4/9/08 REPORTS: TX/OK/AR

[Mike Hollingshead]

Pretty funny chase. Drive down from Nebraska the night before, stay in Woodward. Drive south, was on the Abilene storm from its birth. Saw the dust action near town, but not sure what I'd call what I saw. Went east with it, and then dropped south to the cell blowing up just southeast of it. That cell would soon dominate, after it hooked up with the northern, old one. Problem all along was how cold they looked. Anyway, I stayed with it till north of Moran, southwest of Breckenridge not that far. I was ahead of it and about to shoot east(north of Moran option), but was sick of racing with this endless cold beast unable to do a whole lot, other than have one long a$$ cold gust front. So I stopped, taped it closing in, and got a still or two out the window as the rfd hit. The action in the rain bands moving over me was a little unnerving. With the shear in place and the rest of the gust front above me, it just felt spooky, the way the bands were moving. I actually hedged north a hair into the hard cut as it felt better, lol. Then I spun around and dropped south to hope for later stuff, letting that "garbage" go. Then I got data back and saw what it was now doing on GR3. I was like, what the hell! Go figure! It was like, "Mike's gone! T-time!" Thing had to have eyes....unlike myself apparently. Nothing like sitting on I20 a billion miles from home after letting a beast, the only show in town, go after being all over it from the start. I don't try and regroup after I screw up like that either. I just get really pissed off and say screw it. And had I had data up in there where it was going, I likely would have just kept on it...as I'd been sure I wasn't missing something better off the dryline or out ahead. Visually...it was just getting old, and I've seen that long cold look enough times now that I know it seldom comes back from that. Ooops. Congrats to those that bagged.

So after that wonderful time I wind up in Wichita Falls for the night. Not being able to stand going home with nothing, I tried lightning out my motel room....since there were radio towers in sight and I've always wanted a good reverse bolt off one. This meant staying awake longer, after a lot of driving and only 3 hours of sleep the night before. That and it likely meant missing any targets the next day. Not that I had a whole lot of desire to chase again, being pissed off about the day I'd just had. So I said screw it, I'm trying lightning. The lightning with those storms sucked....to say the least. I had the shutter open for a good 2 hours, a minute or two at a time stopped down. My problem is I get afraid of missing something. I have a hard time stopping. Well that 2 hours or more 3 bolts happened, and it's sort of nuts how interesting 2 of them were.

The last one towards the end was this one going up off a tower. I didn't see it, but once I did on the LCD I went nuts. Probably said "yes" 30 times, this at like 2:30 a.m. Believe me I tried to find a spot with no drops, but with no overhang and wind driven rain, the top right corner was the best I could do. Tripod extended, perched on a small ledge above the ac unit. Camera leaning on the window. Me standing on a chair to see through the camera.

The next image was the second bolt I got, much earlier on in this. Was probably 12:30 then.

I didn't see this one either, lol. I was walking back to my laptop when the room lit up. I was like, "that was close"...boom. You can see the window caused channel ghosting....and yeah the damn rain drops. The rest of the window was much much more covered in rain. Lighting likes to strike the tallest object? Not this time. I'm rather sure that bolt is really close to the tower and not just well ahead or behind it. Bigger image below....

The tower and the bolt just aren't far from one another. Looks like the lightning just preferred someone's tree. And also, check out the upward leader...apparently off a power pole.

Anyway, the lighting attempted to make the 1800 miles worth it. If ol mother nature pulls many more like she did the main part of the chase, she may scare me off. It's getting highly old. If it's remotely tornadic, I will screw it up...harshly.

 

[Terra Thompson]

Bill Ladwig, Nick Biermann, and I left Norman around 12:30pm and never stopped driving. We went through Wichita Falls, Seymour, and Throckmorton. We got a radar update from a friend (Thanks Darren!!) with the only bar of cell coverage (out of 3 different carriers) and planned on meeting up with the storm just south of Breckenridge. Based on what others have said I think we had a unique view of the rotation just before (maybe during) the first tornado. From 1 mile west of 183 on 1032 we could watch the meso move closer. It was hard to tell which part of the broader rotation would produce but we thought it was imminent from the very impressive, rapid inflow. As the funnel moved north it got into the trees and we could not tell if it was a tornado or not. Here is pictures from this location at about 22:10.




