northward into the forward flank of the older one, while an unrelated outflow boundary swooped in from distant storms to the east. The outflow boundary supplemented the lift, but also undercut the combined newer and older supercells to some extent. The older storm, suffocating in the stable air of the combined outflow, took on a strange, skeletal form in its own right, while continuing to churn southeastward. This is what remained of the newer supercell, by now riding southeastward over the locally stronger forward-flank cold pool of the older storm. This entire, complicated, absolutely fascinating process finished merging, then surged toward Amarillo as a deep, dark storm cluster with bow echo.
3 S Channing TX (1 Jun 9) Looking NE
35.6473, -102.3278