We awoke today with another Slight Risk over the same area as the previous day and another 5% Tornado Risk as well. Today we went west into the Davis Mountains and to Fort Davis for lunch. Soon after big towers were going up all around us and it wasnt long before the first thunder was being heard from initiation just 5 miles south of us. The storm took a while to get organised but soon became supercellular with reports of large hail. It is very tricky chasing in the mountains so we headed off South East to Alpine and then North East again towards Fort Stockton. As the storm approached the road there was an impressive wall cloud almost scraping the ground but no touch downs were seen from our location.
Once the storm had passed the road we headed back into Alpine to watch a big Supercell coming straight north from Mexico but this storm was very tame once it got to us with just a few Cg bolts. We once again hit the road east towards Marathon and easily caught back up with our Storm and just east of Marathon quite strong rotation was noted in front of us. And soon after a dust column appeared and went straight up into the cloud and into a funnel above. Tornado number 1 for Tour 3 had occured and really early into the trip, and soon enough the red dot appeared on the SPC page confirming what we had seen.
We then turned our attention to another storm erupting to our west which was throwing out some amazing Cg Bolts onto the Mountains north of Marathon, we sat to the east and watched for a good 30 minutes clear air Cg’s marching towards us, the closest was in the field opposite at a range of about 300 yards.
We let the storm go as the precip started to fall at our location and headed to Midland for the night in readiness for another risk tomorrow in the Northern Texas Panhandle.