Friday 2nd June 2023 - SW Texas (Enhanced Risk)

After yesterdays 5% Bust day to the SE of Lubbock we knew today offered much better chances and everything pointed to my Nemesis of Fort Stockton!! HRRR had been insistent on breaking out a lone Supercell to the SW of there over the Davis Mountains from Orographic Lift and all parameters for a Tornadic Supercell were in place. 76/66 T/Tds with an Outflow Boundary and great 500mb Flow nosing out of Mexico. In fact the only negative fly in the ointment was the Chase Terrain. With 13z looking like the initiation time we set off from Lubbock around 9am for the drive down and a quick lunch in Odessa.

Our first look at the Supercell showed a nice radar representation with the storm hooking right after about 5 scans, I tried to be clever today knowing the Storm would probably produce east of Fort Stockton when it interacted with the OFB and headed a little bit further east than I really needed to, the Storm actually produced a substantial Tornado earlier than I thought around 9 miles east of Stockton! We did manage a distant photo then had to re-position into the hills and canyons further South of Interstate 10 which is no easy feat. We did find a nice view of the storm and let the hook roll towards us where we saw Tornado number 3 of the day a quick rope Tornado. After this storms congealed and it was into large hail avoidance mode, we did take golf balls a few times but with no gas stations around we had to double back to north of I-10 to fuel up and hence we missed another substantial Tornado just before sunset near Dryden on the Mexico Border. So 3 Tornadoes today but not my best chasing by any shot but at least I have got the monkey of Fort Stockton off my back finally after all these years and actually seen an amazing Cyclic Tornadic Supercell down there for once.

Some Pictures Below