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1995-06-08: Pampa/Allison/Kellerville tornado outbreak

Tim Vasquez

Tim Vasquez

EF5
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This is a placeholder post meant simply meant to demonstrate the subject title format that's required ("MM/DD/YY: Description"). As with other Target Area posts, this format helps people find threads quicker. Anyone who wishes to discuss this day may do so and I'll remove this placeholder.

Tim
 
I have watched video of these tornadoes. The F4 tornado that hit near Allison, Texas at one point was over a mile-wide and threw a couple of vehicles for two miles. The Pampa tornado was very narrow but very destructive F4 tornado. The Kellerville tornado from what I have heard from others the damage it caused probably warranted an F5 rating. Was not into tornadoes at that but I bet a a lot of chasers that day had a wild experience.
 
Darren Addy said:
Great new forum idea! Board feature request:

If the board admin wants to do this we could embed YouTube video of the event (like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJp2TVEM2vI or this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjXvEZAdRXM&NR=1) right in the thread.
Click to expand...

Darren- not many people know this because it was announced in a thread that didn't get much attention but Stormtrack allows YouTube videos to be embedded into threads. The format for this is (remove the quotes and add the video ID which is the letters and numbers after the = sign in the URL): ["youtube"]videoID["/youtube"]



 
Tough to forecast

June 8, 1995: I almost blew this day. Gene Rhoden and I jumped the gun leaving the night before and staying in Goodland, KS! We woke up to a surge of cold air and immediately drove south to Perryton, TX where we had a nice BBQ lunch. We stayed around Perryton, TX chasing a storm that developed on the surging cold air boundary but it kept getting undercut. So, we dropped south, along with the Vortex armada, bypassing the Pampa storm and intercepted the Kellerville and Allison tornadoes. Another top ten chase day for me. tm
 
Thanks to Danny Neal for inspiring me to add to this thread.

I was only 10 when this event occurred, and I really didn't know anything about it until I saw it featured on TWC's video Tornadoes 1995 (you know, back when they made quality programming). Yet it remains one of the big events that gave me interest in chasing even as a little kid.

I was amazed to discover that archived level 2 and level 3 data were available from a number of 88D sites near the event, including AMA, DDC, and VNX. Therefore I obtained such data and made a large animated gif of base reflectivity from KAMA for the TX panhandle part of the event (http://www.caps.ou.edu/~jdduda/other_ST/08_June_1995_KAMA_n0r_loop.gif). As I learned during my investigation of this event, the convective activity spread into SW KS and NW OK with one particularly long-track, hybrid supercell tracking from the OK panhandle into NW OK, occasionally getting eaten from behind by convection advancing from the TX panhandle. It finally merged with the squall line that developed and nearly produced another mesocyclone. Also, a spectacular bookend vortex can be seen on KVNX as the leading edge of the squall line passes by Wichita (ICT didn't have data during this time). Also visible in the loop is a zippering effect of convection continually trying to backbuild along the merger of two convectively reinforced boundaries in the TX panhandle. One appeared to be the dryline that triggered storms, whereas the other was oriented west-east and was also present prior to CI. Fascinating stuff really.

I'll add some old charts in the future.
 
What a day! Instability was nearly "off the chart". SB CAPE was quite high east of the dryline. Mid 70s dews in the eastern TX Panhandle along with stout southeast surface winds around 20 knots. I intercepted Tail-End-Charlie south of Clarendon in Palo Duro Canyon and stayed with it all the way to Kellerville documenting 4 tornadoes along the way... 3 of which were likely violent tornadoes. Linked is the video in the first two parts. Parts 3 and 4 linked in a following post.

Part 1.
Part 2.
.
 
Bruce, thanks for chiming in. I watched these videos when you posted them on Youtube last month, and I was glued to the screen! It is always a joy to see new videos that I'd never seen pop up from these legendary events.
 
@Bruce Haynie , I watched all four videos yesterday straight through, and then some parts over again. I couldn't pull my eyes away, especially in clips #3 and #4. I remember seeing your footage from the north side of McLean where you had to turn around on some chaser video when I was a kid and it completely floored me. I hadn't seen much, if any, of that video before. That looked like a very low stress chase outside of those intense moments near McLean. I didn't hardly see or hear another vehicle pass you by during the entire sequence, and that tornado looked as big as El Reno 2013 at times (looked like the meso dropped to the ground).

How did the chase actually compare to ones you've done in the last few years? Is it as dramatically different now as it appeared in your video?
 
Bruce - many thanks for posting all this footage. Like Jeff, I recall seeing some of the footage back in my late teens/early 20s, in my case on the Tornado Video Classics series (these were my 'fix' of storm footage back then, here in the UK). The turning around part, and also the concrete being scoured stand out as very clear memories from these videos! Back then I was dreaming of visiting the Plains - I made that dream a reality in 1998, and in most subsequent years! Back when I first saw the footage, the Plains were a far-off, somewhat abstract (to me) concept and location - now, with many thousands of miles under my belt out there, I recognise some of the locations very easily!

As a side-note: much of the footage I saw in my formative years was rather like this - taken in a calm and collected manner, with no whoopin' and a hollerin' - perhaps that's why I also don't shriek and shout on my footage!
 
Jeff Duda said:
@Bruce Haynie , I watched all four videos yesterday straight through, and then some parts over again. I couldn't pull my eyes away, especially in clips #3 and #4. I remember seeing your footage from the north side of McLean where you had to turn around on some chaser video when I was a kid and it completely floored me. I hadn't seen much, if any, of that video before. That looked like a very low stress chase outside of those intense moments near McLean. I didn't hardly see or hear another vehicle pass you by during the entire sequence, and that tornado looked as big as El Reno 2013 at times (looked like the meso dropped to the ground).

How did the chase actually compare to ones you've done in the last few years? Is it as dramatically different now as it appeared in your video?
Click to expand...

Jeff... sorry for not responding sooner. Yes. It was definitely a low stress chase other than being excited about the events unfolding in front of me. I don't recall seeing any chasers around. The only other vehicle I do remember seeing was a storm spotter with one of the local VFDs. I believe most chasers were up north early on and then eventually worked their way south. I finally ran into one of the VORTEX vans around Wheeler and let them know about the scoured concrete. I would say it's dramatically different today when compared to 6-8-95 and can only imagine the number of chasers that might be out on a similar day. It was just one of those days where the storm cooperated, the roads were in my favor and I didn't have to worry about giant hail.
 
To me, Kellerville is still one of the most impressive tornadic events to date. Too bad it doesn't get the credit it deserves. That's why I talk about it all the time. Lol.
 
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