4/29/09 REPORTS: TX/KS

[sdienst]

Started the day off near Ralls, TX with Kiel Ortega. Kept an eye on the early convection but mainly focusing on the numerous outflow boundaries north of there. Ended up getting on the numerous storms north from Floydada to Childress area. We watched the Cedar Hill storm produce at least two stout tornadoes from a distance before it became outflow dominant.

 

[Jason A.C. Brock]

Throckmorton chase

Started the day off headed for Childress but saw the storms fire NW of Abiliene and bit on the Throckmorton storm. Had a nice collar look to it with some broad rotation but began to become very outflowish. Decided to blast North and Try to get back toward Childress before dark but got a call a family member was ill so I headed back to Wichita Falls. Not sure I would have arrived for the Tornadoes Near Paducah but would have been close. Im sure I missed some good structure as well. Pics of Throckmorton storm will be at http://www.holytornado.com later.

 

[edward oneal]

04/29/09 KS

Got off work at 5 went home for a bite to eat and to check the radar, storms near Garden City did not look that great at the time. But a tornado watch had been issued so maybe they could do something. As I was driving I could see the storm near Garden had split. One left mover and one that seemed to become stationary near Garden, it was high based but looked like it was starting to rotate. In a very short time a wall cloud formed and funnels started reaching for the ground. Then a brief multi-vortex tornado touched down, luckily for Garden the cell had turned south at this time. I followed it South until sunset. The circulation got rain wrapped and it was hard to tell how many tornadoes it spawned. I saw two in the rain for sure. Here are a few pictures.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

Crazy day. Jumped on the storms that fired west of Plainview. Saw atleast 100 gustnadoes (no exaggeration) around Plainview and got hit by one as the storm was dominated by outflow. I got tired of watching outflow so I was going to go to one of the slower moving eastern storms. As I traveled down 207 a funnel passed over head. After I got east of the storm I noticed a large funnel extending down from the upper part of the storm while the lower part of the updraft was getting wrapped around it. Within minutes I was watching a large tornado moving toward the highway that was lined with chasers. I was pretty sure somebody was going get tossed into the field for sure. After it crossed the highway it moved across the field to my south where I could hear it. Once I began to move east thats when I saw the second tornado coming down on the highway. It was incredible chase. Definitely got my best pictures to date. In the second picture, I believe the 2 headlights down there are David and Ben. No need for them to zoom in.

 

[Jay McCoy]

Got on the Plainview storm when it was still west of I-27 near Kress. At that time it was high bas3ed and inflow winds were nonexistant. After it moved past I-27 and interacted with that boundary the inflow winds kicked up to 30+ and the storm went from outflow with gustnadoes everywhere to huge wallcloud and baseball hail in like 10 minutes. Worked it all the way to Cedar Hill and filmed the entire tornado and its sister looking back west and then SW along hwy 97. Unfortunately the highway then turns NE which meant core or take a mud road south. I opted to let the tornado pass west and then south of me and then backtrack west through the wraparound then south but lost the storm. From my direction it was very dark and dirty and really kicked up a huge dirt plume as it tried to rope out. The sister tornado touched down numerous times but never really got going that well. Passed Reed and David D right before it dropped who decided to hang back and film it from the west looking east. I understand David got some amazing footage. Cant wait to see it.

 

[Verne Carlson]

Garden City, KS

Gustnado #1 00:33z

Landspout #1 00:40z

Gustnado #2 00:45z

Got off work at lunch and shot out to Burlington, CO where I thought there was an outside chance of a lamdspout. The Jim Reed foot chase day of last year was in my mind. I liked the forecast capes on the RUC up into the surface low.

With Michael nowcasting for me I jumped on the rapidly developing cells around Leoti, KS and almost called it a day when the cell near Garden City looked like it was worth a check.

On arriving from the west side I was greeted with marbles, then golfballs and then a few near baseball hailstones and 4" drifting! I positioned myself out of the hail and on the southeast side of the meso and saw my first dusty spinup out on the forward RFD push.

While following this gustnado I observed off to the west a nice laminar landspout with translucent tube fully connected to the ground. Out from this spout a small gustnado spun out rapidly ahead of it.

Continuing south out ahead of the meso an RFD push again turned into the huge dusty gustnado that Michael posted in the NOW thread. This weakend a bit and spun out more little gustnadoes. I decided to drive right through the dying large gustnado and got sprayed by straw and dirt!

The cell splitting and mergers or lack of mergers after that were something I can't wait to review on radar!

