4/21/07 REPORTS: TX / KS / NE / CO

[Billy Griffin]

Great Day!

Wow... that about sums it up for me today! I played it solo today, just enjoying time out on the plains and chasing after almost two years away.
I had my eye on this system from the get-go. I noticed the Gulf of Alaska origin, and was able to track its progress while flying between Seattle and OK City all week.

Although I am very sad to have witnessed the damage, I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to chase today, and to catch up with some old friends along the way.

I targeted the northern TX panhandle, and it turned out a good call. It seemed like every cell I was on was dropping one or more tornadoes! I can't recall having that kind of luck in the past, that's for sure! The first tornado was near Channing, followed by two on the ground (at the same time) just west of Dumas, followed by a large wedge east of Dumas, followed by a brief tornado near Lake Meredith, followed by two night tornadoes south of Sunray! Photos posted below are actually video captures.

Tornado #1... view from approximately 7 miles east of Channing, TX.

Tornado #2... multi-vortex stage southwest of Dumas, TX.

Tornado #3... small tornado with violent motion! Approximately 8 miles west of Dumas.
Tornadoes #2 and #3 were observed at the same time!

Tornado #4... rope tornado just east of Four Way (south of Dumas).
This one died rather quickly, but the wedge soon appeared afterwards.

Tornado #5... violent wedge east of Dumas, TX.

Tornadoes 6 & 7 were observed at night, so consequently, no video.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I went out towards AMA with Brandon, Gabe, and a several others this afternoon. It's almost 3am, so I won't say much other than give anyone a guess as to say that we ended up with a total tornado count of .... zero. The targeted storms SW of AMA, in the Hereford area. With each new cell that went up in this area and moved NNE, a new cell would develop to its SSW and collide with it. We witnessed at least two such collisions. Each time, we waited a little longer for the southernmost cell to come into view, thinking that the tail-end charlie (locally, at least, since there were more cells to the NW and W of LUB ) was the best bet given uninterrupted inflow. We did experience incredible inflow south of Bushland with a developing supercell that, of course, was heavily disrupted by developing convection to its south-southwest.

With radar looking like everything was congealing N of I40 with widespread initiation in a very linear manner, we opted to stay with a LPish cell that crossed N of I40 w of AMA near Bushland. Of course, while this was occurring, the cells that we watched earlier in the afternoon (one that passed very near Vega, and another that passed between AMA and Vega, the one that on which we experienced amazing inflow) discretized from the mess N of I40, and both went on to produce tornadoes (I believe). Meanwhile, it was getting to be 7pm, and we know we couldn't make it south to the Tulia cell before nightfall. So, we stayed with the LP storm in hopes that it too would become tornadic, but that was not to be the case (before nightfall, at least). In utter frustration, we dropped that storm and headed home in a manner that would allow us to experience the Tulia supercell as it crossed I40 near Groom. While in Groom, we noted very intense convergence (with a large area of >71kt inbound velocities on BV1), and a tight circulation soon developed very nearby. We busted east towards 70, and started heading north towards Pampa. At one time, SRV1 indicated a very intense, very tight circulation west of Hwy 70, between Groom and Pampa. Alas, as we approached this circulation, it weakened. Again, admitting the Mother Nature defeated us, we limped home.

Ugh. This day was so bad all I can do is laugh. We were on 3 storms during the afternoon and evening. Each storm had looked decent in it's initial stages, before more convection kept developing to the immediate SSW. EAch time this occurred, we turned our hopes to the new tail-end charlie (local, again, but there was a decent gap between the Oilton / Tulia cell and the cell(s) we were on). And each time, despite mergers and the abundance of nearby convection, the cell we left developed strong rotation and (again, if I've followed the warnings correctly) produced a tornado (or tornadoes) N of I40. Meanwhile, Gabe and I both had original targets in the Silverton to Plainview area that we had for the past couple of days, a target that would have allowed us to observe the tornadic supercell that roamed to the W and N of that area. Instead, we modified our target slightly based on fears of strong capping possibly inhibiting convection S of I40 (as the various RUC runs indicated), as well as fears over high LCLs. In addition, I believe the more recent NAM runs showed the best low-level shear near I40 through afternoon. So, with all that, we opted to stay near AMA. Bad choice. At least I can hang my hopes on the potential for two high-end severe weather days in the offiing...