We went back to 183 and then east on 576 to 207. As we got closer to the 207/180 intersection we observed what looks like the Breckenridge tornado to our north/northwest. The following are screen shots from the video. The first is enhanced and the second is as shot.




When we popped out onto 180 Nick got this picture of what we *think* is the rope stage of the Breckenridge tornado (in the center of the picture, its low contrast). Any opinions?



Just after we saw it, it was gone. We waited a few minutes for the rest of the rain to cross north of 180 before continuing east. We made one last attempt to see the circulation by driving north on hwy 4 from Palo Pinto. About 5 miles up the road we stopped before we got into the rain curtains. Briefly (~30sec) we saw what appeared to be a tornado, it was a narrow white tube that looked like it was on the ground with rain curtains rapidly rotating around it and then lost it in the rain. This was similar to what Tony Cook described. Sadly we don't have any pictures of it. We dropped back down to 180 and along the way got hit with a wall of rain from the RFD. After that we continued to follow behind the storm as it lead us to 35 to go home. It was a crazy day.

 

[Tony Cook]

Eolian Rope tornado

Just a followup on my initial report. Finally got my VHS video transferred to digital. As I feared, I missed the precursor to the Oran tornado. Got the wall cloud, but in my rush and panic to dodge the approaching RFD, I lopped off the pendant funnels.

I did discover what appears to be a rope tornado that I shot from road 576 a few miles SW of Breckenridge. FWD has confirmed EF0 tornado damage near Eolian, which corresponds to what I filmed. This tornado preceded the EF-1 Breckenridge tornado by a few minutes. Here is their survey:
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/fwd/April0910/april0910.htm

At the time, I thought it MIGHT be a tornado, but I never took a minute to take a thorough visual of it. Had forgotten completely about it until I was doing the transfer earlier tonight and saw it. I was filming North, out the driver's side window, but looking straight ahead to watch the road. My trusty, borrowed VHS camera had issues with constantly oversaturating the scene, so I had to play some contrast games to bring the rope out. Apologies for the awful quality, but it's all I got...

It appears there were two other weak vortices near this one, and possibly also on the ground at times, but the contrast/saturation is so poor, can't tell for sure.

Later, I am south of Breckenridge shooting NNE. I believe this is the wall cloud after producing the Breckenridge tornado, from several miles away:

TonyC

 

[Tim Johnson]

I pretty much have the same report as most. Arrived just west of Abilene to see the first dirty whirly south of the road. (that's what I'm calling it anyways...lol) I'm like Mike, not sure what that was.

My vantage point wasn't great but here's a crappy pic I snapped just before the whirly thang.

I had stopped on the north side of I-20 to look things over, see some rotation and quickly head under I20 to go back east following it.

Once back to Abilene I took 351 heading NE to follow the storm, stopping a few times, trying to take some structure pics.

RFD was closing in, and the storm was cutting off the NE route, and another storm appeared to be merging with this one from the SW. I wanted to keep driving NE to get in front of this thing, but the rotating rain clouds were not too inviting. I pull over and see Tim Samaras' parked there. I remember thinking to myself "if he drops a little red probe here and runs, I might be in deep doo-doo"...lol (Tim, you need one of those T-shirts like one about the bomb technician. )


Anyhow, to make the long story short, I wind up driving back SW through the wrap around and some small hail that was in there, and headed back east on I-20 then north on 183 towards Breckenridge. I avoided going into town when I heard reports of damage. Zig zagging on more farm to market roads than I care to recall, I managed to follow this storm all the way to between Decatur/Denton, never seeing much structure again. Fortunately ending the chase fairly close to home.

As most have said, it was a fast and frustrating chase, with few photo ops, but I'm glad I went. I would have felt worse not trying.

Bring on May-June!

