County Road 262/371 just south of I-20
Intersection of County Roads 371 and 270, 5:33 p.m.
The storm exhibited a more defined base as it approached I-20. At 5:38 p.m., a spotter reported a rain-wrapped tornado crossing I-20 near Coahoma. The tornado was not clearly visible from our location nearly 10 miles to the east.
Rain-free base at 5:35 p.m.
5:38 p.m.
As the gust front hit, we retreated to FM 670 to escape southward, stopping for a few last shots of the blue-green storm. It wouldn't regain serious tornado potential but was photogenic.
With the first storm weakening and cutting off northward and eastward road options, we targeted the new supercell behind it, which was diving southeastward toward Sterling City. In Sterling City, we watched storm #2 attempt to get its act together. A few minutes after the following photo was taken, a tornado was reported 14 miles to the west-southwest. The new updraft trying to get going on the southern flank was interesting, but never seemed particularly organized, so any tornado was probably in the rain-obscured lowering farther north. Scud from the edge of the precip core was continuously being pulled up into that region of rain wrap, looking like a tornado I saw on 4/17/13 near (coincidentally) Sterling, OK.
West side of Sterling City, 5:40 p.m.
While in Sterling City, I was approached by a local resident in an SUV who introduced herself as the editor of the newspaper. She asked what was coming and when I told her the storm was tornado-warned, she asked why the sirens weren't sounding. That was a good question. In fact, even as the storm closed in, I never heard a siren in Sterling City. After that, another local hollered out of her car window and warned us not to go west. "There's five tornaduhs in there!" Even in the age of Twitter, real-time severe weather information remains a game of telephone; an iffy multi-vortex report becomes five tornadoes. We dropped south of town on Highway 163 and the logjam commenced. Chasers, Skywarn spotters, tour buses, locals with kids in tow--you name it. Everybody in Sterling County, Texas seemed to be on 163.
A bizarre low-level feature appeared as the storm came closer. It didn't even seem to be attached to the cloud base and was displaced from the main updraft, but was slowly rotating and ascending. At times it became elongated and extended to the horizon.
Just south of Sterling City looking west, 7:08 p.m.
About that time, the first hailstone either of us noticed came flying into my mom's hand. The storm was chucking at least half dollars ahead of it; they were actually being blown from east to west in the inflow. Not wanting to take damage just to watch a weird little gustnado, we bailed southward as hailstones shattered across the road and occasionally on the car. Fighting hail, traffic, and rolling terrain, we didn't get a good look at the storm as it crossed Highway 163 and had to watch it from farther south.
Looking north around the time a rope tornado was reported, 7:14 p.m.
Well clear of the storm's path, I took a couple of photos at 7:24 p.m. that show a thin, faint feature extending from the cloud base to the horizon north of the RFD gust front. I hardly noticed it at the time, but after seeing SPC tornado reports at 7:13, 7:15, and 7:31, I went ahead and emailed the photos to NWS San Angelo in case they had additional information.
~20-30 miles south of Sterling City looking north-northwest, 7:24 p.m.
Tighter crop of tornado-like feature
Second photo of the same feature, taken about 10 seconds later
The second storm moved off to the east and we edged north on Highway 163 to intercept a third supercell trailing behind it. Stopping just north of a Texas Tech research radar, we watched an incredibly long inflow tail slide into the new storm's well-developed mesocyclone. A tornado was reported, probably with this storm, at 8:05 p.m., but no tornado was evident from our position.
Looking west from Highway 163, 7:58 p.m.
8:00 p.m.
8:02 p.m.
8:03 p.m.
8:05 p.m.
8:07 p.m.
This supercell swept across 163 with no sign of producing a tornado, and we ended our chase. More storms continued to fire near Midland and train behind those we'd intercepted, though, making it impossible to reach I-20 without a chance of getting cored. Even to attempt it would have required reliable radar data, something we lacked given the sparse cell service. Instead, we raced supercell #2 to San Angelo in hopes of circling around it. We took desolate 163 southward to FM 2469, which cut eastward through remote oil fields to a gritty little wide spot in the road called Mertzon. From there population density slowly increased as we followed Route 67 northeastward into San Angelo. Lightning flashed continuously in the slowly weakening supercell to our north. We left San Angelo on 67 just before the storm moved in and dropped low-end severe hail all over town. New convection grew overtop of us near Ballinger, filling the gaps in a spectacularly electrified MCS. From there it was north to Abilene and east on I-20 to DFW, most of the way in trailing stratiform precip that seemed to have a lot of tiny hail in it.
We were close to multiple tornado reports from multiple storms and saw nothing conclusive. Cell towers and paved roads were few and far between. The storms were messy, threw large hail well outside their cores, and rarely sustained strong low-level mesocyclones for more than a few minutes. For as many reports as there were, there have hardly been any tornado photos making the rounds. Some have expressed doubt about one particular report of a multi-vortex tornado early in the second supercell's life. Even with a clear target area, it was actually a challenging day to chase. Still, it's hard to complain about three tornadic supercells in open country. With Oklahoma sitting at 6 tornadoes on the year--#6 hardly counts, a landspout under cold-core convection on 5/27--this is as good as it gets right now.