I'm very curious as to why the cell we were on from Bushland to Marsh (and, eventually, east of Dumas) didn't really do much until near sunset as it approached Moore county... This storm was the local tail-end charlie, with it's inflow only interrupted by a dissipating left-split that was thrown of the Tulia cell. Structure was okay from time to time, but it was extremely disappointing to know that we left at least 2 supercells that would later produce substantial tornadoes.

Congrats to those who scored (sounds like almost everyone but us). It's been quite a 1-month stretch for western Texas and the TX panhandle region, and there's the potential for a similar event Monday.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

Got to Plainview around 2 pm after taking the scenic route across SW Oklahoma. I sat around there till 5pm with my g/f, Dave Haas, and Ryan Jarratt. I felt the southern Panhandle had the best chance for seeing something, so we stuck it out in Plainview most the aftternoon to take advantage of the EV-DO through my phone there. We moved west on initial development and realized the storms headed to Hereford could not be caught from where we were at, so we turned south and picked up the best one coming from west of the Lubbock region (my best decision of the day).

When we first saw the rain free base near Littlefield, it was nothing special. It stayed this way for 20 or 30 minutes when out of nowhere the storm seemed to stop moving for 10 minutes and exploded one of the best structures I have ever seen. It also sucked up more dirt off those fields around there than i though was possible. We stayed with the storm all the way to Claude. We are thinking we saw atleast 3 or 4 tornadoes with one after dark near Wayside. Almost made a major mistake towards the end of the first tornado (Olton) after going down a very muddy road since I didnt see many other options that might keep us with the storm. Baseball size hail helped me keep from getting stuck. My jeep was covered completely in mud by the time we saw pavement again. It was really stupid initially, but we ended up with a great view of the Olton tornado roping out. Had a few focusing issues with my camera today. All the dust being sucked up by the storm didnt help that any, but overall another very exciting chase.

Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk3K2x3YgeM

Here are the pics:

SE of Wayside looking NW

 

[Gerard Jebaily]

Congrats to those who scored (sounds like almost everyone but us). It's been quite a 1-month stretch for western Texas and the TX panhandle region, and there's the potential for a similar event Monday.

Jeff, your's and Gabe's day sounds suprisingly familiar to ours. A good many of us from OU made our way to amarillo, then to canyon to start the day. We met up with a few others along the way. You played the situation exactly the same, you even intercepted the same storms we were in the same area. We both witnessed exactly the same frustrating situation. We however let go of our north targets early after being cut off from a hail core to our north, and a muddy east road option, and loosing one of our vehilcles in our convoy.
We ended up headind down to tulia and arriving instantly after the tornado had struck. Our goal was to try to catch the tail end of that massive storm and possibly wait for the next one to come through which was takign a similar path and intensifying in strength. The hail core had jus passed and we caught the last bits of it with some smaller hail. We stopped and picked up quite a few large stones (3 inch +) and made our way into tulia to intercept the second storm aimed to take the same direction as the first. As we neared Tulia, we heared that there was massive damage and we went in to offer any assistance possible. The poor town jus got nailed right in the center of town.
We ended the day late and its 530 am and i jus arrived home. I wanted to let you know quickly that you were not the only one who got a zero tornado count for the day. However we saw plenty of spectacular storms, so im not too disapointed in it. But it was jus one of those "unlucky" days for many people, and in many many respects.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

I just now returned home, I'm tired so keeping it short.

We stayed with a storm with rapid rotation that did produce a funnel a time or two, it never dropped. We got screwed at the end, we got stuck in Amarillo behind the storms as they were to our east, southeast with many reports of tornadoes, wall clouds, and very large hail.

 

[Craig Maire II]

Yesterday

After 2 days of driving I'm VERY tired and still am going to chase today in northeast Kansas or southeast Nebraska but here is what I saw yesterday:

1. Wall clouds and great storm structure
2. 3 tornados (2 on the ground at the same time near Dumas)
3. Watched the large tornadic supercell cross the road north of Dumas along highway 287 (had to pull over) and was amazed to see all the tumble weeds in the area "run" towards the storm!
4. Saw a nice funnel cloud form northeast of Cactus Texas
5. Saw a large amount of damage in the Cactus Texas area

 

[Tony Laubach]

A difficult chase to say the least, but all thing's considered, it was worth-while!