 

[Bill Tabor]

Ok, I have now reviewed the dash cam footage for this day. Interesting. Tornadoes or not tornadoes follow:

1) Initially coming north from the town of Moran somewhere on fm576 there is some type of dark 'block' structure on the ground. It is fairly solid. I only caught part of it on the dashcam as I was backing out of the way at the time until I figured out what it was. I still don't really know. It was perhaps near the area the tornado warning indicated for the torn moving toward Breckenridge but it still seems it may be too far west. Not sure. I don't know what it is, but it did make me turn around briefly. That is how impressive it was.

2) Approaching the town of Breckenridge from the wsw on 576. I begin seeing a fairly large funnel lowering from the large rainfree cloud deck above and almost directly east of me on 576. Time wise I believe it would be a few minutes before the Breckenridge tornado - so it is close in time and proximity. Under the large funnel I see substantial amounts of what I believe to be dirt whirl dust at the funnel. I called it a tornado at that point while chasing. Later as I continue to drive I continue to see other 'dust' which I assume was part of the RFD at the time making gustnadoes, etc. However then it started to possibly look like smoke to me. So I don't know if this was an elaborate hoax to make me think the origina funnel was a tornado or not. Originally I thought it was. I'm not positive.

3) Later headed east from Breckenridge and getting closer to Graford I turn up hwy 16. According to David Douglas I am right under the rain freebase / wallcloud. This is fairly accurate. The wallcloud appears to be just on the right side of the road. Along the way and right before turning onto 16 I see a needle like spin up or two that appears to touchdown briefly in the hills, but I have no photos or video of that.

4) Continuing on hwy 16 a number of miles up I stop and videotape to the east in the direction of Graford. I have a nice wallcloud / funnel forming nearby. It continues to get further east. I see quite a bit of upward motion and some rotation as well. Later it appears a possible small funnel near ground on the left side. I move positions by heading a bit further ne up the road and run the dashcam to the east. The contrast is fairly low, and the air is full of moisture but I can make out a dark silhouette that is tornado shape and fairly large in the distance. From what I can tell, parts of it appear to be on the ground. So this is a likely tornado and occurs about 20 minutes before the Graford tornado strikes.

5) There was another large snakelike appendage from a cloud later. It was after I had gone north of Mineral Wells in the direction of Breckenridge. This didn't have a good laminar look. It was a bit ragged, but it also seemed to emulate a tornado fairly well - over the hills. But I cannot verify what this was.

6) Later, I believe nearing Bridgeport and getting fairly dark, I see and videoptape another feature that appears to be a tornado. It is a tube that stretches from cloud above to ground, and appears a large amount of debris / dirt near the ground around the bottom of this thing. It didn't last long and started dissipating almost immediately.

 

[Mike Hollingshead]

Full account up here: http://www.extremeinstability.com/08-4-9.htm

I'd like to report that I saw SCUD along the gust front with this storm...as well as SCUD tags. In those regions I never noticed any funnels or wall clouds. I also think the dust whirls I saw were just that, dust whirls. Seems to me there's no place for these anymore in chasing. They've turned into tornadoes, wall clouds, and funnels.

 

[Bill Tabor]

Ok, finally getting around to some pics. I haven't gotten to any of the grabs from video of the possible tornadoes though yet. I need to update my website too. I am SO Slooow sometimes. My apologies for the wait.

Wallcloud / Funnel north of Baird

Same wallcloud a bit later

Same wallcloud moving on..nne

Wallcloud / funnels - the road east to Moran

Wallcloud nearing Breckenridge. Should be just to it's ssw probably 5 to 10
before the tornado.

Damage in Breckenridge, Tx

Wallcloud / funnel east of Breckenridge off of hwy 180

The same a little later

Headed nne up hwy 16 to an area west of Graford, Tx before the tornado.
Scattered wallclouds over hills with occasional needle spinups.

More of the same a bit later.

A more defined Wallcloud with strong upward motion and rotation on it's
way to Graford headed ene or ne

This is my view as it continues to the ene or ne. In the video I can make
out funnels with strong motion. Some appear to be near or on the ground

This odd funnel shape past Graford is part of a secondary flank area of
rotation. I saw very little motion from this feature, and it is ragged
for a tornado, but it could be a tornado. I was unable to tell for sure.

 

[cdcollura]

Good day all,

Full chase log summary on this day is now available, and is shown below...

