06/12/05 REPORTS: TX

[David Drummond]

Kent County, Texas...... WOW WOW WOW

Un-freakin-believable storm. If I don't get to chase another storm this year I will be content.

Saw dozens of chasers. The DOW teams were out, the Texas Tech mesonet teams were out. EVERYONE was out there!

I lost count along the lines somewhere, lots of stuff happening fast, but I saw somewhere between 6 and 8 tornadoes of all shapes and types from nice elephant trunk, to big cones, to a wedge! Some at close range. I will post some video later, but for now....some pics to feast on.

Brings me up to 16-18 for the year, STILL all 70 miles from home!!

 

[Brandon Clement]

Nice pics and nice meeting you David, I was not so fortunate. I was a minute late all day. I did meet up with Michael Mezeul and friends and we chased until dark. It was still a great chase eventhough I did not get a tornado. I did see some of the best structure of my life after core punching and coming out in the bear cage with an incredible meso to my SW. Saw many very nice funnels, one lasted almost ten minutes and was a large cone that just danced around. We chased a cell all the way to Abilene before it finally gave up but not before a great lightning show and some incredible contrast. I will post pics and stuff when i get home tomorrow. Hope everyone else enjoyed the chase.

 

[Melanie Metz]

Great pics David! You were right there. Peggy and I had a great day also. What a day. What an incredible supercell! I think that sums it up pretty well. We have been waiting for this day. Great tornado touchdowns out in the Texas fields. Gorgeous structure also. Here are a few pics from our day.

Looking forward to other reports!
Mel and Peggy

 

[Amos Magliocco]

What a day. Eric, ScottB, JasonP, and I observed 6 to 8 tornadoes, including elephant trunks, cones, ropes, and a large red-dust ingesting wedge in the Garza and Kent County regions tonight between 2330z and 0245z. It was one hell of a chase and an incredible way to end the best week of chasing in my life. I'll try to have a few stills and video grabs on my blog within a handful of days, but my chase vacation is over and I'll likely take my time doing so. Tonight I'm going to sleep eight full hours!

A few interesting notes about tonight's storm: it seemed to ingest convection to the south quite easily, then translated rotation southwest into the new southern flank rapidly. Also we observed, like yesterday, that tornadoes frequently occured well after mesocyclonic occlusion, when the rotation would quickly tighten and decend, but well after the wrap around precip and even hail swung around fully.

I finished my chase vacation with five tornado-day chases in a row, going all the way back to Arthur County, Nebraska, then South Dakota, Trego County, Kansas, and the last two tornado days in the great great Texas panhandle. I could not have asked for a more spectacular introduction to mid June chasing, a time period I'm normally forced to skip. Never again.

I'm finished chasing this season. I have to get back to Indiana and
prepare to move. Full chase reports for the 2005 season should be updated on my page by December, and sometime in March I hope to release the sequel to Seven Years On Cyclone Road.

I want to say thanks again to my great pals who helped make 2005 the best chase year of my life bar none. I'll see you guys under the next meso.

Amos

 

[Todd Beal]

and the rich get richer.. lol

wow. great catches guys!

looks like I picked the wrong month this year :shock:

 

[Tony Laubach]

Jon Van de Grift and I saw at least one tornado (the talked about 10 minute rope out) and possibly another early on in what became one of the longest one-day marathons I have ever chased. In a day which started at 7am CDT in Denver, we actually made the storms in time to catch at least one tornado! Most everyone who saw and or passed me was amazed to see me at these storms. In what would normally be a disappointing day seeing as most everyone scored so well, I am happy to call this one of my funnest chases to date. Jon and I chased about as naked as it could get; no Baron, no Wifi, no GPS, no WX Radio... a quick radar check on Hwy 287 and a few barely in service cell phone calls to Verne Carlson, our nowcaster, and we basically went by eyes to intercept the three storms today. We missed the best of the action, but made it for one, which at 750 miles at the time, was unreal to have made that trip. We finished the night in Abilene where we ate a quick dinner with Blake Naftel and others before Jon and I went to say goodbye to Amos down the street. We're now in Snyder where we've bunked up at my Dad's place where we'll finish the trip heading to Denver on a rather long trip home tomorrow. We pulled into my Dad's place at 906 miles for the day, which makes for my quickest single chase mileage (906 in 18 hours); the trip will end with over 1,500, placing it into the top 5 longest chases. What a fun day! No disappointment at all; I had a great time today. It was almost stressless with no gadgets to keep tabs of and the get-there-when-we-get-there attitude which passed the time very well. Next thing I knew, we were south of Aspermont on Hwy 83 watching a tornado waaay to our west. Not sure if the video will aid this as we set up shop as the tornado was lifting and the cells were merging. Such a great time, I cannot tell ya! And best of all, we freakin' made it from Denver!!! That's the gold of this trip! Good night all! I'll post my report later this week with pictures!

