5/7/08 REPORTS: OK / TX / LA

[Chris Sokol]

I was awakened today by my wife calling me to ask if I was on the Oklahoma County storm. I was like...what storm? Well, didn't make it to that cell, but did move to intercept the Shawnee/Seminole storm, which managed to crap out just as I reached it (I was only 20 miles away from this one to start with). So...not a great day, but at least I only spent about $5.00 in gas!

 

[Chris Lott]

About 7:30 this evening I got on I-35 and shot south toward a storm that was building in Falls Co.Tx. I had been watching the area most of the day, and when everything seemed to be gone, this one decided to ramp up. I weaved my way through the Baylor University campus, because I missed my turn to hit hwy. 6 east, and approached the storm from the backside. Reports were coming in over the weather net that the storm, which was over the community of Regan at the time, was weakening. As I pulled over to take some pics, I could see the updraft take on a rapid intensification. It looked like a bomb went off. I called into the weather net to let them know that it wasn't weakening, but about to get real nasty. Shortly after, the weather service came on with an update of the storm intensifying and going from quarter to golfball size hail. The road I was on took me away from the storm, so I opted for some dirt road that was leading me to nowhere. I decide to turn around to try to find another road option, and the storm is now tornado warned in SE Falls Co. approaching Bremond. I never could find another road to get on to lead me to the storm before dark, and it appeared to be moving away from me pretty fast, so I decided to call it quits. On the way home, reports came over my radio of confirmed torndado touchdowns in Bremond and just to the SE. I was going to post some pics but I can't get it to work. Oh, well....

 

[Kevin Rider]

Jake Wallentine and I were packing up our dorm room when we took a look at our window and observed a nice rotating wall cloud to our south west from Norman. We grabbed our cameras and went to the 11th floor lounge which has a full view to our south. We then watched the wall cloud for about 5 to 10 minutes as it moved east just south of the National Weather Center. As we watched the wall cloud we observed a few small rope like funnels. This storm was never tornado warned. This was taking place during all the coverage of the tornado warning on the north side of Oklahoma City. Here is a video still of the wall cloud in its less definite phase. This picture was taken looking due south. This picture is courtesy of flickr.com

 

[Tim Marshall]

SHORT: One more chase. One more shelf cloud to add to my collection this year.

LONG: Target was FTW-Paris, TX. Waited until convection developed just west of FTW. Towers were highly sheared and kept back building. When a Cb did develop (over my house), it had a long, stringy anvil with linear echo on radar. My patience grew thin with this cell, so I gave up on it when I saw a large overshooting top on another storm north of Bowie, TX. I zoomed north on I-35 and intercepted it west of Marietta, OK. But, it was soon overtaken by other convection and a long shelf cloud developed. The storm back built into Texas, so I dived south and followed the shelf cloud eastward along Rt. 82 from Whitesboro to Bonham. On a scale of 1 to 10 for shelf clouds, this was a 7 with nice backlighting, sinuous striations, and fiberous formations lifting along the leading edge. Cost of the shelf cloud in fuel: $50. TM

 

[Hank Baker]

Thanks Dave Ewoldt for calling in the report of the tornado.

Had a long chase yesterday. I had to travel about 30 steps from my office and look east out my store window. I called Dave Ewoldt told him I just witnessed a tornado with debris about 3 east of Yukon on the south side of hwy 66 aprox at the turnpike or just west of the turnpike. Dave, immediately called the warning desk at NWS.

Long: I was watching this storm on radar from my office, and actually was tempted to drive south of Mustang, thinking it looked stronger just south of Mustang, but was to busy. So as the storm was moving into Yukon I went to the front of the store and was looking due east from 4th and main. I had just mentioned to one of my employees that the leading edge of cells like this you can get a spin up. Then to my surprise about thirty seconds later, I see strong rotation at cloud base and then start seeing debris going straight up in the air. It was very clear that this was not straight line winds, as there was tight low level rotation with debris. I was caught completely off guard, I was not in chase mode. Caught off guard, I ran to my truck grabbed the video camera and by then there was nothing to film, I immediately called Dave, knowing he would get the report in.

Thanks to Dave Ewoldt for being Johnny on the spot and calling the warning desk right after I gave him my report.

