5/7/19 | Tulia, TX

Moderate Risk

After seeing a nocturnal tornado the day before, our travels took us in to Texas. We drove from Oklahoma through the Texas Panhandle in the morning hours. This was my first time in the Texas Panhandle and I was awestruck by how beautiful the landscape was for the majority of the ride.

After driving through drizzle and clouds for some time, we blew past the warm front and into the sun. The Storm Prediction Center had issued a Moderate Risk, and it was looking like a very active day with the potential for strong tornadoes. A small 15% hatched tornado area was added in the Texas Panhandle.

Some early storms went up near the warm front to the north of Amarillo, and we checked those out for a bit. It’s mainly ranch land in that area, which led to difficult chasing as the road network is winding through private property and gated areas. Eventually we decided to move south towards the better instability.

A supercell developed to the southwest of Tulia, Texas and quickly produced a strong mesocyclone. The storm was tornado warned shortly thereafter, and produced a tornado near Tulia. This was rated an EF-U (not enough damage for it to be rated). The structure with this storm was incredible and the tornado itself was quickly rain-wrapped as it transitioned to higher precipitation in nature.

It was at this point that our chase went off the rails – as we were trapped to the northeast by the Palo Duro Canyon. We could not follow the storm through the canyon for the risk of flash flooding (and getting hit by a possible tornado) was very high. Therefore, we had to track 20+ miles around the canyon to re-trace the storm. This took us well out of position.

We tracked some other structure through the evening, but did not see a tornado on this day. There were widespread tornado reports in the Texas Panhandle, however, as well as large hail and wind damage.