>> Report Here <<

 

[Ben Holcomb]

David Drummond and I scored multiple tubes on the storm northwest of Floydada, TX. We got some insane footage that we can't post just yet, but it's amazing. Here's a screencap.

I'll get more pics and video posted along with a recap at my website tomorrow, assuming we're not bagging more in Oklahoma tomorrow!

 

[brandongreen]

i didnt get to catch any tornadoes. i wound up getting stuck in a ditch and had to wait it out before someone could pull me out. hail hurts when it hits your ears. these were taken near quitaque. the telephone poles were near cedar hill.

 

[Jason Boggs]

Congrats to the ones who bagged a nader today. Jay, you're gonna pay for this one! LOL

Anyway, got on the storm that initiated SW of Tulia. Got in position and saw that it was right turning fast! Made my way down near South Plains when I saw a wall cloud form very fast. It organized very quickly, but it dissipated just as quickly. Tracked my way down a few miles north of Floydada and sat and watched it a while. I saw the rotation transfer to the NE in the precip core. Visibility was terrible due to rain and dust. I knew that the wall cloud was rotating, but I wasn't sure about a tornado. I did a phoner with the station I chase for and said there may very well be a tornado on the ground. A few minutes later a Floydada police officer drove up and handed me his radio! I was like, ok. He had his spotters confirming a tornado on the ground along with downed power poles near Cedar Hill. I relayed this into the station. I listened to his spotter for a while and gathered more information. I showed the officer the radar and he thanked me and left. He was a very nice guy. Kudos to the Floydada police department! Anyway, to make a long story short, no tornadoes for me today. I saw some great structure though, so it was well worth it. I guess my target area forecast for Matador played out pretty well, for once at least! Now to the photos:

LOOKING NORTHWEST JUST EAST OF FLOYDADA

LOOKING EAST OUT OF MATADOR

ANOTHER SHOT LOOKING EAST OUT OF MATADOR

MAMMATUS NEAR MATADOR

CRISP UPDRAFTS

 

[Matt Chatelain]

Curtis McDonald, Ilya Neyman, Ryan Nulsen, and I started the day targeting the boundary west of Childress but left Norman a little too late as we missed the estelline tornado by 5 minutes. However the storm had an insane updraft, I was really great having the storms take advantage of such high CAPE, help create great structure! We chased some more supercells fire to the south of the original one near Matador, thats when us and several other chasers looked west and saw the Cedar Hill tornado (appeared 10-15 miles to the west), which appeared to be very stout. Here is a video still of the tornado which we observed for approx 7 mins. Finally made our way to that storm and chased it as it went outflow dominant. Got 60-70mph winds west of Paducah and had several large branches knoched down. Anyways, really enjoyable day overall, and looking forward to more high cape days.

 

[David Drummond]

We have a sort term media restriction until tomorrow afternoon but you can view some of the video on KCBD.com that Ben and I shot. They are supposed to be adding numerous clips that are in the new ingest queue right now that will be online there soon. I'll try to get some on Youtube tomorrow, but chasing may get in the way of that. We have 7 gigs of video from 3 cameras at very close range. This was the most incredible chase I ever had I think. Nothing but power poles were injured in the shooting of this tornado.

Great tornadoes, not taking lives or property, at close rang. Doesn't get better than that!

Some video here showing up already, scroll down just a little: http://www.kcbd.com/global/story.asp?s=10276457

 

[terra seright]

Headed down to Silverton, TX, in an attempt to intercept the storm that came from W of Plainview. Ended up in a bunch of farm land with the road I was on being the ONLY paved road. Watched the storm attempt several times to produce, and saw many downbursts. These were apparently pretty hefty bursts, as the debris/dust actually looked like it was flying back into the wall cloud.

Headed back to 207 and toward Quitaque, where we ran into a nice meso nearly sitting on the ground. When we got to Quitaque, the streets were empty, and the tornado sirens were blaring. Took the nearest road north, which went into Caprock Canyons State Park, and discovered that the road was flooded in many places. Turned around and headed back to town, looked up and there was a rotating wall right above us!! ACK! We went back out the way we came, and waited for the wall to pass over, then headed for Turkey, then on to Esteline, where we decided to go back to the Panhandle storm, rather than punching the huge core at Childress. I had not driven fast enough to get ahead of the massive storm that had formed and was headed toward Childress.

Meanwhile, there are multiple warnings going off south of Quitaque.

I didn't follow my instincts, and should have, as I would have caught something. Crap. I always doubt my gut instinct.

BUST......but I got some really cool shots anyway.

