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.
I was going to post some pics but I can't get it to work. Oh, well....
