Pictures of Wedge N of McLean 3-28-07?

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

I was going back through my video of March 28th again, inparticular what I filmed after dark north of McLean. I believe I finally found the wedge that past by Kellerville around 8:50pm that evening hiding in one of my video stills. Considering the direction I was looking and the time stamp on the video, I am 99% sure that it has to be it. I am curious if anyone else got video or stills of this tornado? I was about 4 Miles SE of Kellerville at that time.

Attached is my still from 8:48pm. Horrible quality, but I am going to try and get a better copy in a few days and post it. The area of interest is the right side of the photo (kind of in the background). When my camera was hooked up to my tv it looks a lot better.

 

[Jeff Snyder]

I was chasing with Gabe Garfield, Dan Dawson, Robin Tanamachi, and a group of several others that day... We were driving north on 1443 S of Kellerville when the folks in my group started to talk about a possible large tornado to our northwest. For the life of me, though, I couldn't get a good view of it (I'll attribute that to me having to pay attention while driving!). Your vid capture actually clears things up a bit for me... We stopped about ~3-4 mi S of Kellerville (+/- a mile or two... don't have the exact log up right now) to see what we could see, and I pulled the following vid cap, facing the northwest @ approx 8:46 pm:

Now, the "low-hanging doohickey" that's being blocked by my wiper blade appears similar to the low-hanging doohickey that's on the left side of your vid cap, and the brightness on the right of this vid cap looks like heavy precip that's in the center of your vid cap. This would corroborate what our group was seeing farther north... I wish I would have thought about panning the video camera to the right (i.e. north), but I was too busy trying to find it w/ my eyes to think about moving the camcorder. At any rate, here's a vid cap taken from approx 8:55pm when we were basically in Kellerville:

I think the "feature of interest" may be in the background to the right of the bright "flash", where it looks like a funnel/tornado may reside. By this time, camcorder issues continued as I accidentally slipped it out of manual focus and into auto focus, thus yielding the out-of-focus vid.

This probably isn't much help, but it's interesting nonetheless. Gabe and/or others in my group that night may have better video, though. At least my daytime video turned out alright... Ugh.

To refresh some memories, below is the text recap of this tornado from a PNS from AMA:

RATED EF-3 (MAX WINDS 138-167 MPH)
PATH LENGTH: 7 MILES
MAX WIDTH: 1 MILE
TORNADO BEGAN 8:45 PM...ENDED 9:00 PM
0 FATALITIES / 0 INJURIES

THIS TORNADO DEVELOPED FROM THE SAME STORM THAT MOVED JUST EAST OF
MCLEAN. THE INITIAL CIRCULATION DEVELOPED 8 MILES NORTH NORTHEAST
OF MCLEAN AT 8:45 PM AND WAS INITIALLY MOVING NORTHEAST AT 40 MPH.
AS IT CROSSED FM 2473 AT THE MCCLELLAN CREEK BRIDGE...HIGH-TENSION
POWER LINES SUPPORTED BY DOUBLE WOODEN POLE STRUCTURES WERE BROKEN
OR SNAPPED AT THE GROUND AT SEVERAL LOCATIONS. NUMEROUS HARD
AND SOFTWOOD TREES WERE DEBARKED WITH ONLY STUBS REMAINING. AT 8:49
PM...THE TORNADO MOVED MORE NORTHWESTERLY AND ACCELERATED TO 45 MPH.
A LOCAL RANCHER...WHO LIVES ABOUT 7 MILES NORTHWEST OF KELLERVILLE
HEARD THE TORNADO APPROACHING AND TOOK SHELTER. DAMAGE TO HIS
PROPERTY INCLUDED A COVERED PORCH THAT WAS COMPLETELY BLOWN OFF AND
STEEL ROOFING WAS PEELED BACK ON THE SOUTHWARD FACING SIDE. A BRICK
CHIMNEY ALSO COLLAPSED. SEVERAL TREES...AS MUCH AS 200 FEET FROM
THE WEST EDGE OF THE HOUSE...WERE BLOWN DOWN. A BUNKHOUSE ON THE
PROPERTY LOST HALF OF THE ROOF. THE STEEL ROOF ON THE RESIDENCE
HOME WAS PEELED BACK. AN ANCHORED LARGE STEEL FEED BUNK WAS PULLED
OUT OF THE GROUND. SEVERAL POWER POLES WERE ALSO SNAPPED AT THE
GROUND.