This was a "mini chase expedition" responding to a potent severe weather setup in central Texas and points eastward from April 8 through April 11, 2008. The "go" or "no go" decision was made on April 6 and 7 when forecast models all agreed on lee cyclogenesis and a powerful front / dryline setup on April 9, with activity shifting east on April 10 (with April 9 being the best day). I was able to get an airline ticket from Fort Lauderdale, FL to Dallas, TX at a reasonable price along with a car rental for the same period (April 8 to April 11). Meanwhile, SPC (Storm Prediction Center) showed a moderate risk of severe storms 2-3 days out with April 9 being the "best" chance for chasing. On the evening of April 8, I arrived in Dallas after a stop-over in Houston, picked up the rental vehicle, and spent the night in Dallas near I-35 East. According to forecasting, as well as SPC's moderate-risk outlook, a tentative target stretching from Childress to San Angelo, Texas was agreed upon, so there was no rush getting into the target area.

On April 9, another forecast was done, and a warm-front was draped across Texas from WSW to ENE near the I-20 corridor. Meanwhile, a strong trough / shortwave was present over New Mexico, with diffluent and strong jet-stream winds expected to rotate into western Texas by afternoon. A strong instability axis (CAPE over 2500) and shear axis (helicity over 500) intersected an area close to Abilene, Texas. After speaking to Tony Laubach and Verne Carlson, in Amarillo, TX at the time, we also agreed that near Abilene was a great target area. At the Storm Prediction Center (SPC), a 15% hatched tornado area, 45% hatched hail, and 35% hatched wind outlook constituted a high-end moderate risk for the same region near Abilene about a 100 mile radius or so (a "hatched" outlook means the chance of strong tornadoes, hail over 2", and extreme winds over 65 knots within 25 miles of a point in the outlook area)! I left Dallas and headed north to Denton, Texas on I-35 with a westward track along highway 380 through Decatur. Headed south along highway 281 from Jacksboro and into Mineral Wells by lunch time. The final leg into Abilene was by highway 180, then highway 16, then westward on I-20.

I reached Abilene by about 2 PM CDT and obtained fuel plus a new power inverter at a truck-stop there. By this time, Tony and Verne met up with Tim Samaras at Sweetwater, about 25 minutes to the west on I-20. I left Abilene along highway 277 and stopped to make sure my equipment (radio, inverter, and laptop) was set up. The 55 degree drizzle and fog rapidly gave way to partly sunny skies and 80+ degrees just south of Abilene denoting passage / crossing of the warm-front boundary. At this time (3 PM or so) the SPC issued PDS (Particularly Dangerous Situation) tornado watch box # 178 valid until 8 PM CDT for the area in response to MD (Mesoscale Discussion # 607). A data check confirmed this area was ready to see convective initiation since the dryline boundary was still well to the west, a differential boundary between a stable and unstable (well-mixed) boundary layer to the west was present, both intersecting the warm front. Sure enough, a thunderstorm cell fired to the south of Sweetwater and west of Nolan near highway 277 and 126. This cell was encountered, and showed the start of some supercell characteristics, and allowed to pass to my east (while keeping an eye on it). This storm also contained small hail.

This developing shower / storm was to be the big storm, and the only best storm of the day! I met up with Verne Carlson, Tony Laubach, and Tim Samaras near I-20 and highway 70 and notified them about the developing storm. The well-defined frontal boundary was right along I-20, with the "fog bank" visible to the north, and partly cloudy skies to the south. My group and I watched the storms, including the cell that I saw initiate, along with a few other storms that seemed to weaken quickly. The original storm showed the best possibilities, and a tornado (TVS) was indicated by radar on it, so we grouped up and headed east on I-20 to catch it. We encountered the storm near Tye, TX along I-20, where a rotating wall cloud / funnels, intense RFD, and some small dusty "spinups" were noted. We headed north on highway 707 towards Hodges and Anson to encounter a large funnel and dust (quite possibly tornado #1). The storm appeared to rapidly wrap-up at this point, with very intense rotation, while evolving to an HP supercell and eventually weakening somewhat. Another weaker mesocyclone to the south appeared to "merge" with this cell. Large hail (golfball and larger) and frequent lightning was also encountered on highway 707.

