Date: April 29, 2012
Time: Late afternoon
Place: Amarillo, TX & Ute Lake, NM
Camera: T3i
Warnings: None
Rating: -

Well, you can't win em all. Today was our first official bust. The SPC had issued a 2% tornado probability up and down the Texas panhandle. With the excellent cell coverage and nice looking road network, I figured it couldn't hurt to head out and at least have a look. The previous evening, we had driven to Clovis, NM to get in position for today's storms. (BTW, the Clovis Applebees is pretty awesome on Saturday nights, just FYI). We meandered our way northeast along Highway 60 through Texas beef country. Toni really grew to love the smells. Around 3PM we made our way into Amarillo and stopped to get some coffee and check updates. Our hope was that storms would initiate in eastern New Mexico and turn severe as they rumbled into the panhandle. Unfortunately, stuff just wasn't able to fire. There was one low-topped cell that tried to get going north of Santa Rosa, NM, but it just never looked very inspired. Since we had work the next morning, we decided to call it quits early and start the drive back to ABQ. We did take a brief detour to check out Ute Lake. Plus, in the setting sun we did finally see some storms fire much further east in the panhandle. If we'd hung back a little longer, we might have had an hour or so to chase them. However, there were no severe reports for the day, so they obviously weren't very strong.