 

[Brian Emfinger]

I chased somewhat locally and while I knew that being as far north as I was (I-40 in E.OK/W.AR) I would only see a squall line, my hopes were raised a bit when all of the tornado warnings (and tornado reports!) started being issued for Central Oklahoma. Unfortunately by the time the system got to me it was indeed just a squall line. I decided to intercept the line anyway at Sallisaw, OK. I had been there a few minutes when the NWS TSA issued a tornado warning for the part of the line of storms that was heading for Sallisaw. Looking at radar I didn't see any rotation and once the storm got to me I was definitely a bit confused about the warning (I thought for a minute that they might have issued the torn warn for severe winds) as it was just a raging squall line. Anyway there are a few more pics - HERE.

looking straight at the "tornado warned" storm

 

[Bill Tabor]

Summary: Great Chase! First chase for Tony Cook and myself together. First live streaming cam rainbow that I am aware of. Good forecast, very scenic storm in pleasant countrysides with wallclouds, funnels, occasional lightning, and just missed a tornado by apparently 3 minutes!! Or possibly missed a tornado right on top of us while we were there.

Details: After being really down on this day forecast wise… this day ended up being a really fun, surprisingly productive, and enjoyable chase. My initial forecast target was along the Red from Gainsville to Paris, Tx - and generally in particular northeast Tx. The large area of vorticity expected and strong upper dynamics always get my attention. However I wasn’t expecting much in the way of tornadoes as the NAM had been forecasting veered 850mb winds and almost unidirectional 700's and 500's along with weak surface flow. The overnight and morning widespread convection and lack of instability really put a damper on things and at first I had little inclination to chase, or go to my target. As the day wore on though and I tried to make something of the mess and pull an option out I eventually came up with a possible eastern Tx concept - perhaps east of Waco or even College Station and north from there. Mesoanalysis was not showing quite as bad unidirectional winds as had been expected and clearing was taking place / dryline was firming up. SPC had issued a watch further north along the Red into OK and very north central TX. Cold core storms with possible funnels / torns were potentially developing nw over the sfc low wsw of Wichita Falls. I began talking with fellow Stormtracker and Austinite Tony Cook and he thought we still had time to get into trouble before the dust settled even though it was already after 1pm and we were in Austin. We met up along IH35 in Round Rock and my idea was to take a precautionary drive north to Waco and based on development and readings decide to continue north through the DFW metroplex (a daunting task at what would be rush hour), or some how go around it to intercept cells west of Denton or somehow get up in the prior target area nearer Paris closer to 0z and catch whatever action remained.

As we got to Waco I was noticing on vis sat some cumulus congestus to the west that wasn’t showing on radar. We began checking this out. I remarked and laughed at this little tiny cell that already was showing a bit of a funnel lowering even though it was still small. Eventually Tony began seeing this cell on Threatnet just wsw of Waco. I mentioned mostly in jest that it was the next big cell of the day. Well, it was partly in jest and partly because in similar situations in the past I often see good development on tail end near Waco. Usually I miss those situations for some reason. We briefly stopped at Waco for some fast food, and when we got out the tiny cell was already quite large visually and on radar. We opted for plan B - the Waco Option.