We left this storm and planned on following it along I-20 as it started taking more of an ENE motion rather than NE as id did originally. We stopped for fuel near Baird and continued east on I-20 to Cisco, then to highway 6, then north on highway 183. The supercell now violently intensified, showing an incredible SCIT (Severe Cell ID and Tracking) of 198 knots gate-to-gate shear with a flying eagle and couplet on the Dyess AFB radar site. The storm motion also changed from ENE to ESE at this point. Its position was just southwest of Breckenridge, Texas and we were headed north on highway 183 towards it (by about 20 miles away at 5:30 pm CDT) after being slightly delayed by a freight train in Cisco. We encountered the SW side of Breckenridge, with an RFD shelf cloud in front and possible tornado to the NE of our position. This may have been Tornado #3, developing in the new mesocyclone of the storm to the east, while #2 was not visible but responsible for extensive damage in Breckenridge. A semi truck was blown over and lying across highway 183, and many power poles were snapped, along with trees down, and roofs torn off some buildings. The damage path appeared to be at least a half-mile wide, with opposing damage direction (such as snapped poles leaning opposite directions) on each side of the damage swath.

We passed into downtown Breckenridge and headed east on highway 180. More damage was encountered on the east side of town, with poles snapped, powerlines down, roofs torn off buildings, and structural damage. We stopped to document as well as help some locals move debris from the road, as well as making sure no one was hurt. Later analysis of the video taken of the damage near highway 67 and 180 clearly shows the rope tornado stage, to the NE, and most likely from tornado #2 that caused much of the damage in Breckenridge. After the supercell storm got east of Breckenridge, it underwent some drastic evolutions. The storm crossed the differential boundary and its inflow began ingesting the cooler stable air to the east. Inflow was very impressive east of the storm near highway 180 near Palo Pinto, with gusts over 60 MPH. The gate-to-gate shear relaxed significantly from 120 knots down to 50-60 knots and the storm went entirely HP, with a warm advection wing to its southeast. This storm was followed to Mineral Wells along highway 180 then north on 281. Impressive 60-80 MPH winds were noted south of the area of rotation with this storm. At this time, Tony Laubach and Verne Carlson broke off of the chase, as I continued north (with Tim Samaras) on 281 towards 380 to head back east.

Above: Rope state of the Breckenridge, TX tornado.

The supercell continued moving northeast, but never intensified again, instead, it just got weaker and weaker until it lost its identity northeast of Pilot Point / Denton, TX and well east of I-35. This was roughly at 9:30 PM. From initiation to weakening, the single supercell lasted more than 6 hours. Tim Samaras and his crew and myself spent the night in Denison, Texas with the next-days chase prospects in mind (possibly OK / AR). A potent squall line developed late at night (April 9-10) and moved through by 4 AM or so, with violent winds and frequent lightning. The rapid passage of this squall line was to determine the chase prospects for April 10, and a target of eastern Arkansas was sought by myself. Tim Samaras and his group decided not to chase, and needed to be back in Colorado by April 11.

More details can be seen at this link (below) ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/mwcl2008.htm#APR8

Video for (and including) this chase can be seen at the link below as well ...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/m9vid2.htm

 

[Tony Cook]

I did discover what appears to be a rope tornado that I shot from road 576 a few miles SW of Breckenridge. FWD has confirmed EF0 tornado damage near Eolian, which corresponds to what I filmed. This tornado preceded the EF-1 Breckenridge tornado by a few minutes...

After some detailed reconstruction of my VHS footage of this feature, I have determined it is definitely NOT the Eolian tornado. I had to pick out curves in the road on the video and annotate them using my GPS track, since there was no time code, and I wasn't doing a good job of narrating. This feature was still SW of Eolian, somewhere North of Moran. It does appear to be a rope tornado, but video is inconclusive.

Alas, still 0 for 2008.

TonyC

 

[Sam Barricklow]

Abilene to Decatur, TX Chase

Due to the fast movement of the storms, I didn't take many photos, and only shot video of damage at Breckenridge. See:

http://www.k5kj.net/20080409.htm