MAY 26, 1999 with Ed Cohen
EXTREME SOUTHEAST NEW MEXICO, WEST TEXAS, Left Lubbock for Midland, TX with initial target unclear. My initial target by viewing the RUC model would be SE New Mexico but it looked like things could go further east along an old warm front so we just went to Midland initially. After a bit of an excursion SW of Midland looking for the warm front we heard that storms were going around Artesia, NM and started moving north to get in front of them. We went north on hwy 18 through Monahans and Kermit, TX and gassed up in Jal, NM. It now appeared that the best storm was south of Carlsbad, NM and headed ESE towards up so we went west on 128 from Jal. We took road C-21 to the north a bit and found a nice open place to set up near some gas wells. The storm to our SW was obviously tail-end-charlie and the strongest one so we concentrated on it. It developed a nice fat inflow nose to the east and appeared to have 2 wall-cloud structures at one time. We moved back to Jal and went south to Kermit, TX. then south on 115 and got right in front on this beast. It developed and incredible beaver-tail/inflow nose right over our heads. The inflow had increased from nothing earlier to 35 to 45 mph. The inflow band above us to on the appearance of a conveyor belt rapidly moving toward the center of the storm. A wall-cloud now hung just above the ground to our west. As we drove further south we noticed a large subsidence hole to our south, it's edges rotating rapidly in a clock-wise motion. We fought with the core's of several storms as we made our way back to Midland for dinner. We decided to return to Fort Worth for the night to regroup and plan our next move.