Lightning Flashes as 'Rolling Dry Line' Produces Severe Storms in Texas

Timelapse satellite imagery released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on May 6 shows what the NOAA said was a “rolling dry line” that produced severe thunderstorms across Texas on Monday, May 3.

The imagery, captured by NOAA’s GOES-16 (GOES East) and GOES-17 (GOES West) satellites, shows a line of clouds moving east over Texas and producing multiple flashes of lightning.

The NOAA said a dry line is a “boundary between moist and dry air,” and said they are common in spring and summer months in Texas, “when moist air from the Gulf of Mexico meets dry air from the Desert Southwest, often triggering thunderstorms.”

Some of the storms developed into supercells and “produced widespread straight-line winds, hail, and reports of tornadoes,” the NOAA said. The storms prompted tornado watches from the NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, which later tracked 23 tornado reports that day.

One of those tornadoes touched down in Blum, Texas, the National Weather Service confirmed, and was captured on video by local residents. Credit: NOAA Satellites via Storyful