5/1/07 REPORTS : TX

[Olivier Staiger]

Incidental "chase" report : I flew from Houston to Del Rio TX today afternoon , to meet Gene Moore. It was the afternoon flight, perfect to see action around initiation time . I was seated on right side of window and had a great view on two storms : first there was the storm ENE of San Antonio, somewhere south of Austin. And then I saw the other storm, NW of San Antonio ( SE of San Angelo) , and that one later went tornadic, I later saw. I did not really chase these storms, per say, but still took a few airborne photos for you guys and gals which might be of interest here (webmaster please forgive me if this is off-topic, and feel free to move me to another page if needed). Here are some, and a few more on my blog :

http://klipsi.blog.tdg.ch/general/tornadic-storms-in-texas-photos-from-airplane.html

black-and-white photo with enhanced contrast for better view.... and drama !

did anyone actually chase the tornadic NW-ern storm , on the ground ?

 

[Shane Hale]

Well I finally got a chance to write up a report on tuesdays events. Myself, Tony Cook, Jason Doss and Jeff Draper got togather around 4:00 and headed west out of Austin to intercept the cell that was near Brady at the time. When we got to Llano the cell really started to get organized and made its initial right turn an headed more SSE. We found what looked to be a pretty good route down 2323 out of Llano and then onto 648. We caught the inital wall cloud in a small dot in the road called Doss an watched some really nice rotation in an around the wall cloud, but it wasn't letting anyting down yet. We dove south and decieded to catch it again about 10 miles down the road in Harper, TX. When we turned west on 290 the cell was really starting to act weird and had LOTS of shear and turbulance, to the point where the leading edge split off and started rotating itself. The back half all at once started pulling in some MASSIVE inflow. I was guessing around 25-30 at the surface where we were. It once again dropped a nice white wall cloud that had HUGE rotation in it. At 7:33 the inital part of the tube made its way down and then tightend up to a nice cone tornado that was on the ground for about 6-7 minutes. All in all it was a great chase.. here are a few pics.

Wall Cloud:


Funnel:


Lowering:


Tornado:

 

[Paul Austin]

Initial target: south of Fredericksburg along I10. Our road choices were: 1. US87 to Brady, then south. 2. US277 to Sonora, then I10 to target. We opted for the second option for the interstate travel. Had we taken the first option, we would have found ourselves to be very near the Brady cell as it produced a reported tornado. Alas with our choice we could only adjust our target and hope for good timing. We caught the cell along State29 east of Mason and observed a somewhat well-organized mesocyclonic updraft with nice wraparound inflow but a very heavy precip core obscuring our view. We backtracked to Mason and tracked the storm southeast along US 87 as the cell reorganized with new convection to the west merging with the existing cell. The terrain in this area is not especially chaser-friendly. The challenge here was to find areas with limited tree/shrub coverage and few blocking hillsides. We were able to position a couple of times to watch the cell struggle to organize. At one point we were in position to observe rapid vertical condensation and turbulence in the mesocyclonic cloud base. The circulation tightened up with obvious inflow bands into a strongly rotating rain-free lowering. This was approximately halfway between Mason and Fredericksburg. The structure was very impressive for an HP storm, but did not produce even a funnel for the time we were able to watch it. From here, we continued to Fredericksburg, then west on US290 to Kerrville. We made a pit stop here and took too long deciding to outrun the storm toward San Antonio for more distant pics. Shortly after entering I10, we were caught by the storm's core with no shelter. We waited out the storm on the roadside as we were pounded by quarter to pingpong ball sized hail. I know this is quite modest for Texas and many of the chasers on the board, but these stones were dense and gave my Explorer its first battle scars. I was quite surprised, as I saw no stones larger than the aforementioned. After the show, we headed to Junction for the night.

BTW, nice pics from the air, Olivier.




Vigorous rotation in this ground-hugger!