Short and sweet on this report as my video and stills weren't the greatest. My crew (Jon, Jenn, and Ed) along with Verne and sons headed into AMA from the east as storms began to fire. We let several storms north of 40 go as we positioned north of AMA to get on storms coming up from the south. We got on our first storms as they were flying north/northeast. We saw our first two tornadoes from the storm southwest of Channing from FM2202 in Bautista near a house with a scared sheep (it was baaaing away behind us). It was here where we met with Tyler and chased with him the remainder of the day.

Verne and sons shot west on 354 while we continued north into Dumas, stopping for a quick top-off before heading east on 152. Our goal at this point was to get east then south to get on the next group of storms, but the storm we were trying to leave dropped another tornado on the west side of Dumas which later became the Cactus wedge. We filmed it for a bit and sat as that tornado disappeared in the rain. We then witnessed our forth and final tornado which from our view looked pretty weak, but turned out to be the long snakey rope tornado.

We stairstepped east and north through Sunray into McKibeen and finally stopped at the 520/207 junction southwest of Spearman to try and get a view of the tornatic storm we raced to get out of the way of. Reports of a tornado with this storm, but again, we were probably too far east to see it.

While we missed the biggest shows of the day from being as far east as we were, we spared ourselves the issues of trying to drive through the damage paths near Cactus and obviously stayed clear of the worst of the storms. Speed, direction, and how the storms were clustered made this a difficult chase to say the least. Even as I didn't score the best vids or stills on this chase, I consider myself lucky to have bagged 4 tornados on this day, regardless how far away we were.

I'll probably turn the keys over to Jon for part of the trip home and crank out my log from there. Nothing great to post in terms of stills as most of the better shots went to the photographers of the group, Jon and Jenn.

Great chase overall considering how things worked out. Feels more like an appetizer to the upcoming days in the Plains. My heart goes out to those in Tulia and Cactus who were hit pretty hard last night. Two chases in Texas in which, as Eric N says, came out to be pretty sobering.

Random stats...

3/3 on Texas trips this season (2/23, 4/13, 4/21) and 4 of my last 4 trips to Texas have ended with at least one tornado (including 5/5/06).
Today's tornado count was 4 which brings my season up to 6 and career up to 56.

Our third tornado looking west from just east of Dumas on 297.

 

[Jim Bishop]

I ended up on the Hereford storm like many others. I was originally on the storm just to it's north-northwest. But I saw a large inflow band to my south, along with the north side of a crisp updraft. I got a hold of Arron Ruppert and in the 10 second cell connection he had, he told me that storm was south and slightly east of my cell. So I dove south towards Hereford and stopped in Dawn (60/809). (I saw the DOW and some film crew too).

This storm look absolutely amazing - simply incredible structure. I repositioned to 1062/809. Within 15 min it had a rapidly rotating wall cloud and funnel. Out of nowhere this feature died. I went north on 809 along with the 30 other chasers I saw. It seemed a new meso rapidly developed to the north-northeast, but it was rain-wrapped. I can only assume this is where the possible rain wrapped tornado occurred. At the same time another storm was forming on this ones flanking line, and I guess that's why it didn't produce a tornado at that time.

I punched through some hail, go to I-40, went about 1 mile east and was just south of a new wall cloud. That's that last good feature I saw from this storm until near dark. Meanwhile the Amarillo radio had live coverage of the tornadoes occurring in the Dumas & Tulia areas. I had no data and it was already almost 8pm, so diving south or gunning it north was pointless.

So a very frustrating chase indeed, and it sounds like many others share my frustration. However if I had data at my fingertips I probably could have dove south towards the Tulia storm and got a tornado. So I think I am either going to purchase Threatnet with a credit card, or have a dedicated nowcaster for any chase I go on from now on. I dedicate too much time, money and energy on chasing only to miss tornadoes, laregly due to no data when it counts.

 

[Brian Stertz]

One tornado and one mean hail encounter

Short Summary:

Chased the first tornado warned supercell near Dawn and it had a nice funnel that never could connect. That supercell raced north, and we intercepted the next t-warned supercell that came out of the Hereford area. It seemed very stretched out and failed to organize sufficiently to produce a tornado. I am wondering if this one was underneath the main jet core as stretched out as it appeared. Our last chance was to get on the tornadic supercell that was moving out of the Hart-Edmonson area. We decided to make the run for it as it represented our last chance for a daylight score. We dropped south on I-29 and a few miles past Happy, we headed dead long into the severe bear's cage. Tennis ball and almost softball hail severely pounded us for about 10 mins. as the tornado moved across the north part of Tulia. We finally got into view of the tornado and could see it doing the damage through the rain and hail. The fairly large tornado (probably on the order of 300-400 yds. wide and multiple vortex) moved northeast from Tulia and copious amts. of debris started to "rain" out on us. We watched the tornado from the distance as it moved towards Wayside and into the Palo Duro Canyon area. We certainly paid the price for the tornado score, but got the tornado before dark so the frustrating day was a bit more satisfying. Thanks to Jeff Piotrowski for his updates from the field.

