4/23/08 REPORTS: TX/OK/KS/CO/NE/MO

[Dann Cianca]

First chase of the year and first severe weather in Colorado!

Chased with:
Cameron Redwine (Driver)
Kendell LaRoche
Cutler Gosbin

Left school at 2:30 (Metro State in Denver) and blew east as fast as possible. Dryline moved a little farther to the east than I expected which worried me.

There was some convection on the eastern horizon but it was misleading ... very high based, just on the dryline. We started to get a little anxious. Heading east on US 36, we passed through the dryline and noticed a cell going up to our south. Just then, an outflow boundary from Kansas moved west and amped up the storm, setting off more storms to the north.

When the Stratton storm went tornado-warned, we were on the NW side ... so we hurried east and went south out of Idalia. Luckily, it slowed down and we were able to get through the light precip and massive dust being kicked up by the inflow.

Heading west on dirt, we parked for pictures and saw the Carlsons (Michael and Eric), Jon Van de Grift, and Ryan Shepard all flew past. We continued on and saw a beautiful meso:

We saw a funnel-like appendage higher up ... but it was probably just some scud and I did not get a picture of it. It was definitely not on the base.

The meso weakened but the storm still was taking a lot of inflow. We got into a nice hailcore and were taking on mostly quarters, but a few 1.5"ers.

Storms weakened after that point. We did follow one briefly into far west Kansas and Nebraska just looking for some nice sunset shots and then headed home.



...

No tornado, but a great first chase of the year. Felt great to be out!

Thanks to Cameron for driving!

 

[Paul Redmond]

I too got stuck in the I20 crunch trying to intercept the cluster north of stephenville. My mistake was heading too far west before I realized my mistake. I eventually made a u turn and headed east and north on 16 into Palo Pinto county. Again I was too late and ended up behind the cluster. Throwing caution to the wind I drove east on 180 hoping to core punch. A vain hope in hindsight. With all the rain and ponding on the road, I made slow progress into Mineral Wells. Heading south on 281, my last hope was to intercept and area of radar indicated rotation along the Erath Palo Pinto line and there my luck changed for the better. Its seems that I had just arrived in the wake of the Palo Pinto tornado as it dissipated. I saw some considerable tree damage on 281 where it crossed and an area of clear rotation and a possible funnel to the east. For a few blessed moments it was clear despite the driving rain, and then sadly it became hopelessly rain wrapped. Radar updates showed a persistent area of rotation for some time after too. Since it was almost dark at that point. I headed south on 281 into Stephensville and ran into quarter sized hail. By 9 Pm I heard about new severe storm warnings in norther Hamilton co around Hico, but I had had enough for one day and kept heading home, and even managed to avoid accidently turning onto 183 in Lampassas. Joy.

I have not reviewed the video yet, but I think it was worth the trip.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

Arrived a bit later than I would like, but met up with the western cell just as it got to Lemesa. The wall of dirt was fun to drive through, especially when you could get hit by a gustnado at any moment. Saw a possible funnel SE of Lemesa, but was trying to get back out in front of the storm and couldn't take a picture due to all the dirt. The storm looked really good till it collapsed near I-20. Decent chase, just should have left sooner.

 

[sdienst]

-Mods, can't edit last post with pictures-

Here are a few video stills from the tornado southeast of Lamesa, TX. I was on just west of FM 26 looking back towards 137. It was on the ground for about 4.5 minutes.

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

Finally catching up on doing a summary for this chase. Out of the near 500 miles we drove this day, about 460 miles of it was rather uneventful, the other 40?...

Charles Edwards, Michael Ratliff, Chris Sokol and myself left Yukon, OK at 1300cdt and targeted the area below the SPS area down to ABI. We left a little later than we wanted to due to other commitments I had.
Once near SPS, I knew that the action going on north of ABI was interceptable, so off we went toward the hinterlands south of Seymour. The thick, bubbling underbelly of the anvil from the cells to our south made for an unusual look to everything, quite dark and ominous. It wasn't until around 1645cdt that things started to get interesting. South of Throckmorton on Hwy 183/283 toward Albany (about 15mi. north) was the core of the storm visible off to the southwest. Intense staccato cg's were blistering the ground every 15 seconds or so. The winds, which were very light and variable before, were now picking up out of the NE at 15-25mph. Light rain from the anvil started to fall. About 10mi. north of Albany, the cg's increased to about one every 5-10 seconds and hitting within a mile of the vehicle. It was some of the wildest lightning I've seen in the last few years.

