High Wind — Yoakum, Texas

2024-07-07 · Yoakum, Texas

Wider weather episode

An approaching short wave trough interacted with a surface pressure trough, a stalled out cold front, strong heating, and abundant moisture to create prolific severe thunderstorm winds across portions of the South Plains and Rolling Plains on the afternoon of the seventh. By late in the afternoon, temperatures had warmed into the upper 90s to lower 100s across the central and western South Plains. At the same time, a surface low formed in the extreme southwestern Texas Panhandle with a surface pressure trough extending southward and a stalled out cold front extending eastward. The strong heating east and south of these features created a very unstable atmosphere able to develop thunderstorms. A multi-cell cluster of thunderstorms formed along these features and moved to the east during the late afternoon. A dry sub-cloud layer allowed these storms to produce numerous swaths of severe wind gusts, especially as they moved across Lubbock County. The storms eventually grew upscale into the Rolling Plains and weakened early in the evening. Additionally, a strong outflow boundary well out ahead of thunderstorms produced a severe wind gust of 61 mph at Plains (Yoakum County) measured by the Texas Tech University West Texas mesonet.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1184455. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.