 

[Jimmy Deguara]

I guess i can only say I got the one tornado in Colorado - it seems like it had large or wedge status. Sorry I can only see what was on the view finder. The storm scale rotation of what eventually turned HP and rainwrapped the tornado was incredible! Despite its rapid motion reported at (60 miles per hour but slowed to 45 miles/hr), I felt it dragging E to even NE winds toward the notch. The location of this tornado was perhaps 5miles SW of Granada, CO and I guess SE of Lamar.

This chased turned out to be very difficult given I was chasing alone. At one stage I lost data whilst I was playing the notch - this forced me to stay ahead and away from my plan unfortanately of heading S with the line. I am still happy that I have got my first tornado for 2007.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Me and my crew were on the storm in Baca county, CO that was TOR warned. We may have POSSIBLY seen the tornado that was reported 8 miles SE of Campo. We were for sure we saw a funnel, but we are unclear if there was debris on the ground. We unfortunetly got caught with no road options east which forced us into the core. The core consisted mainly of nickel sized hail, but came down intensly. Then, Wx Worx went down while in the middle of the core. We finally made it out as the storm lined out as we were treated to an awesome lightning display.

Very pissed we missed the TX Panhandle tornadoes as we ate lunch in Dumas, but stupidly thought a northern play would be better.

Let this be a lesson for all of you, never leave your original target.

 

[Zac Goode]

Wow what a day!!!! Saw a few tors . The first was near Channing I believe. The second was the monster near dumas. The third one snuck up on us and was quite scary. I believe we were near sunray. Heres a couple of pics.

 

[James Siler]

ME and my chasing partners ,Sergio B. and Jason H. experinced like Jeff S. nothing in the way of tornado's. How ever did see several funnels but unsure if any ever made contact with the ground. From Jeff's report it sounds like me and him were genrally thinking the same way today. We got on the storm thatwould pass west of Bushland as it tried to produce. While driving through Bushland they were blowing the sirens. Followed north on 2381 merging into 1061. After all that had fell apart decided to turn around and drop south to try and race to the Tulia storm but heading back south encounterd a hail shaft on a developing storm that then forced me to seek shelter under a train bridge. Got some new dents now!
After getting back to I-40 we hauled it east bound junctoning on to 287 souteast to Claude. We headed on to Goodnight due to the warning had been dropped.We took 294 north to Groom were just about a mile SW of Groom we pulled over and watched an area that would again become warned. We saw a very large cone shaped lowering slowly becoming visiable in the rain moving out of the SW towards what appeared to be our genral direction. Decided to repostion and while entering Groom noticed the lights flickering until they went out. Didn't see any power flash's. Headed east on the I-40 service road till we got to Hwy 70 north to Pampa. W parked on the bridge over I-40 behind a Texas trooper until we decided to head back home due to if there was someting NW of us on the ground it was rain wrapped and didn't want to take that chance. Hopeing to have the time and money to chase on Tuesday. Have a great day everyone.

 

[Glenn Dixon]

I am posting this as a form of therapy. It's whiney. You've been warned.

First, let me just say that I am VERY glad to hear that Eric and Amos escaped with their lives. That's some scary **** there! Outlaw chasers should take note.

Second, when you see a radar image of a generally north/south line of storms in the TX panhandle, go south (if you can) until you see clear skies. Many saw tornadoes north of I-40 today but the odds say you'll generally be teased (and hailed on) until you realize it is too late to catch the storm(s) with unrestricted inflow south of you.

Third, nothing add insult to injury on a busted chase day like a squall line following you home, trying to blow you off the road, drown you and generally making life miserable.

Fourth, cute video of golf ball sized hail bouncing in the grass won't ease your pain the next day.

ok, that's all.......

 

[Michael Carlson]

Witnessed 5 tornadoes yesterday from the supercell that formed near Channing, TX, moved west of Dumas, TX, with my dad Verne Carlson and my brother Eric Carlson. I took some stills but mainly focused on video here is some of the shots I got.

Chase Report 4/21/07