We just barely made it to Albany when the storm started to overtake us. I had a strong feeling that going east on Hwy 180 at that time was very risky, but Charles assured us that we could beat it just in time.
Heavy rain with some scattered large hail began to pelt us. Winds were gusting hard out of the NW to about 45mph. At aprox. 1730cdt, we were just about 5mi. east of Albany, maybe not even that far, the front of what I thought was a low hanging shelf cloud was just to our east, but the core still looked to be closing in on us. At this moment, either Chris or Michael noted a very suspicious area just off to our north. Just then, the winds VERY ABRUPTLY backed to the south and increased rapidly. I then noticed a descending multi vortex tornado literally within a hundred yards to our north. Charles later said it was more like a HUNDRED FEET. What looked like vapour and atomized rain blew by us restricting visibility to the point I could barely discern where the road was. My heart racing and my prayer life in overdrive... I punched the accelerator and drove as fast as I could to get east as the tornado crossed just behind the van. Winds at the peak I estimated was in excess of 80mph. Chris swore the van was being swerved sideways, I could'nt tell, all I was focusing on was living to tell about this close encounter and getting out of the way of this whirling dervish. After about 20 seconds, the visibility cleared, winds backed to the northeast then north. Michael and Chris were coming out of their skins in excitement as they witnessed a partially rain wrapped tornado on the ground moving from north to south into the mesquite bush. Charles convinced me after a mile or two it was safe to stop. Briefly... we did, I was still trying to catch my breath, I was still a little too freaked out to get out and see what they were seeing.. We continued on to Breckenridge by 1800cst. where we allowed the storm to pass over.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, barely severe criteria. hail maybe to marble size and winds to about 40mph at our location. It was very dark and there were lots of cg's, but nothing extraordinary.. and after my near heart attack earlier... I did'nt mind. After about 1815cdt, we ventured back west to see where their was damage. Remarkably, very little accept further down Hwy 180 past where we saw the tornado there was some tin wrapped around the fence. For all I know, that could have been from previous storms. At the location where the tornado crossed... no visible damage at all. Those mesquite trees can take a licking I guess. The only other eventful part of the trip was wondering if we were going to get back due to transmission problems. Charles's van would not get out of third gear ontil we got back to Seymour. Then afterwards, we gased up, let the van cool down for a few minutes, and we were fine.

Looking back on this, that experience near Albany was the most frightening moments I've ever had chasing. I'm sure many on this forum have had similar close encounters in the past and I'm sure most were unintentional like our situation was. I do wish we were monitoring NOAA WX radio more, because a TOR warning for was issued for our location just three minutes prior to our close call, probably about the time we were on the east side of Albany. I surely would have shut it down and rode it out back in town had I known about this given the fact that this as a typical HP beast with potential rain wrapped tornadoes. Like many other folks, I'm not overly fond of chasing in this area of Texas, but still it was an experience that will be etched in my mind forever. I do want to say that Charles Edwards is one of the finest chasers I've ever been with. I think his call to head east was a good one, had we done it about a minute sooner.

Below is a link to the video that Charles posted on his Cloud 9 site. Two things to note, it doesn't look near as bad as it really was. It was much darker and the visibility was down to literally yards as we were in the inflow jet. The audio... well, I'm sure your sides will get a workout from the laughter you'll have. Yeah.. I did freak out a little... okay, maybe alot but by golly I did keep the van on the road and we lived ... to chase another day.


http://www.cloud9tours.com/bear/video.html click on the April 23rd link.

 

[scott r currens]

Bob Fritchie, Amos Magliocco and I observed several supercells along the outflow boundary from Lamesa to Snyder, TX.
Click here to see all my images from the chase.

First tornado west of Snyder, TX at 2:34 PM.

Second tornado entering southern portions of Snyder, TX.

 

[Bill Tabor]

Full Report: My forecast target for the day was just north of the Abilene, Tx area. As I recall I expected convection to begin early in the day, but I didn’t think conditions were really conducive for tornadoes until nearly the 20z to 0z based on somewhat poor wind conditions until that time. I got out fairly early for the drive. I believe I left about 11:00am. I thought that was reasonable given the expected winds until later. I took my time on the way up even getting a Starbucks coffee in Brownwood - LOL. Somewhere around that time, it became apparent that the real stuff was starting to kick off, so I raced north to Abilene and then further north up hwy 83/277 toward Anson. I arrived at Anson at 3:54 CDT and it was already apparent there was a huge storm inbound from the west. There was also another cell further to the west at the time. I immediately went north of town and was streaming video with my new Sierra Wireless card and Millenicom service. I had trouble finding a flat place on the road to point the dashcam toward the storm. Threatnet was indicating a large area of rotation headed directly for me. This storm was immensely large, and looked really angry, with dark green hail cores, some black colors, and dirt colors. It just looked like a mess, and it didn’t appear I’d want to stay in that place for long,…I didn’t. I was north of town about 3:59 and turned around about 4:04 to head back through town. The angry storm was right on my heels. I began retreating back down 83/277 toward Hawley. I managed to stop once or twice and get out and shoot a picture and run my video camera. Unfortunately the front of my truck was facing parallel to the storm so for much of this time even though I was streaming I wasn’t able to show a lot of the action. The storm gave me very little time to stop for long. At one point south of town I remember shooting my Vx2000 to the nw and remarking on camera that the area looked suspicious and there could be an embedded tornado in there. It was hard to tell for sure though. Now I know there was a tornado logged 4 sw of Anson. When I was near Hawley and racing south I looked west in the direction of the other flank and immediately could see a tornado in the distance. It was very dynamic and changing quickly but obviously violent and in contact with the ground. I pulled up the Vx2000 and tried to shoot one handed out the window as I drove, but I know it was shaky and not sure yet how good the video turned out. I called this tornado in. At this point the storm near Hawley and the storm to it’s sw were merging. They were almost merging over Anson, and on radar there was a huge hellacious rotation signature covering 5 miles or so in diameter. Visually looking at the storm while stopped north of Abilene I could see that the whole thing was rotating cyclonically! It was amazing to watch.

