June 2, 2023

The third and final day for this chase run, I was helping a photographer get shots for a project. We began the day in Snyder and set a target of Brownfield, TX. Shear profiles were favorable for tornadoes, and this day looked like the biggest of the run. Rich moisture was flooding the Caprock making for explosive instability, but with little inhibition to hold it down, the possibility was there that the whole atmosphere would just overturn in a big convective mess before we could get usable shots of supercell structure, which was the goal of this project.

We teamed up with Anton and Tracie Seimon for this chase and decided to caravan. We moved east out of town to watch towers percolating on the Caprock before diving southwest through Seminole toward a Tail-End-Charlie cell that was becoming dominant. Roads were plentiful and the terrain was perfect so we had a nice approach. However, storm mode was not cooperating and the cell transitioned into a high precipitation mode almost immediately. We shot tornado warned gust front structure from several miles to the east before cells congealed and the circulation within the storm became completely embedded in precipitation.

We started to drop down the line for the new Tail-End-Charlie, but storms were following similar trends where a classic mode was short lived before the enormous amounts of moisture and uncapped instability forced a high precipitation transition. Cells were also quickly gusting out with huge expanding outflow boundaries.

We dropped south again, hoping for a play on a new base, but it was soon apparent that we were now caught behind an expanding pool of cold outflow. Normally a “junk catch” for a chaser, as it means the tornado show is hosed, the Whale’s Mouth structure provided our photographer with some dramatic panoramic opportunities.

We then ran east and northeast to get ahead of cells, and were greeted by a menacing outflow dominant HP with a green core. We went east down an unpaved oil road before stopping to get some shots. Anton and Tracie wisely fled back west for pavement to avoid getting cored. But the greenish turquoise core and expanding gust front was incredibly dramatic and another unique opportunity for our photographer’s project, so I decided it was worth lingering, and even chancing getting munched. We stayed until the gust front came sailing overhead and then blasted west for the pavement. We were clipped by the heaviest part of the core as we made our turn onto Highway 349. The highway was a perfect escape, a straight shot northeast with a 70 mph speed limit, allowing us to quickly blast ahead of the core.

We made it back into clear air. Our east option was just past the tiny town of Patricia, so we were slowing down and in the far-right lane of the wide, four lane road as we entered town. And it was a good thing too. A block ahead of us, a tour group was executing a three-point turn in the middle of the road. Meanwhile a white car was coming into town head-on from the northeast going probably well over 70 mph, as, ridiculously, there apparently is no reduced speed zone through town. The car swerved to miss the tour group, one of their vans fully perpendicular across the road. However, the car was now aimed straight at us. I had just a fraction of a second to react and swerved right onto a wide shoulder. The car missed by seemingly inches, and I had to stop to collect myself before continuing the chase. I have had a few close calls while chasing, but it’s mundane traffic encounters that will bring many chasers the closest to death.

We went east to get ahead of the expanding line of storms, and caught up with Anton and Tracie. The storm complex was now gusting out but also entering an expansive plain of powdery brown dust. A massive haboob started to form and we again setup for video, stills, and timelapse as this was our most dramatic stormscape yet.

The wall of dust hit while Anton and our photographer were still outside the vehicles. The photographer ducked into the van, but Anton hunkered down outside to endure the blowing dust.

He almost faded from view as the brown clouds swallowed us.

Anton returned to his van once the dust started to clear a bit, exhilarated by the encounter.

We stayed for a few more minutes to watch the dust storm streaming across the road with roiling Whale’s Mouth structure overhead. Things were winding down stormwise across the region, so we called the chase and made our way back to Brownfield to get dinner and a room. The four of us enjoyed a nice meal and stories at a local BYOB hole in the wall restaurant, then said goodbyes under balmy moonlight to all go our own ways the next day.