 

[Jonathan Whitehead]

Wow, David, you seem to just luck out everytime.
I did not realize that was you driving the channel 11 van though I knew you were affiliated w/ channel 11. That last cell you were on just northwest of Abilene when you were pulled over to the side of the road while Scott, Chris, and Mike looked at your pics there, that was me w/ the cowboy hat and the white NWS outfit. I had no clue that was you, I feel so bad now.

Anyways I did not have the luck everyone else did. We did see the brief SPINUP possible tornado in NW Dickons Co. early on and then another spinup east of Dickons on that major east-west road that runs through. It crossed the road from south to north w/ cone shaped funnel and big dust cloud underneath. We stayed on that for a while before we took a gamble and hauled ass south to the two large cells that were merging. Unfortunately we decided to come on it from the NW instead going east to Guthrie then south. As a result of this we missed a large tornado that was reported w/ this cell. So, so goes the 2005 chase season, another disappointment. This is the end of my chase season. I am disappointed for not having seen a tornado this year but now that I live in Ft. Worth and go to school in Norman I know that I am always in a target area 24/7.

Would like to add that I saw a number of chasers out today. Initially followed the Texas Tech chase team from Childress into Matador before things fired. It was in Matador that we ran into the DOWS and tornado attack tank that always follows. Also saw Kiel Ortega and his posse on the east Dickens spinup.

Well thats it for now will post pics once I get them developed (yeah im cheap but I got me the expensive cameras but still learnin on those)

 

[Shane Adams]

Missed it all. No NOAA coverage, no spotter chatter, no definable structure further than 5 miles away (from our approach), and lost touch with our nowcaster at the most crucial point in the day. I'm sick, I'm tired, and I'm pissed.

There's nothing wrong with the 2005 season - it's just fine. The problem is me, I just suck.

 

[Aaron Kennedy]

Well... I thought the day was decent till I saw (in here) what the S. storm produced. Early on we were prepared to ditch the N storm and beeline to Kent Cty to reach the much more visually impressive storm on radar. As we are leaving the N storm (near Dickens), it manages to produce a brief tornado off in the distance. Of course, this manages to suck us in (didn't have an animation but decided perhaps there was just enough seperation, both could be game) and thus cause us to miss the S. storm show. What pisses me off the most is we made the call to junk the N storm but it drew us in to its trap then after 30min to an hour... gave us the finger.

Ah well... not very surprising. Give me a 50 50 on 2 storms and I always seem to pick the wrong one.

Full report/pics up later
Aaron

 

[nickgrillo]

Myself, Kurt Hulst and J.R. Hehnly saw well over a half dozen tornadoes today, mainly in Kent County, TX. From cones to wedges, as well as beautiful structure was all seen today in this absolutely magnificant event! I taped only 40MINS of video today, and probably 30MINS of that was pure tornadoes. I will hopefully have my page up in a day or so, I already have the vidcaps done, but I haven't even started working on the digitals...

Here's just a couple tornadoes that we saw today (probably 6-10 total)...

