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

[Robert Edmonds]

I didn't see any tornadoes. I did see some nice structure though, and some quarter sized hail. I started off sitting most of the day out in Dumas. Once the storms began I kept working south trying to get into a position where I could be on one storm while feeling comfortable that I would not be over taken by another. Once I was in Amarillo I stopped getting radar data. From there I decide to go south since I was still getting strikes data, and I could see the storm to the south. The radar came back a few minutes before, and so I began working my way around the storm. I must have come into Tulia coming from the west a few minutes after the tornado. However, I didn't see it or the damage because I didn't drive into the town I just stayed on the west side of the freeway before deciding go back to Amarillo. Infact didn't even know a tornado had actually touched down till I kept seeing allot of Emergency vehicles going south, and found some news on the radio.

 

[Zac Flamig]

I have to say on this trip we really got more than we bargained for.

We started the day at about 8AM, after a few quick stops we departed Norman for the Texas Panhandle. The initial target was Plainview but after a stop for lunch in Amarillo we modified the target to Canyon.
Upon heading to Canyon we realized that we would need a place to stop for wifi so we headed for the local Holiday Inn and Best Western. We got there to find some other friends, the TIV, a DOW, and the Discovery Channel.
So we sat around there for awhile waiting for initiation and the storms to fire. Once the storms did start going we headed for Hereford to intercept several of the cells there. Our intercept was successful and we followed the storm to the north a ways and watched it wrap up to produce this nice lowering.

However, as near as we can tell it never made it all the way to the ground so we had no confirmed tornadoes for the day. After this the lowering dissipated and we went to chase after it only to run into a hail core. We reevaluated the situation and decided to head for the southern storms instead with an attempt to intercept them at Tulia.
Here is where things started to get really ugly really fast. Getting radar updates from our lead car Gerard we knew that the storm was moving almost directly over the city and that we would not make it in time to intercept it. We continued forward in hopes of intercepting the second cell behind it. Before that could happen however we stopped to look at the hail that had fallen on the side of the road, it was in the 3" range. We weren't really all that far from Tulia when we made this stop to look at the hail and while we where stopped we heard someone call out on one of the amateur frequencies about search and rescue going on in nearby houses.
Since one of the members of our convey is an EMT in the state of Texas this became the priority and the chasing was over with for the day. Proceeding south on US 87 into Tulia we found debris in the road and downed powerlines at an intersection in the road. This is a picture I took of that intersection.

Coming across this we made contact with the deputies and first responders at the scene inquiring how we could help. They ordered us to go back north on US 87 and block the road off ahead of the first debris and wait to be relieved. We promptly carried out this task and blocked the road while watching daylight fade. We were at this location for around two hours, not all of which was time waiting to be relieved actually, they had a proper roadblock set up quickly but we were then waiting for further information on how we could assist. The decision was finally made to send us to the police headquarters in Tulia so we went there while waiting for further word.
We were waiting around for the press conference that happened that you can see in some of the video David Drummond took, we where just around the corner in the hallway from all of that actually.
Once the news conference happened contact was made with what we believed to be the Incident Commander, he quickly directed us inside towards police dispatch. Apparently the police dispatchers had been on since 3PM and were very worn out from the event and the immediate aftermath. After a quick 30 second briefing on what happened and how to manage everything, Matthew Morris, Chris Pape, Nikki Acton, Sara, James and myself basically took over the police dispatchers job of answering the phones and keeping up with radio traffic. Keep in mind that some of the group have experience in doing this so it wasn't like we got randomly pulled off the street and that the actual dispatchers were never more than a yell away. They just needed a break and some relaxation. We stuck around assisting with this from about 10PM until 3AM. Around 3:30AM we finally made it out of Tulia and headed back towards Norman. After making it to just east of Amarillo we decided it was time for a quick nap and stopped to catch some sleep in the vehicles before continuing onward towards home. We finally made it into Norman around noontime on Sunday. Even though the chase could be considered a bust we definitely got our fill of excitement.

 

[Adam Atkins]

Kiel Ortega, Tiffany Meyers and myself all started to head south towards the would-be Olton, Tulia monster when the Hereford storm went tornado warned...first mistake. Chased it to I-40 and it went to @#^! much to our dismay. So we're between tornadic storms and were very indecisive.

