The last chase of the trip is always bittersweet. And on May 29, 2025, it was also exciting, confounding, and incredibly dusty.
Alethea Kontis and I targeted an area south of Levelland, which is west of Lubbock, Texas. The first storms almost immediately looked like they would form a line, which often means less power and less chance of tornadoes.
Landspout tornado spotted south of Brownfield about 5:19 p.m. CDT. It’s way back there in the dust.
Yet several short-lived tornadoes were reported with this dust monster – landspouts and otherwise – and with cameras we managed to see at least one of them. I say “at least” because in reviewing the footage later, it appears there are a couple more in my shots, but when you have to pore over your photos with a magnifying glass to be sure, the catch isn’t as satisfying.
We mostly stayed ahead of the dust, though we couldn’t help sampling some of it as screaming inflow winds carried the red earth of west Texas into the maw of the beast. This storm also was warned for baseball-size hail, so I was loath to drive into it.
Dust – and hail. Note the green.
At times it felt like we’d entered the Upside Down, given the eerie haze, the mysterious heart of the storm, and the strange colors in the sky.
We played tag with the clouds of dust and plenty of storm chasers all the way to I-20, where we headed east, staying ahead of the worst parts of the line of storms until it overtook us.
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