 

[David Hoadley]

Today was a big bust! Started from Big Spring and worked the first storm between Lamesa and Snyder. I then drove up to Aiken (east of Plainview) and watched the approaching cell make a brief wall cloud, which then wrapped in rain. NOAA Weather Radio then warned of a severe storm **east** of Floydada. Instead of turning onto County Hwy97 (bad decision but looked like a hail risk at the time), I charged down to US72/60 and turned east at 5:34PM CDT --thinking I would be just south of the base (My-Cast-radar out of range at that time). I watched an impressive, broad, lowering to the ENE against a dark background but could see no wall cloud or beaver tail. At 6:02PM, I turned north on State Hwy70 for a closer look. It appeared to be the same dominant lowering, I had followed since Floydada. The Cedar Hill tornadoes would begin 15-20 miles WNW of me, at about the time I reached a broad, bowl-shaped base 7 miles north of Matador. It rotated and tried to form but couldn’t (triggering another T warning). It continued weakly rotating NE of there toward Northfield, but that was it. Since the Cedar Hill warning was based on radar/observation (6:11PM; my notes) and was only 2 minutes before touchdown (6:13PM per SPC storm data); it apparently formed quickly. After Thursday’s activity, I'll start the long red-eye drive back to family obligations at home.

- - - David Hoadley

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

I originally was not going to chase this day as I thought the set up was too marginal to warrant a trip into the dreaded hinterlands of NW TX. but, with my friend Mark McGowen up visiting from Houston and with the cohersion of a couple of chasers who called me, Mark and I left and targeted Silverton, TX. where I thought the best interaction between one of the boundaries and what upper level support we had to be juxtaposed to initiate convection. Turns out, we were in the right place but managed to miss all the tornadoes. We were stuck in Quitaque as TOR warned cells grazed us to the south. I could have probably made it to see the tornadoes near Flomot, but probably would have paid the price with eating glass with the alleged baseballs that were reported just south of town. Flooding was another issue, with us chasing in the Honda Civic, I had to be extra careful in not getting marooned (or submerged).. another reason why I don't relish chasing in that part of the country.

I decided to haul back west to Silverton, then go south through South Plains to Floydada.. (missed the tor's around South Plains.. ). The highlight of the day was that we witnessed a very low and moderately rotating wall cloud NW of Matador somewhere around 1830 (time estimate). I really thought that was going to produce but could not quite reach it's magic. From then on, we were trying to avoid the ice machine near Paducah along with the 75mph+ winds occurring around there. As the evening progressed, we enjoyed the anvil crawlers that we videotaped north of Paducah. We later met up with Simon Brewer, his GF and a new chaser, Justin who we enjoyed dinner with in Childress before arriving back home at 0345 after a 694 mile chase. I think I'm ready for a tornado now that it's been 5 chases since the 2/10/09 event. A big thanks to Simon Brewer, Charles Edwards, Dave Ewoldt and Hank Baker for the nowcasting.

 

[Tony Laubach]

http://blog.tornadoeskick.com/

http://www.tornadoeskick.com/index....rticle/18-chase-season-2009/285-20090429.html - Log work ongoing, will mention here when complete!

1,110 miles in 25 straight hours lead to one of the most memorable chases of my career, and not just in terms of the tornadoes. The day will filled with amazing food, a destroyed camera, a two-mile tractor pull, deep mud, a blown transmission, 30 miles of swayed driving, four tornadoes, 1.5" hail, and a 7:00am Denver arrival time.

We intercepted the Cedar Hill tornatic storm in Plainview from Chubby's Mexican BBQ (an AMAZING place for food) and followed it through at least three cycles.

Cycle 1: Just north of Plainview, scuddy mess, HPish storm.

Cycle 2: Gustnado city east of Plainview, including a long-lived and fairly large gustnado.

Cycle 3: "Tornadoed Its Brains Out", the first a rope to out west, the second main cone/rope/needle tornado, the third its satellite to our immediate east, and the last being a rope a couple miles east of us as we buried ourselves in mud.

The main show as it moves east.

The satellite tornado to our immediate east with the larger tornado ongoing in front of us.

The amazing rope out of the second tornado, best I had ever seen!

Special thanks to the farmer southeast of Cedar Hill who came out on his own will and dragged my car across two miles of mud back to pavement. The gentlemen saw us from his farm trying to get my car free from the mud and drove out on his tractor to help me. While the mud ventures cut our day short, he saved us from spending most of the night out in that field. None of us ever got his name, but I left him my card, but I offer a sincere thanks for showing that southern hospitality does indeed still exist!