Shot south on I35 in south Waco and immediately began seeing a large inflow / wallcloud feature. We had no east roads here though so we continued south to the town of Eddy and hwy 7. There was a lowering at Eddy as well and what appeared to be a tornado developing in the precip just west of town. It was a large funnel that appeared like it could be a tornado with it’s base obscured. We broke east on hwy 7 toward Chilton / Marlin all the while keeping watch on our development. We were very close, partly because I kept messing with trying to get my dashcam to stream video. For some reason I was unable to at this point and for some time. It just wasn’t working. The development was constantly starting to overrun us and at times we were practically under the wallcloud. The whole area was active and we saw potential areas alternating to the w, nw, and sw all part of the inflow region. We led the storm east taking pics and video. Our route took us to Chilton, Marlin, Kosse, Marquez and there we took hwy 79 north to Jewett. While we saw quite a few lowerings and funnels none produced. The storm was steady getting a bit weaker than appeared earlier near I35. The part of the storm to the north which we had originally seen exiting Waco appeared on radar to have slightly more rotation, and I believe Threatnet showed a shear marker of 69 mph for it at one time. We would have considered catching that area, but roads were non-conducive. However we were already fairly happy we had caught a fairly strong storm so close to home, and I continued to believe based forecast wise there was always some hope. At Jewett we began driving through the core to Buffalo. Some time before there I managed to get my dashcam streaming and video taped / streamed what was likely the first rainbow on SevereStreaming.com. Ta Da! LOL! Our storm was still showing some rotation however and we had recently seen a nice funnel near Jewett so with light remaining we decided to continue on. Somewhere near there we noticed a secondary cell had popped up directly behind our cell. We thought that was a bit odd. It was strengthening fairly quickly and we thought it might be good to turn around since we could check it out on the way home. However after a scan or two of radar analysis it didn’t appear as they it was as good as our current cell. So we proceeded to Centerville through more precip core and then ne on hwy 7 for about another 6 miles. At this time it was starting to get late and we were beginning to think we were wasting time with our cell. I began tinkering around and scrolled the radar a bit west to notice that our storm west had a TVS showing! Closer inspection revealed it also had a meso and a hook, and apparently it had been showing consistent TVS’s for about 3 or 4 scans!! Alert!! Likely tornado on the ground! We immediately turned around back through Centerville, to Marquez then down hwy 79 west in the direction of Franklin. The storm continued to show strong rotation, TVS, and signs of imminent tornado, if not already on the ground. We could just kick ourselves! It appeared our storm had released a gust boundary and the new cell was riding it from behind and using it to increase it’s SRH. Along the way we could see the menacing back of the tower in the distance. We were losing light, and the core / anvil precip was making it even darker. I was streaming video. We arrived just nne of New Baden on hwy 79 at 8:19 CDT when Tony had spied a large conical funnel halfway to ground in the distance. It was very dark in that direction due to the storm and failing light. I adjusted and tried to get my dashcam to stream but appears I couldn’t improve the contrast enough to see the funnel. This was obviously a very tornadic area, and we had high hopes based on what we had been seeing on radar for this storm to produce. However we also knew stormwise, tornado warning wise, and signature wise on average it was beginning to get a bit stale. I took some digital cam shots mostly after this funnel had dissipated, and pulled out the VX2000 and it was showing the area fairly clearly. Tony was rolling with his low light digi-cam the whole time. There were actually several lowerings and the inflow at times was fairly strong. None of the other lowerings though ever looked as good as the initial stout funnel. We continued to watch and tape as it crossed the road and continued ese. The storm then began weakening…chase over.

After checking logs we find that we missed the tornado logged for 6 ESE of Bremond by a little over 3 minutes!!! I think you know how that makes us feel. We were staring at what was left of the tornado directly after it lifted. Oddly, looking at SPC’s updated log now I see Franklin Fire Dept logged a tornado basically directly at mine and Tony’s position at 8:39! LOL! Not sure what is going on there. If one of those lowerings was on the ground I didn’t see it. Perhaps they were referring to a funnel. Surely another torn didn’t pass between us to our wsw. I have no explanation for this, but it is interesting.

This was the first chase between Tony and myself and it was a good one. Whatever pics and video as time allows so please check back. I still have to post pics for 4-23, and updates from video for other previous chases - which I intend to do.

 

[Kiel Ortega]

I guess I can say I witnessed the Norman/Noble tornado from the NWC...though winds around 65-70 mph and about 10 secs of good funnel and rain bands doesn't get me all that excited (Patrick Marsh and Greg Stumpf went and surveyed the path about 2 hours after the tornado happened). I ended up surveying the N OKC tornado (EF0)....which if it hadn't been for the radar signature you could've written off as wind damage and the Pauls Valley/Paoli tornado (EF1) yesterday. While the manufactured home is a complete loss from the latter tornado, I'm not that surprised. The home wasn't strapped down, the "foundation" was
three levels of cinder blocks, loosely mortared (or just glued) together and gravity was holding the home down onto this foundation. The thing I have yet to figure out is how long the path is. I found a hay coverage destroyed at Hwy 59 and 133 W of Byars which is right where the radar had the signature ending...but I am concerned that may be from an event last month.

 

[Sam Barricklow]

I chased the tornado warned storm just north of McKinney, near Anna. I followed the storm to Honey Grove, east of Bonham. A few photos are at the following URL:

http://www.k5kj.net/20080507.htm

and a time-lapse of the storm is at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jx18ZPR0Mmc