Ended up on a nice little LP that went up on the rear flank of the Hereford storm and it was my first tornadic LP sup, not bad for a consolation. Developed a wall cloud with very fast rotation within a span of 5 minutes or so. Followed it NNE up HW 287 north of AMA. We drove underneath the circulation after its first occlusion. A steel road sign directly out my driver's side door bent 90 degrees and paralleled the ground....this was concurrent with strong west winds, so might have been strong RFD or tornadic circulation. Saw a couple small funnels/possibly tornadoes south of Dumas after dark, then called it a day.

 

[Joey Ketcham]

Here is some video southwest of Amarillo Texas, I sped the video up..

http://www.kschaser.com/Videos/april21stwallcloud.wmv

 

[Shane Hale]

We saw a possible tornado touchdown NE of hereford texas but can not confirm it.

These are a couple videos from yesterday. Ray I think this is the lowering you guys saw we were at 1062/2943 NE of Hereford. Also are two videos from the Wayside Tornado just E. of Happy. Tony will have the full report.

http://media.putfile.com/Hereford-TX-Funnel-Cloud

http://media.putfile.com/Wayside-TX-Funnel-Cloud

http://media.putfile.com/Wayside-TX-Tornado

 

[Sam Barricklow]

Vega/Dimmit/Hereford Storms

First, congrtatulations to all who intercepted tornadoes yesterday, especially near and NE of Channing.

The Dimmit storm appeared to be going downhill as it moved over the Canadian River valley, and the Hereford storm was looking pretty good to the southeast. I assumed, incorrectly, that the Hereford storm would cut off the inflow to the Dimmit storm and become dominant. So, I left the Dimmit storm, punched through the Hereford storm's wrapping hail curtain on I40, to be treated to a rain wrapped meso that appeared to have a fairly high base. At that point, I was between storms.

Before leaving the Dimmit storm while it was still south of the Canadian River valley, I noted what appeared to be a distant tornado on either a southwest flank of the Dimmit storm, or on the flank of another storm west of the Dimmit storm. This was prior to the Dimmit storm dropping into the river valley. Also noted a 162 mph shear marker back at Vega (AP induced?), which was another reason for moving south. Highway 385 would have provided an easy path to stay with the storm, even with the fast movement NNE.

Later in the evening, I raced down highway 287 to get ahead of the Littlefield/Tulia storm. As I was eating large quantities of dust in the tremendous inflow, I noted a large, low wall cloud or tornado silhouetted by lightning that crossed the highway just west of Claude. Inching as close as possible to the passing storm, my attention was abruptly drawn to a new lowering that quickly developed almost overhead. Almost simultaneously, a shear marker appeared overhead on ThreatNet, prompting a quick retreat to the east. As the storm moved over I-40 farther NE, reports were heard of a wedge tornado and damage, followed by tornado warnings for the storm near LeFors.

Back to the Dimmit storm - I was north of 385 when the Dimmit storm moved across I40. The storm produced a large meso, with a long tail cloud, and an RFD induced collar cloud, which provided one of my few photo ops for the day. I did shoot quite a bit of video, including video of the Tulia storm as it passed over highwa 287 in a hybrid classic/HP configuration.

I had an uncomfortable feeling when the ThreatNet outage showed me how much I have come to depend upon this device for navigating close to cores.

Drove back to Garland, arriving at about 4 AM. Photos and video captures later.

 

[Alex Lamers]

Me, Sam Dienst, his girlfriend Cassie, and Brandon Smith all headed out to the Texas Panhandle. We were on the east side of Amarillo around noon and we were gonna look at wifi for a bit but we think they cut off our internet feed so we hopped on I-27 and went south to Canyon, TX which was where we wound up setting up shop until initiation. We were there for about an hour (1:30pm-2:30pm) when the DOW crew rolled up.

CU field started going up around 4pm or just after but we couldn't lock in on any particular areas of interest and decided to wait until a couple of cells got established and then head after them since we weren't in bad position at all. This happened around 5:30pm and we raced off to the southwest down Highway 60 out of Canyon towards Hereford, Texas. We got on a cell initially that looked pretty decent. It gave us great shots of the supercell on approach, beautiful looking structure with the sun just poking out the side of the anvil.

However, a storm developed to the south of Hereford and we decided to loop around the FFD of that and intercept it from the southeast on Highway 60 again. As we were underneath the anvil it produced some fairly large hail for being lofted that far away from the updraft (quarters).

