Gene and I headed out yesterday from San Antonio down Hwy 90 straight to just NE of Laughlin Air Force Base near Del Rio, Tx in Kinney county. We headed for that area due to the rich moisture, temps, dewpoints, low LI's and the fact that the fairly deep low was forecast to track southward along the border from it's current position which I seem to recall was just near Del Rio to the south down into Mexico. We arrived near 5pm to Tornado Warnings for a cell which had just left Hwy 90 moving north east, with another one approaching from the Mexican border across the AFB. As we arrived I was having trouble getting my IBM notebook to start properly. It kept giving me weird error codes probably related to how well the battery was pushed in. Then I also realized I forgot my Street Atlas Cd, so I couldn't use my GPS with moving maps. Oh, well, hey I did have SWIFT on board.

Well it's hard to describe the scene. The storms were moving very fast and developing rapidly. I finally got the pc to work, and downloaded some radar. The first storm to leave we decided not to chase. It had already been warned on and we would be pursuing it in the rain so we figured that was a losing proposition. We began focusing our attention to our SW with the next storm moving in over Laughlin with it's core straddling way across hwy 90 to the north. Before we knew it a new tornado warning was issued for that storm ( I believe), and it began raining, then hailing with the hail getting larger and larger. Time to move!

The hail was coming from our west so we did a 180 and got out of the hail for awhile. Finally got some more radar, and it was determined that the storms were now moving East instead of the previous NNE!! The cell toward Laughlin had some pretty nice striated structures but also was sporting a huge band of outflow headed SE. This kind of put us out of position for our planned attempt on the south end. We raced Hwy 131 south toward Normandy trying to get south of these cells developing and moving in from the west across the Mexican border. It was pretty much futile. The cells were traveling very fast. Welcome to March!

Somewhere along the way here I got SWIFT working with our position plotted. It was nice to be able to see our position in relation to these developing monsters. There was a really large storm still in Mexico which appeared to have some promise and was down close to our original target area of Eagle Pass. Well we tried to get south as all the tons of dust kicked up to our west and the skies grew dark. It was still only about 6:15 or so but these storms were making it really dark. At one point we watched to our south toward Normandy as a very large base and shelf of outflow winds moved SE with tons more dust across the ground. It looked like lots of gustnados, and high wind, a huge precip and hail core moving just to it's SW.

We decided that the outflow boundary from the storm wasn't a good sign and that it looked like a high wind event. We knew to get to the south end of this newest tornado warned Mexican storm we would have to plow straight through this very large Dbz core, without much light, and probably not much to see at the end of it. Instead we elected to call it a day.

With SWIFT we were able to somewhat meticulously avoid the worse parts of these 3 storms and hide in the lighter precip areas between them. This probably saved us a windshield and glass money. SWIFT also had a cool feature that plotted the tornado and severe thunderstorm warning projected paths across the map so we could see our position in relation to them which was nice. For some reason I was unable to find the zoom in / out keys. But I know it has them cause I was using it at home. Probably the main thing I thought SWIFT needed was a little smaller icon for showing your position. Perhaps it's size is adjustable?

All in all a nice tune-up chase to test the equipment, get out of the house, and see some lightning, wind, hail, supercells. There was lots of that.

Basically our original storm went on to Hondo where it caused 80mph winds and 2 3/4" hail - so I guess it's a good idea we stayed out of it. Thanks SWIFT & Rory!

The other storm continued on to the east to the southern end of San Antonio where roofs were blown off houses and other damage occurred. The media is reporting that this was a tornado, but I have not seen it listed that way on the SPC logs yet.

We didn't take any pictures, but there wasn't anything all that photogenic. I really do need to get my dash cam mount going though.

I may post some of the radar shots when I get time on my web page.

Total mileage for this "local" chase = 575.

Bill
 

March 19th Laughlin Supercells Chase

Tornado Extreme Storm Chase