The storm continued moving and I headed east on I20 toward Cisco. I believe I stopped first near Baird. Somewhere around there I ran into Tim Marshall. I didn’t recognize him at first until he turned around. I said ‘Hi’ and we chatted a moment. He remarked that he couldn’t get out earlier and had likely missed the best action. It’s true the storm wasn’t quite as discrete anymore and it was transitioning to a widespread very large storm. Perhaps it was HP eventually. It’s hard to say without further analysis, but it was a big monster storm. I continued to Cisco and began following the area of rotation to the ne and into the core. It was amazing how it was so bright on the outskirts of the storm and I quickly was submerging myself into what looked like a black abyss. It was however pretty cool looking in there. There was some wicked lighting that I enjoyed and various interesting storm motions and features. Eventually when I was moving into the heavier core I decided to withdraw and reverse. Next, back on I20 I started to follow the storm toward Eastland. There was a flank showing rotation in that direction; however a similar thing happened and I ended up in pretty heavy rainfall on a busy highway. The main area of interest was ahead of me. I figured it would be tough to catch and it was moving into more congested urban areas. So I turned around, stopped and debated for awhile then eventually identified another meso cell coming up from the sw which was currently se of Abilene. I went back to Cisco and took hwy 206 toward Cross Plains. I went through a little bit of the somewhat heavy precip of the storm and then broke out and could see it’s large tower out the front right of the vehicle as I continued sw towards Cross Plains. Once at Cross Plains I took Fm880 north about 2 miles near the meso / wallcloud area just across and to the west of the road. I saw a brief amount of upward motion and it looked interesting for a moment and then it was obvious a cycle had completed and it quickly scooted off some miles to the nne. I decided to follow and retraced my path back through Cross Plains back up the route I had taken to Cisco. I made it about 7 to 8 miles nw of Cisco and watched the storm for another minute or so. Then things got weird.