We moved north to intercept on what seemed to be a good north-south road. I was in charge of navigation and radar so I got no pictures of this but Brandon Smith did and I'm sure he'll post them on here eventually. We saw a small funnel form. It at first appeared to be scud just being lifted into the cloud base but it definately turned into a cone shaped funnel with the tip nearly touching the ground based on timestamps in about a minute's time. We were surprised at how quickly the circulation got organized.

Anyways that receded into the cloud base and for the next 20 minutes funnels kept coming down and going back up into the cloud base. I think the circulations just kept occluding and it could never get anything fairly substantial established.

Headed south to try and intercept the storm headed towards Tulia then. We obviously didn't get there in time as we were approaching from the north but got a couple nice shots of the supercell as we approached from the north.

AJL

 

[Gerard Jebaily]

Here are a few images of the storm damage in Tulia. My camera batteries died on me, the spares were dead too Not to mention i couldnt film or photograph since i was busy helping.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Myself and Damon Shaw started off in Hereford with a tornado warned cell that was pretty high based. Followed it north and it began to lower and rotate. Got a possible tornado as a funnel lowered at least 75% down but could never see an actual debris whirl on the ground. Decided to go south to catch the storm that was firing near Olton. As we neared Tulia the storm showed a base but it was nothing to write home about. Got a mile or so east of Tulia and in a matter of less than 5 minutes the wall cloud went from slight rotation to a drill bit tornado. Followed the tornado north until we were stopped by downed power lines in the road. Man, what a chase! Glad to see that nobody was killed yesterday. I will be posting some damage photos in Tulia. I went to Tulia today to asess the damage with the Mets from KAMR-TV. We think it might very well be EF-3 damage in the hardest hit areas. I will be posting LOTS of damage photos later tonight on my chasenews blog. The link to the blog is at the bottom of this report.

Guess this thread drowns out all the hoopla about the moisture return!


HERE IS THE VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewAEETv-Amg


HERE ARE A FEW DAMAGE PHOTOS IN TULIA:

Like I said, many more photos will be at my chasenews website.

 

[Jimmy Deguara]

Some incredible tornadoes in Texas mentioned in this thread - what a great day for those who got onto those storms!

For those who would like to see what I was trying to comment about in my post earlier of the Colorado tornado - the following is the link:
http://australiasevereweather.com/video/movies/2007/colorado_wedge_tornado_2007.wmv

it's 23 mb so be careful

My apologies about the unedited version - I just don't have all the resources and was lucky to get that online.

Added to my observations in my first post, I am thinking that I had taken a a photograph but it may have turned out blurry of a possible satellite funnel/tornado. This developed rapidly on the western side of the major circulation. I wished I had been filming at the time. My photographs were not the best at all.

 

[Tony Cook]

Wayside tornado after dark

Departed Austin 5 a.m. with chase partner Shane Hale, aiming initially for the southern TX panhandle. Ended up in Dimmit at 4 p.m. after stops in Plainview and Tulia to observe the shallow Cu field which translated east out of the area. Around 5 p.m., cells fired just to our West, and the chase was on.

We tackled the storm that went through Hereford with a warning, then got caught between that cell and a new cell that moved up from our South. Still reviewing the footage on what happened here, but we ended up shooting west to avoid golfballs from the southern cell. It produced a couple of elevated funnels close to our location shortly thereafter, but did not look visually impressive. We decided to let it go, and to head down towards the intensifying cell that was SW of Tulia. The cell which had just pounded us with hail tightened up shortly thereafter, producing a nice wall cloud in the northern distance (pretty sure this was one of the tornado producers up near I-40, but not sure which one), but it was too far gone by then.

We dropped south to Happy, watching the Tulia cell from the North, but unaware that it was producing a destrutctive tornado. At Happy, we turned east on 1075 and waited for the Tulia cell to cross the highway in front of us. There was possibly an anticylonic flare on the Northwestern edge of the cell, and although this feature was right in front of us, low levels were obscured by heavy precip. South of this feature, cyclonic rotation developed, and a notch became evident in the reflectivity field. We waited until the core of the storm passed, and moved quickly east towards the notch.

We began to see lowerings just to the north of the highway as the last bits of daylight faded. We continued east to highway 2301 in the SW corner of Armstrong county. At 8:45 CDT, turned North on 2301, and a large tornado became apparent, illuminated by frequent lightning. We went north, and then east on 285, with the tornado persisting just to our north. At least two other lowerings approached the surface near the main tornado, and may have touched down during this time. The main tornado moved just to the east of Wayside, assuming wedge-like characteristics. At 8:55, we turned North on 207, and lost sight of the tornado as we dropped down into a canyon on the curvy highway. When we emerged from the canyon walls, the tornado was no longer visible. Believe that the circulation crossed the highway to our north several minutes later, and we were blasted by heavy rain and RFD. We stopped the chase there.

