Evan Bookbinder, Jay Antle, and I decided on a chase target in the eastern TX Panhandle in favor of eastern Colorado mainly because I enjoy taking a chance every now and again, and I thought we could get an isolated beautiful supercell somewhere east of Plainview/Lubbock given the not-so-hot 700mb temps, great deep layer shear, and the nose of moderately high CAPE. The result of this decision was a bust. We were fairly excited about a storm that formed northwest of Silverton during the late afternoon hours around 4:30pm CDT or so. Unfortunately, the storm died a horrible death as it moved away from its source of convergence and into higher CIN airmass to its east. We were also watching an area near Floydada to our south where a mesolow developed. Some aggressive attempts at congested cumulus were noted, but in the end — nothing. It was sort of painful watching supercells thrive in southeast Colorado, the more obvious upslope play today. We took a gamble at something isolated and largely to ourselves (the majority of other chasers were up in Colorado) and we lost. Below are a few images if the little storm that couldn’t:
