Thursday 15th June 2023 - Tx Panhandle (Moderate Risk)
After a down day at the Farm on the 14th we started today from Hutchinson (KS) and with an additional day of Moisture the SPC had issued a Moderate Risk for Storms with a 10% Hatched Tornado Risk and 45% for Large Damaging Hail. This was one of the best days since April and todays Mesoscale features were good as well. I was targeting the Triple Point Low Pressure which was North of Amarillo and an Outflow Boundary which extended from the Low East and South Eastwards into SW Oklahoma. Temps were perfect around 79f and Dewpoints of 68f. Everything pointed to Intense Supercells. The first Storm of the day actually fired in SW Oklahoma well away from the triple point, this was tempting but I was not going to be suckered into this storm and stayed with my original target of the Triple Point.
It wasnt long before storms started to fire North of the Low Pressure and these were heading straight north, the first 2 crossed north of the Outflow Boundary but the third Supercell actually first turned right just South of Perryton and then stalled completely. I went south at Booker just to the East of this storm and stopped and watched, in front of me was a beautiful surface based Classic Supercell with strong rain free base and incredible Smooth Channel lightning falling around our ears. The storm quickly started to show strong rotation and a Bowl funnel started to reach down to the ground. The velocity couplet also really spiked at this time and directly over Perryton to our west which was a big worry. The Tornado fully condensed but then wrapped rain back in front of it, it did briefly pop back out to the south but our attention was now drawn to the South West side of the Storm which amazingly had Twin Landspout Tornadoes on the ground as well. What an incredible Supercell this was. We headed further south to get near to the 2 Tornadoes and took some amazing pictures. Word at this time was coming in of heavy damage on the North side of Perryton which had been hit by a strong tornado and our mood soured quite a bit.
We headed further South East towards Higgins with strong rotation right above our heads, wrapping rain curtains told me I needed to move as a big Tornado was about to drop very close by. We quickly moved North East for a few miles and with large hail still impacting us we had to stop as a Tornado was already on the ground behind us (Number 4 for the day) This was becoming quite the cyclic Supercell but we had to continue on as the Hail core was about to smash into us and in fact we had taken a Baseball sized stone to the front cars windshield which had smashed the screen already.
We headed south towards Elk City soon afterwards and the storms had actually lined out by now and all lost their Tornado Warnings, an incredible days chasing and the correct storm to target verified.
Some Pics below
