4/22/10 REPORTS: CO/TX/KS

[Charles Kuster]

I chased in the Texas Panhandle yesterday with Stephen Jones, Brian Squitieri, and Travis Darling. We initially targeted Clarendon, Texas and arrived in the area just after 2:00pm CDT. Storms initiated at about 2:20pm CDT in eastern Armstrong County. In response, we moved to near Ashtola, Texas and watched the storm slowly organize as it moved to the NNW.

Soon after, the storm became tornado warned as we moved northward on highway 70. The first tornado touched down at approximately 5:17pm and lasted for 2 minutes. This tornado quickly dissipated and the storm produced another tornado at about 5:23pm CDT which lasted 6 minutes. While watching this tornado, we noticed another tornado well off to the southwest near Goodnight, Texas. We dropped south to near Howardwick, Texas where we watched it rope out at about 5:42pm CDT after being on the ground for about 20 minutes.

Picture of the tornado west of Jericho, Texas. This was taken at 5:22pm CDT from 11.5 miles N of Clarendon and is looking NW.

Same location and tornado as above picture. Taken at 5:21pm CDT.

We then moved north to Jericho, Texas where we watched the Goodnight supercell slowly rotate before moving east to reposition on the storm. Route 291 out of Alanreed, Texas presented a decent northward road option which allowed us to move about 3 miles north of the Interstate. From this vantage point (about 3 miles NW of Alanreed) we observed the storm as it produced a small tornado that lasted from 6:33pm CDT to 6:39pm CDT. Shortly after, a violently rotating wall cloud produced a multi-vortex tornado at approximately 6:40pm CDT. At about 6:45pm, the RFD arrived with 60+mph winds forcing us back south to I-40.
This video shows the tornado NNW of Alanreed, TX. It was taken between 6:40pm CDT and 6:42pm CDT from 3 miles NW of Alanreed and is looking west. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwzmA1Rq4AA

Overall, it was an incredible day which included five tornadoes over open country, 1.75” hail, and strong RFD winds. Congrats to all who saw storms yesterday!

Other Pictures:
http://i43.tinypic.com/wlun14.jpg Picture of early statges of storm taken at 4:45pm CDT and is looking west from 1.5 miles South of Ashtola.
http://i41.tinypic.com/knp53.jpg Goodnight tornado. Picture taken at 5:33pm CDT from 11.5 miles north of Clarendon, TX and is looking SW.
http://i43.tinypic.com/10dgq5v.jpg Goonight tornado roping out. Picture taken at 5:41pm CDT from 1 mile north of Howardwick, TX and is looking W.

 

[Andrew Ryan]

Don't have much to add to what everyone else has said. I was basically making circles around Groom, TX and Alanreed, TX and intercepted the supercells as they made their way through there.

After the storms started to go linear, we dropped south to target the storms around Childress.

Here's some video of one of the first tornadoes near Groom, TX:

 

[Mike Parker]

I chased the Texas Panhandle yesterday with Charles King and his son Austin. We left Gainesville, TX at 9:30am with an initial target of Childress.

We ended up northwest of there in Clarendon with a gazillion others. While most went north we stayed on 287 and waited on the southern cell. It walled up nicely and like you have already read, it produced and eventually crossed 287 near Goodnight, TX. It was a true beauty and honestly I feel truly lucky to have filmed it. This was Charles and Austins first tornado and it was a great one to cut their teeth on. I have a few more pics on my Facebook page and will have video up later.

Edit: Added video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wTi15n00tU&feature=player_embedded#!

A few pics:

 

[Jason Boggs]

Finally got my video up from yesterday. The video is at the intersection of I-40 and Hwy. 70 south. Tornado is to the SW. Oh, by the way, I was in Lanny Dean's video! I didn't know it was Lanny that was saying that. I thought I had accidentally stepped in front of someone that was taking video. Lanny said it again and I looked up and he was filming me. You'll get the idea when you see the video.

TORNADO VIDEO

 

[Gabe Garfield]

Looking at some of the pics on this thread, my summary/vid/pic will be a real yawner. Same story as most, so I hope the following isn't too redundant:

My brother, two others, and I started our drive in Norman around 12:30 p.m. Our target was the Childress area, so we made our way down I-44 and west on HW 62. In Altus, we realized storms were beginning to fire a little north of our target, so we decided to hedge northward. We intercepted the northern storm just northwest of Clarendon and saw two tornadoes. The motion was, as Robin mentioned, fairly lazy. While the second tornado was still in progress, I was shocked to see a nice cone/stovepipe tornado develop to our southwest. (This was the first time I've ever seen simultaneous tornadoes from different storms.) At any rate, we followed the southern storm and watched it produce two more tornadoes (for a grand total of 5 for the day). We tried to go after the Paducah storms, but couldn't get a decent internet connection, so we maintained a safe distance from the storms (we learned later we were only a few miles from seeing large tornadoes).

Tornado Video

 

[Danny Neal]

Recap of what I think may have been 6+ tornadoes with those storms.

Tornado #1 and #2 MAY have been the same tornado. Although to me from my vantage point it seemed like #1 produced a 30 second spin up before the wall cloud cycled and another circulation developed further to the NE where we noticed another funnel coming down. I thought it was different circulations but it could very well have been the same one. So for arguments sake I am just going to call it ONE long lived tornado that lasted probably 10 minutes.

A couple minutes later .....

Just after tornado #1/2 lifted another beautiful tornado dropped out of a rapidly rotating wall cloud.

