There are a lot of great images here…along with some that are…well, they leave a bit to be desired. Be sure to click or tap each to see it full-size!
April 15, 2016 (Map)
I left home about 11:45am headed for the Sublette, KS area with the intent of probably heading furhter southwest, into the Elkhart area. This was substantially south of the target I’d been looking at earlier in the week (first briefing, Wed) (second briefing, Thu) (third briefing, Fri).
My live streaming hardware locked up a little west of Pratt, and between making a couple stops in Greensburg to try to buy a jeweler’s screwdriver, a 10-minute wait for a pilot car through a paving project west of Mullinville, and having to go clear into Dodge City, I lost about 30 minutes. Things worked out fine, though…
Fast forward to a little after 5…I’ve made the decision that the storm which is trying to get its act together near Dalhart, TX is going to be my storm of the day, and I head south out of Hugoton toward Guymon. After a brief dalliance with going over toward Boise City I commit to going on toward Stratford, TX. Another hour’s drive and I’m a dozen or so miles from this beast:
Beautiful structure on supercell near Stratford, TX. Taken 04-15-2016 at 6:52pm
The storm was pushing quite a lot of outflow to the east-southeast at this time. The top panorama also shows the moisture being drawn into the storm…the inflow foot on the right.
The inflow wind picked up as I sat near a railroad crossing a little further down highway 54:
As the storm passed to my north-northwest it went tornado-warned. I turned around to get ahead of it again, backtracking to Texhoma where I headed north up Highway 95. At a couple of places I pulled off on dirt roads where I could get a good look at the storm:
Did you notice there appeared to be another funnel back to the southwest (left)? It’s hard to tell because my camera was out of focus, but I’m pretty sure that’s just scud cloud, not a separate funnel.
It was starting to get dark and the traffic was getting pretty bad (along with the morons who were parked barely to the right of the white line and standing with their feet in the lane of travel…) so I don’t have a lot of additional photos or video. What I do have is coming in a post tomorrow. Just for fun, I want to give you the chance to decide what you would report to the NWS based on what you see in my video.
Meanwhile, I’m going to get the video camera set on “infinity” focus…there’s some stuff I know I have on video but can’t make it out enough for my standards because the camera had shifted into auto-focus mode. Grrrr….