June 1st report

Hello. We started the day in Pecos, Texas, aiming to target the area fairly close-by, mainly to the south, in a corridor from the confluence of I-10 and I-20, ESE to Fort Stockton.

We headed west, picking up some lunch - and then once we'd reached the confluence of the two Interstates, we headed SE on I-10, turning off onto the same road we'd been on yesterday. We parked up and watched the cumulus bubbling away to our west, over the Davis Mountains. Some of these grew quite deep, but never moved off the mountains.

Over an hour passed, and we then noticed a cluster of towering cumulus to our ENE - these may have formed from cumulus drifting off the mountains, or may have been unrelated, simply growing in the 32C heat (perhaps aided a little by some steep lapse rates being advected off the mountains). Either way, this area of development looked interesting, and so we headed SE and then E, to Balmorhea, where we paused briefly, seeing Willoughby Owen and his chase partners.

The developing shower to our NE now had lightning in it, and was growing stronger. We expected it to turn to the SE if it could become a supercell, and so we decided to move down I-10 towards Fort Stockton. En route, the storm did become a supercell and duly started to turn to the right and head SE. We got fuel at Fort Stockton and then headed north of town, taking up a position on a slight rise where we had a grandstand view of the supercell. We were there for about 40 mins (during which time the storm was tornado warned) before we headed back south into Fort Stockton, and then a bit SE. We stopped on the SE side of town and watched as the storm glowered menacingly to the NW of town. Rotation did pick up for a while but, overall, it was quite a high-based storm - luckily for the town. The tornado sirens did sound, and folks were out and about looking at the storm.

We continued to the SE and stopped again - the storm had a good go at spinning up but never quite did it - several dust whirls and surges from outflow were noted. Lightning was frequent with plenty of CG activity.

We then dropped south a bit more to try to get a better view of the whole storm - by this time the storm started to slowly ease in intensity. We then decided to head to Midland for the night - but stopped in Fort Stockton briefly - the town had quite a bit of street flooding from the storm.

We then made the drive to Midland and had a late dinner in iHop - we could still see lightning flickering away to the north - other storms may drift over here later tonight, if they hold together.

A great day of chasing!