College of DuPage Storm Chases
1992
With 1991 being such a fantastic year, almost an all you can eat buffet
for storm chasers, you just couldn't wait until 1992. However, 1992 would
pale in comparison...especially in May. May was the month of a cutoff low
sitting and spinning in southern AZ allowing MONSOONAL flow through the
mountains. Very July-like precipitation patterns in the southwest US and
Intermountain Regions.
Our first of two trips this year left in late may for 7 days and would
end on Memorial Day. We really only had one chase day, but it wasn't bad.
Thanks to some help from the Stockton Plateau, we were able to caputre
an F3 tornado in southern Reeves County (south of Pecos), TX. We started
the day in Amarillo, only to wake up and realize the only chance was south
of Midland/Odessa, in the Big Bend Region of Texas. That's ok because that
is some of the most beautiful chase country around. However, we needed to haul
you-know-what to make it down there (not speeding, just quick
bathroom/eating/gas stops). With the big cutoff upper low spinning away,
we could only hope for a shortwave to possibly eject out of it. There
wasn't much of a cap and the shear wasn't tremendous, but the atmosphere was very
unstable and we were going into a favorable geographic area for tornadoes.
Most of the day was spent looking thru a SCT/BKN Strato-Cu field. In the
afternoon, a tornado watch was issued and we were smack dab in the middle
of it. Seeing Cu's build into towers was just not going to happen this day
for us though, as we had to battle the Strato-Cu field. But helpers back at
the lab informed us of some storms to the west, just as we noticed there
might be some evidence of an anvil over us. We proceeded west to find a decent looking
cell with a good RFB (Rain Free Base), and some scud movement underneath
showing some good vertical motions. The winds at this point were pretty
good speed-wise, and thanks to the plateau, very southeast. The winds
aloft were basically south-southwest, but again, it was storm relative
inflow that helped this storm out...not the synoptic conditions per se.
Within a matter of a half an hour, the storm began to
take shape as we look north at the uprdraft region where the rear
flank downdraft curls up back into the RFB and meets with the wall cloud.
The wind at this point was very strong into the storm.
Unfortunately, the roads (or in our case, road!) did not cooperate, and we were stuck
south of this thunderstorm and couldn't get a good vantage point on the
inflow region as it moved to our north/northwest. The rear flank downdraft
eventually came around, and with it plenty of
rain
to block our view. We jumped in the vans and headed south to look for *any*
road going east and then north. As we did, we looked back and as the rain
cleared for a bit, a well defined cone shaped tornado was sitting there
oh-so-nicely. The tornado picture is right now on video only, and I'm working
on getting it on here.
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