Chase 2021
Target: Big Spring, Texas
A day chase that originally was intended to be more in the Texas Panhandle ended up along the I-20 corridor in central Texas. While Lubbock was originally supposed to be the southern play at the beginning of the day my arrival to Lubbock only meant I had to go even further south, as a supercell formed along I-20 in Midland. There would be plenty of deep convection in the Lubbock area later in the evening, but with an established storm already going and favorable parameters I dropped another hour south to Big Spring to intercept that cell as it moved east toward Abilene. After some initial indecision about which cell to chase I ultimately latched onto the main storm that was now approaching Colorado City, Texas. My original play was to drop south out of Colorado City, but the lack of road networks made me want to extend the chase, so I went a little further east along HWY 208. It was on this N-S highway that I saw a 10-15 minute long tornado that formed near Forsan, Texas. Unfortunately the tornado was about 10 miles away, so I did not get a great look at it, but the distance from the storm provided a great opportunity to get full structure photography. While the storm slowly crept eastward toward my location I noticed more deep convection to my north and east, and while there may have been some brief spin ups, nothing ultimately formed. By the end of the day I found myself at E.V. Spence Reservoir in Robert Lee, Texas. Here I did some end of day structure shooting over the lake.
Tornado forms about 5-10 miles west near Forsan, Texas