Saturday 27th May 2023 - Nm/Texas (Enhanced Risk)

We started today in Amarillo and once again we had a pattern that just would not shift with the Dryline/Mountain combo in New Mexico and West Texas. Today the SPC went a little more robust with a 5% Tornado Risk and 30% Large hail in their outlook. Models broke out 2 areas of storms today, one further North and West around the Santa Rosa area and another further to the South and East near Hobbs which also had an Outflow Boundary nearby that had stalled in the NW-SE Position which is one of my favourites. If a Supercell could become discrete down there and latch the boundary we would have very good chances of a Tornado Producer so I was quite excited about the prospect. Around 3pm a single discrete Supercell initiated just North of Roswell so things were on track at first………..however numerous storms then erupted and the whole area lined out into an east moving squall line, we kept ahead of the line towards Dora and then had a decision to make, there was a single discrete Supercell further north rolling east and pictures from that storm showed a structured Supercell from other chasers. Now was the time to make a big decision north or south. We watched some pretty spectacular lightning for a while before choosing south and hoping the southern part of the line could become the discrete storm to interact with the OFB which was just to its east. We continued south and the Southern Supercell had indeed broken off on its own and was starting to stall meaning it was starting to interact with the boundary, we had to blast through from the North and in the process took some incredible Bears cage Lightning pinging around the car, just then the Storm went Tornado Warned and a confirmed Tornado was reported as we were in the core, we just caught sight of the end phase of this Pencil thin Tornado near Tatum.

We continued on and watched the Supercell just inch down the boundary South and East towards the NM/TX Border and the town of Plains. The Structure was really nice now and various areas of wrapping rain curtains were heading south out of the storm denoting some decent rotation. We stopped a few times and then finally 2 miles NW of Plains a classic looking clear slot and wall cloud really tightened up and we had a Multi Vortex Tornado Touchdown literally a few hundred yards to our North West moving at us. Not a lot of people actually saw this Tornado as they had re-positioned much further east for the structure so we sent in the report to NWS Lubbock with Video proof as well and they confirmed the Tornado on the SPC Site.

The day was not over yet and the Final Picture in the Images below from Thomas Hinterdorfer shows the absolutely beautiful structure this Supercell took on just before sunset. We once again headed for Lubbock after the chase and around 11pm got hit with a barrage of Elevated Positive Cg bolts at the Hotel, an absolutely awesome days chasing with 2 Tornadoes and incredible lightning and structure.