May 24th report

Hello. We started the day in Amarillo - we set an initial target towards Lubbock, but had to spend a little while sorting out a small issue with our Mifi mobile internet unit at the Verizon store.

We then headed down I-27 towards Lubbock - the cap was fairly weak today and so storms started to fire as we were on our way down. We decided to head SE from Plainview after grabbing some lunch as cells were moving NE from where they were initiating close to Lubbock - they actually did this all day, causing a lot of flooding just east of Lubbock.

We got to Floydada and then headed east towards Matador. We stopped just over halfway along to observe the approaching supercell, which was a high-precipitation type (HP). We could make out the updraught area, but the forward flank was very close to undercutting it (as is often the case with HP storms). We headed east to Matador, pausing briefly. The radar showed the low-level rotation quickly increasing, and a tornado warning was soon issued. We headed east of town and observed the low-level rotation increasing quite rapidly - it was moving east to our south, and was quite close - visually, anyway - to producing a tornado. However, it became undercut by the outflow and this was the start of the storm becoming fully outflow dominant. We moved to its east - and it looked quite nice - but when we reached Paducah we decided to leave it and headed south towards Guthrie. We stopped for a while to just take in the quietness of the Plains and the turbulent skies. We then headed to Lubbock for the night - but it was a more convoluted route as we wanted to avoid flooding east of Lubbock. After Guthrie we headed west to Dickens and then south to Spur. We then wound across country down to Post, and then NW to Lubbock, where we checked into our motel.

All in all, a messy day of storms but not necessarily an unexpected outcome, as it did look like being a bit of a messy day. We positioned perfectly on the tornado-warned storm, but it just didn't quite do it.

Tomorrow brings another risk of severe storms to quite a large part of the southern Plains into parts of the central Plains. We will decide what to do in the morning.

Some pics below of the storms, and also the wildflowers which are blooming very well after such a wet spring.