Mexican Cyclic Supercell
Laughlin AFB Reflectivity Loop
(0.5 deg elevation, 1 km NIDS imagery)
This loop runs from 0321Z (9:21 p.m. CST) to 0735Z (1:35 a.m. CST), on the night of March 21-22, 2000.
The loop has 40 frames totalling 850 kB; so it may take several minutes to load even on a fast connection. Once loaded, you can stop the loop, go to the beginning, then step forward frame-by-frame.
This loop covers a little over five hours of the supercell's lifespan, from shortly after it formed on the east slopes of the Serranias del Burro in Mexico, to its crossing of the Rio Grande near Del Rio, Texas, and into southeastern Val Verde County. Note the vivid, striking hook echo in Mexico -- a textbook signature of a classic supercell. Later, the tornado report near Amistad Dam apparently came fron the easternmost of two hook echoes the storm had while entering the U.S. Toward the end of the loop, a large hook forms on the south end of the storm, with a dense and thick core of rain and hail wrapping arond its westand south sides. This indicates the storm entered a heavy-precipitation (HP) phase late in life -- as long-lived supercells often do.
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