Del Rio, Texas Tornado Warning; Confirmed Tornado - May 10th, 2017

After getting pelted during early evening with pockets of large hail, portions of the City of Del Rio and Eastern Val Verde County endured a second round of storms late in the evening on May 10th, 2017.  A confirmed tornado was reported by Laughlin AFB weather personnel just north of the base in a rural part of far-southeastern Val Verde County.

3-D Radar Imagery of a Tornadic Thunderstorm over Del Rio on May 10th, 2017 at 10:44PM

Shortly after crossing the Rio Grande from near Ciudad Acuña, Coahuila, Mexico, what appeared to be an insignificant thunderstorm erupted into a tornadic state just west of the Del Rio International Airport, triggering a National Weather Service-Issued Tornado Warning at 10:35 PM. 

Base Reflectivity (left) and Base Velocity (right) Radar Imagery of a Tornadic Thunderstorm over Del Rio on May 10th, 2017 at 10:44PM

The thunderstorm began to gain momentum shortly after crossing the Rio Grande River, similar to a previous storm just hours before, and displayed easily-identifiable radar-indicated hail (pink, in the base reflectivity image above).  While this storm did not look to produce very large hail - immediate concern was drawn to the tornadic vortex signature (upside-down triangle) found near the hook (inflow) of the supercell thunderstorm.  

While this signature can often be mis-interpreted by weather radars - a quick look at inbound-vs-outbound velocities (shown in the image to the right above as green = inbound and red = outbound) verifies decently strong rotation in the storm (and was further verified with elevated radar scans).  

This was enough to warrant a tornado warning, which accompanied the storm across much of the northern half of the city and into more rural ranch land north of Laughlin AFB into Kinney County.

3-D Radar Imagery of a Tornadic Thunderstorm over Del Rio on May 10th, 2017 at 10:44PM

While at the time of this writing there has not yet been any reports of damage or injury from this storm, a wall cloud and a brief tornado were visually observed roughly four miles from the airfield northwest of Laughlin AFB shortly after these radar images were taken.