Joshua Nall
EF4
Caught a weak tornado about 20 miles from my house this day. 250 miles total, intercepted 2 tornado warned storms, one or two other severe warned storms, saw one funnel, one tornado, and some nice storm stuff including interesting structure and lightning right at sunset. I've bought land and am starting on a house this year so I'll probably be picking and choosing my days more carefully. This was my first time out for supercells this year, and I wasn't planning on going out this day until about 10 AM I saw skies were clearing. Clearing skies always gets me excited over the overcast pea soup type of days, even if those days initially look more promising for tornadoes. Also storms were staying well spaced. This photo is what the updraft looked like when I first cleared the trees. At this point the storm had a strong couplet on radar.
The rotation on radar appeared to broaden and the base elongated, so that I thought it was done for the moment. But then a funnel started forming under the southern most part of the base. The tornado was about as weak as they come. I was in heavy precip with hail falling and all I had was my wide angle lens so these are poor images, cropped and contrast enhanced. If you tilt your head just right and use some imagination you can see the debris whirl under the nicely formed funnel in the first photo. I took the second photo after seeing the debris whirl again, but the funnel had lost some of its form. The official track length was 40yds and width was 20yds. It appears it did travel further than 40yds, but the path was over mostly crop land. On a personal note, I have been traveling out to this area along the Red River for many years for storm observation, years before I started making trips to the plains, and have always wanted to catch a tornado crossing through there somewhere. This is the first.
These others were later on at sunset.
The rotation on radar appeared to broaden and the base elongated, so that I thought it was done for the moment. But then a funnel started forming under the southern most part of the base. The tornado was about as weak as they come. I was in heavy precip with hail falling and all I had was my wide angle lens so these are poor images, cropped and contrast enhanced. If you tilt your head just right and use some imagination you can see the debris whirl under the nicely formed funnel in the first photo. I took the second photo after seeing the debris whirl again, but the funnel had lost some of its form. The official track length was 40yds and width was 20yds. It appears it did travel further than 40yds, but the path was over mostly crop land. On a personal note, I have been traveling out to this area along the Red River for many years for storm observation, years before I started making trips to the plains, and have always wanted to catch a tornado crossing through there somewhere. This is the first.
These others were later on at sunset.