 

[Jason A.C. Brock]

Like David if anyone still has any radar images of these cells in Dickens Swisher Counties as well as SAT Images id love to see them. Didnt have a nowcaster today becuase he was chasing with me . We saw the awesome truncated/stovepipe tornado near Jayton. Nice pics and video as well. We may have also witnessed a distant tornado well to the West of Hamlin. The Hamlin wallcloud had awesome Movement and some of these cells showed 138 mph shear on Baron Mobile threat net XM WXWORX.
Please if anyone can send some saved radar/velocity/ SAT data to [email protected] or [email protected] Ill send some pics and vidcaps of the cells in return.
We (Jeff Papak & I) also chased with Robert Sternadel all day and had a great time. Jeff was only on his 4th chase of the year and the first time he brings out his new Digital Rebel BAM! Tornado!
One of the best chases of the year if not the best for us.
Total chase miles 433
Chased by Jeff Papak, Jason Brock, & Robert Sternadel.
Photos by Jason Brock, Jeff Papak, & Robert Sternadel
Video by Jason Brock
Jay

 

[Dan Robinson]

**Post deleted, new content posted***

 

[Jeff Wear]

got to the Dickens County cell just as the bottom 4000 feet of the updraft vanished into thin air. saw a tiny funnel cloud extending from the base a few minutes after this happened. by this time I was out of position on the Kent/Fisher County storm so my day was pretty much over. got a nice mammatus pic over the Salt Fork of the Brazos River......

 

[Simon Brewer]

Awesome Structure!!!!

Definitely an incredible day!
I've got to say that supercell NW of Jayton had some of the most awesome structure. We weren't as close as some, but we got an unbelievable view of the meso, wall cloud, tail cloud, beaver's tail, flanking line, and tornadoes all in one shot!

Really nice supercell, which is an understatement.

Simon Brewer
www.stormgasm.com

 

[Jeff Snyder]

:roll:

Phil and I met up with the large group of folks at the Kettle restaurant (or whatever it was) there in Childress by mid-afternoon. The majority of them headed south towards a storm ne of Lubbock, while Phil and I hung around CDS a bit longer to see if storms west of Childress would intensify. Given the better shear progged to the north, we didn't want to go too far south. This was a very bad decision.

We headed south out of CDS towards a supercell near Dickons. We successfully navigated side roads with a large wallcloud to our west. After a pretty good RFD occlussion, we witnessed a small, short-lived tornado east of Dickons (west of Guthrie). The tornado was a dust spin-up column, though it was definately a tornado (nice column rising towards a funnel aloft). I had been worried about the southern storms since there was all sorts of precip in this northern storm's inflow area to the east. Despite repeated RFD occlussions and very nice wallclouds, we opted to jump ship and head for the southern storm. No radar data available at this time, so we were going solely off experience. Many minutes after we left the northern storm, it began to completely fall apart, so we felt we made the correct decision.

Finally, we got a radar image in Guthrie, and it was showing two 60-75 VIL cores south-southwest of us, likely impacting Aspermont in a short time. We made the decision to haul south afas and try to beat it across Hwy 83. We made it through Aspermont without any problem, and heard of a tornado warning for the storm north of Rotan. When we finally got view of the base, we noticed a very large wall-cloud with this storm. However, there was a lot of precip in the RFD, and there was also a huge amount of precip to the southwest of the RFD (almost as if there was another small cell hugging the southwest side of the storm). We watched this wallcloud persist and eventually weaken near Hamlin. Eventually, the storm went to garbage, and we met up with a slew of other OU chasers at the Stamford Pizza Hut.

Knowing that we broke off from the group that would later go on to bag the slew of tornadoes in Kent county is very frustating to say the least. I knew low-level flow was better to the north, so we were trying to keep our north option open for as long as possible. Unfortunately, w/o radar help, it wasn't easy to see which storm was better until we started hearing tornado reports for the southern storm. NOAA radio coverage was pitiful in the Guthrie/Dickens areas, so we had no idea the southern storm was going bonkers. While we did see a brief tornado, it's very disappointing to know that, after a 700-mile trip (not complaining there, as I know a lot of folks travelled a lot longer), we missed the tornado machine by 1 county.

I guess at least this chase holds in fashion with the way the rest of 2005 has gone. We got two small tornadoes in Paris TX on the first chase of the year, and one small tornado in TX on the last chase of the year (well, spring season at least). Between the two, every chase was filled with frustration and disappointment. The two days I sat out on (Thurs and Sat) turned out to be very productive for those who did chase. Grrrr.

EDIT: I like Aaron's 50/50 comment above LOL. Perhaps I should take my gut feeling, ignore it, and just figure out where Eric N., Amos, David D., and JR are going, since they always seem to be on the right storm. In what many would call a bad year, these folks have consistently landed the prize supercells and tornadoes... I don't think this season could have gone much worse for me.