Images of the Wayside tornado, some with adjacent lowerings, taken 8:45-8:55 CDT:

​

​

Shane has also posted video from this tornado, and an earlier funnel NE of Hereford:

http://media.putfile.com/Hereford-TX-Funnel-Cloud

http://media.putfile.com/Wayside-TX-Funnel-Cloud

http://media.putfile.com/Wayside-TX-Tornado

Miles:1557
Quarts of Oil: 3
​

TonyC
​

 

[Seth Price]

I didn't get to see too much. I was rebuilding my computer and just so happened to check the SPC site around 12:30pm. We pretty much followed the back end of the squall line into TX. We did see a wall cloud along 86 between Nazareth and Tulia, but no tornado. At that point, we were just looking for a place to stay, the chase was over as it was after dark.

 

[Bill Tabor]

EDIT2: Ok latest thinking per Gene and I is the second wedge was really the Tulia wallcloud from a distance. Will have to see if our pics show any of the tornadic tendrils extending down. I tell you what that is one amazing - huge wallcloud - looks just like a wedge from a distance. Oh PS: I also verified with my gps log and the time we stopped to take pictures of that "wedge" coordinated well with the direction and time of the Tulia tornado within a few minutes. So this is likely the case.

EDIT1:
Correction to my post: After reviewing gps logs I see the tornado which started near Fieldton and ended 6 to 10 miles NE or ENE of Hilburn was on the ground for 49 minutes! Time was exactly 6:50 pm CDT to 7:39 pm CDT. Change times 38 minutes to 49 minutes below.


WOW! What an amazing day! Need I say more than this?!

On the southern primary producing storm from the get go, Gene Moore, David Douglas and I caught 3 tornadoes and possibly a 4th. There were two wedges, and one long tracked damaging tornado on the ground for approximately 38 minutes. Additionally we caught a night tornado east of Happy from 8:57 to 9:10 headed toward Wayside. This tornado had no warning on it and I don't believe is logged even though Gene called it in. After the second wedge ended west of Tulia, Gene got a shot of what appears to be the Tulia tornado but the quality is poor which would make a fourth.

Briefly, this was an exceptional exciting chase punctuated with shocking surprises. One tornado broke power poles which criss crossed the road requiring us to follow, and then smashed nearby homes - lifting the roof off of one strong brick structure. At one point near the tornado we were hammered by a strong (possibly RFD related) area of rotation / shear which side swiped the vehicle pushing the back in a brief fish tail. For a moment I thought we might overturn as it appeared a tornado was forming over us - fortunately that did not happen. We additionally had intermittent computer difficulty as the gps kept going out in the middle of the action and the radar wasn't updating. Completely lost Amarillo / Lubbock radar at one point. Compouding this as we navigated the very tornadic supercells at night, in the core we encountered a couple of road blocks in the form of an impassible muddy road and a train blocking the highway entrance which forced us to go west as a new tornadic storm was approaching from the south. The integrity of our windows got a bit dicey in the increasingly large hail, as we opted west for another road option on the flooding roadway then back east to try the other highway entrance at the Interstate.... More later.

I just got back from many many hours of driving and very tired. No pictures to post for now. Gene does have a quick one up at the moment in the meantime http://www.chaseday.com/chaseday5.htm. I believe I got a lot of the action on dashcam. Will update with pics and a more detailed account as time allows. WOW!

 

[Jenn Brindley]

Hey everyone,

Well just now getting home and had a chance to edit up some photos for you guys. I was with Tony Laubach and Jon Van De Grift - had an amazing day, followed by a sobering evening and a sobering day today. We were quite far from the tornadoes, and being slightly north-east, it was difficult to photograph (the tornadoes being rain wrapped.)

Here are a few images of the tornadoes:

And of course, clear skies shortly after... the moon was beautiful.

Jenn

 

[Dick McGowan]

Darin Brunin, Jordan Wrecke and I intercepted a beautiful supercell near Granada, CO. We are fairly certain there was a brief tornado early on, and will try and post video of it later.

All of these are shot at 10 mm, so we were closer than it appears...