While tornado #4 was already ongoing with the storm to the SW

Tornado #5 we did NOT capture on film due to driving on I-40\

Tornado #6 was multivortex and rotating with extreme motions.

Tornado #7 started just to our NE, NW of Alanreed.

I've heard people claim this was a tornado, but was unable to confirm, if it was it would be 8 but I am going with 6-7 tornadoes yesterday.

*** I know I posted in the thread earlier but couldn't edit it *** I would love to hear what others thought about the actual number of tornadoes. I see a lot of people with 2-3 tornadoes and others with 7-8. Join me in the discussion thread and we can sort it out : )

 

[terra seright]

Very Nice!

Nice job, everyone. It was a really fun night! I got pix on my Droid phone, and a bit of video. Everyone else has much better, though I am happy with my shots of the TIV and Dominator. I loved the action over Lake McClellan...that was wicked!

I pretty much saw everything that y'all Tx chasers are reporting, so I don't plan to repeat any of it lol. I did get spoken to in a very crappy way by one of the DPS officers out there who obviously didn't understand the dynamics of a 200 car convoy...

I would also like to note that the crumpled bumper on my truck is still there, even with the huge audience...it didn't get knocked off!! Not one accident that I am aware of, though I heard that many got stuck in the mud at Groom.

What a great evening!!

 

[Brandon Lawson]

I don't really have much to add that people haven't already mentioned... saw a bazillion tornadoes, funnels everywhere, skittles falling from the sky, and subway on the way home. Brett Roberts and I headed out around 11:00am and took the long route from Norman, through Altus, up to Headley, and then up to McLean. Sat around for about 30 minutes and then went west on I-40 right when the storms got going.

Got under the updraft base on what some people have referred to as "storm A" and watched a couple of tornadoes, only to have the storm turn right and shift it's core on top of everybody. I think my car was the only car to have a window (rear windshield) completely blown out by the hail, out of a line of what had to have been 50+ cars. I was like, "how is that possible?"

I've never had a window completely destroyed and for the first 20 minutes, I was trying to figure out whether or not I would have to call the chase off or not. I didn't want glass flying out of my car into the road or excessive amounts of rain falling into my backseats. But after brushing all the broken glass into my backseat, the air flow over my car, while driving, kept everything inside. We even got stuck in the squall line for about 20 minutes and I don't think a drop of rain got in. Was great.

Anyway, I haven't even looked at my video from the day. I think I wasn't paying attention to what I was filming when the tornadoes were on the ground. I was too busy enjoying the tubes with my eyes.

Here is my rear-windshield though...

 

[Brian Emfinger]

Much of the same story here. Here is the tornado from I-40 near Boydston.

and video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jypf76PTneIhttp://realclearwx.com/images/2010/042210st01.jpg

I was dissapointed I didnt get any great pictures/video of the tornado. My best stuff was slightly out of focus. No doubt due in part to not being able to see properly out of my right eye (it was nearly swollen shut) and I am now in the hospital b/c of it.

 

[terra seright]

Brandon, I passed by you in the white Nissan Pathfinder while you were on the side of the road, right after your had your window blown out. I experienced no hail. We saw the hail on the ground out there where everyone stopped and turned around, but not one stone hit my truck.

(Some smartasses might say that's what you get for going out in a Honda sedan, but this smartass is on break today)

 

[Ben_Jacobi]

Jason Brock, Jeremy Wilson, Brandon Samson and I chased the Goodnight/Clarendon storms. Here is my favorite for the day the Goodnight, TX tornado. You can see more on my photoblog. Congrats to all the chasers out there.

-Ben

http://www.photographybybenjacobi.blogspot.com

 

[Michael O'Keeffe]

Here is the video of the Friend, KS tornadoes with the video of the Deerfield, KS tornado still uploading. Anyway I also included several video stills.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UILtV1b2xo - Deerfield, KS Tornado
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmWBGMBkeCg - Friend, KS Tornadoes

 

[Ric Burney]

I got a few pics from Goodnight and I-40 storms. Compared to others my report is quite tame. The days report w/ a few pics can be found here:
http://www.wxdallas.com/wx04222010.html

 

[Steve Worthington]

We tagged this tornado on the back side of the Lakin KS cell.
Most chasers headed north leaving this cell behind for reasons I don`t understand?
I guess they wernt watching the sky?
I will have some other video uploaded (some time today) of the "mad rotation" we saw in town earlier in the day. 2100 mile 3 day chase has now come to a close and we feel every mile was worth the time spent as we saw some of the most amazing storm structures in the last 3 days.

Enjoy the Video because we sure did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDuWCH0kiuo

 

[Rob H]

This was not a bust for us, but definitely not the 5-7 tubes that many others saw. James Seitz, myself, and two others drove down from MN and woke up in St. Johns, KS with only 3 hours of poor sleep. We couldn't decide on CO/KS border or Childress, TX as an initial target and decided to hang out near Liberal, KS to see where we should head. We ended up stuck in the middle with not much going on and teased by a few wall clouds.

Met a few other chasers and saw a surprise funnel touch down briefly in between Beaver and Booker, OK in the middle cell of a pack of three that just didn't look like it was going to do anything. Then we watched the tail end cell try really hard, but ultimately fail.

We almost made it down in time to see the tornado just south of Childress, but the lack of light and the rain caused us to miss seeing anything more than a large wall cloud. Feeling the strong inflow and watching the lightning show were worth it though.