The time was 7:52 pm and Threatnet showed another storm / flank to my west but it should have been what I thought was nearly 10 miles away. This was plenty of comfort zone right? I looked back behind my vehicle and across the road and for some reason it appeared a storm was..there..already. Huh? I looked at Threatnet again. This didn’t make sense. However this storm looked fairly menacing. It was dark and approaching quickly. I mean it was REALLY getting to my road fast..somehow. I began racing south toward Cross Plains. I figured in no time I’d be back and should be on the south end of this storm where it could harmless pass to my north. Nope. In something that I could only compare to a storm from a Stephen King novel this dark mass was somehow quickly upon me, and then covering the road in a dark twilight with a very dark, heavy looking green core hovering just front right of the vehicle. To the south was an apocalyptic twilight yellow cast appearance and overhead and behind it was very dark almost black. The winds hit and were buffeting the vehicle. The heavy precipitation was battering the vehicle intensely. Looking at that heavy green core now practically on top of me I figured I was done for. All my windows would be smashed and equipment wet in a big mess, and I’d be stuck on the road to somehow take whatever the storm had planned for me. I took down the dashcam and moved my camera and all electronic equipment to the back seat as quickly as I could. I donned my hail goggles given to me at the emergency room from my last giant hail encounter. They look like goggles for woodworking or shop or something but they work pretty well. I did all this, and then oddly, somehow I managed to make it into Cross Plains. I went through town as quick as possible without hydroplaning. I saw a couple of overhangs that I considered getting under to avoid the hail, but I didn’t trust this storm. It was too odd and surprising and didn’t even show on radar in this location. That made me wonder if it might have a tornado in store for me. So, rather that stopping in town and weathering the storm I thought I could just punch a bit further south and hopefully be clear of this crazy storm. However it was not to be. This storm had enormous speed. I was driving very fast (classified chase speed), and I could not get ahead or out from under this storm. It continued to be this apocalyptic twilight color as I raced toward Cross Cut. Somewhere here along the way I noticed a rotating dirt whirl and debris ahead and to the right of the road perhaps 1 or 2 miles ahead and completely under the cloud base. There was a car in the distance near this feature and they had their lights on. I saw them put on their brake lights and they somehow avoided it. With this crazy storm at the time I wasn’t quite sure what it was but I was afraid it was a tornado or developing tornado. I hoped it was just a gustnado, but there was a large cloud base overhead and there appeared to be a large bulbous lowered area nearly directly overhead now. This was a large feature. I debated turning around, but I REALLY didn’t want to deal with that hail and core in the dark and by myself. For some reason I chose the tornado, and for another odd reason…I had my Vx2000 in hand trying to videotape whatever I drove through. I was really concerned that what I had seen was just the begins of a larger tornadic area forming right on top of me, and I didn’t think I had cleared this area yet. It takes quite a bit of time in a vehicle to clear such features. Well, it least it seems like forever when you are going through them. Sure enough my ‘feature’ wasn’t gone. It started again but this time it was practically on top of me and was really wound up violently and cyclonically rotating as it met the road from the west and slowly crossed to the east. I estimate I was within 100 yards and had managed to hammer my brakes and stop just in time even though at the time it was fairly dark and was a tough call to make. I watched it cross and videotaped what I could though I don’t know if anything was in focus or not. Then I through the camcorder in the seat next to me and later after the event noticed that it was still recording. I continued racing south a few more miles and eventually broke free. I turned the vehicle around and observed my storm. Very interesting. I called San Angelo NWS to tell them about the storm and the weird radar and almost derecho type effect of propagation and had a conversation for a bit. After that I stopped in Brownwood and ate at Chilis. In retrospect I don’t know if what I nearly drove into was a tornado or a gustnado. I know it was fairly strong and not something I’d want to drive into. At the least it would probably break my windows with rocks and partially blow me off the road.

 

[Bill Tabor]

Post Continued...

After dinner I decided to go on ahead to my parents who live north of Abilene and turkey hunt with my Dad. Along the way I stopped through Anson and on the north side of town someone had lost the roof of a business and 30+ telephone poles from the north side of Anson toward Stamford on hwy 277 had been broken off at the base. I heard there was reported EF0 damage in Anson. There may have been a tornado near there or to the north. From what I could tell all the poles were laying from west to east so it could have been straight line winds. I’d love to see a damage survey on this.

All in all and excellent, exciting chase with great storms. I’ll have to review my video to see what I got and post some pictures soon.

 

[Tony Cook]

Fisher/Jones County tornadoes

Finally getting around to this report...

Was expecting later development, but when I got to I-20 near Sweetwater, a cluster of cells had developed just to the North.

Jumped on the initial cell, caught it near Roby, and it went tornado-warned shortly thereafter. Witnessed a broad, swirling dusty tornado with no condenstaion funnel south of Rotan. Vidcap from South of Rotan along Hwy 70 looking WSW. Time is ~2:57p.m. Dusty circulation is on the far right.

Moved west on 180 eventually for the next cell in line. Saw but did not video brief touchdown south of 180 SW of Roby (camera had moisture problems). Continued on this cell east of Roby, where I observed a tornado due south, which seemed to persist for a while. It was another dust-whirly thing with funnel at cloud base, but no condenstaion funnel again. Tornado persisted for several minutes- First vidcap is 4:06, second is 4:12, both taken from Hwy 126 between Hwy 180 and Noodle looking SW. During the time of the second vidcap, red dust in a field just to my east was getting kicked up in an apparent broad rotation:

​

Moved South on 126 to just South of Noodle. At 4:27, the tornado to the SW had lifted, but there were still some suspicous dust whirls kicking up sporadically beneath the old area of circulation. I stopped the car and turned to my east to see a fully condensed funnel on the ground. By the time I trained the camera on it, this is what it looked like:

​

It dissipated within a minute or so. I followed the storm for a little while longer, but observed no more tornadoes with it. Turned West and headed towards a supercell several counties away which had popped up. Caught it near Big Spring, shortly after it went tornado warned, and a “large tornado” confirmed by spotters was relayed on the weather radio. Here is the storm at ~6:45 NW of Big Spring:

​

It collapsed as I approached the rain-free base area, giving me a nice show of blowing red dust.​

Big thanks to David Douglas for nowcasting on this tough day.

820 miles, 14.5 hours
TonyC

 

[Sam Barricklow]

I stayed in the Dallas area and went to a favorite spot near downtown to photograph lightning. The result is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAkkpk381Uc