--> http://www.srh.noaa.gov/ama/march2007_tornado_outbreak/LBBPNSAMA.031728

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

I completed my video of the storm after it passed McLean (8:36pm to 8:50pm). I found a few frames that are pretty convincing but being more to the NE would have really helped. They are attached at the bottom with red boxes highlighting what I blieve to be the EF-3 hiding in there. We were near Highway 453 and 2473 when they were captured, 3-5 miles east of Kellerville.

Here is the video link. Some parts are slowed to 1/4 and others are down to 1/16 regular speed. The interesting sections start around 1:30 into the video. Didnt want to put music with it, but it was too demonic without it (slowed voices and all).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZFB2geng3k

I also found this picture yesterday. I didnt know this funnel had touched till I noticed the vorticy on the ground when I looking at it last night.

This is one of my fav shots all day even though it is blurry. This was the new updraft after Kellerville tornado just after 9pm.

 

[Kevin Ash]

Interesting pics from March 28 there. I love the shot of the updraft.

I had to work until 5:30 pm that day, but after work I hopped in the car with fellow Weathernews employee Nick Maddock and we headed west from the OKC Metro on I-40.

We hit Shamrock right at dusk and were forced off the Interstate by county EM officials. We went north on 83 from Shamrock and had a spectacular view of the updraft (with aid of lightning) from the east.

We rolled into Wheeler and heard the reports on NWS radio of a large tornado to the SW. We stopped on the western side of Wheeler along 152 for just a minute or two to get our bearings, check WxWorx, etc. As we sat at an abandoned gas station, the power in all of Wheeler went out.

We decided to creep WNW on 152 to get better visibility outside of town and before we left town we both saw power flashes on the horizon to the WSW. Unfortunately I was driving and Nick was holding the laptop and we never ran the video camera!

I really thought as we cleared Wheeler and had a mostly unobstructed view that we would see the tornado between lightning flashes, but we never did actually see it. Your pictures confirm it was there, though I think after reading the PNS posted above by Jeff we needed to be closer to New Mobeetie to see it. Local EM stopped us again on 152 before we could get that far.

So in the end even if you had been farther NE, it may not have given you a substantially better view. Then again maybe my eyes were just tired from having stared at a computer screen all day before the chase.

 

[Gerard Jebaily]

I was in my vehicle in between Jeff S and Robin T when a couple of my passengers spotted a large tornado while making our way north towards kellerville. I dont recall having any good vid caps of that one but I do have good video caps of a powerflash illuminated tornado that could possibly be the same one you guys are talking about. Its of the tornado that took out the Mesonet Site just east of Mclean as it crossed I-40. In the picture it didnt seem to be of wedge characteristics, more like a short thick stovepipe. Im thinking that its the same tornado. I will post the pics to the thread when I get to my home computer.

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

I was in my vehicle in between Jeff S and Robin T when a couple of my passengers spotted a large tornado while making our way north towards kellerville. I dont recall having any good vid caps of that one but I do have good video caps of a powerflash illuminated tornado that could possibly be the same one you guys are talking about. Its of the tornado that took out the Mesonet Site just east of Mclean as it crossed I-40. In the picture it didnt seem to be of wedge characteristics, more like a short thick stovepipe. Im thinking that its the same tornado. I will post the pics to the thread when I get to my home computer.

I saw the tornado you are talking from about couple miles south of McLean around 8:20 pm. The tornado in question (Kellerville tornado) I believe touched down near 8:45pm. I started this thread in hopes that someone else had got a better view than I did there near Kellerville and they had some pictures that would clear up what I saw that night. It seems as though this storm did one heck of a job at hiding a mile wide tornado, even if it was at night.

Here is the report of the McLean tornado you mentioned. Given the short time between this one lifting and the Kellerville tornado touching down, I would like to see a map of the damage paths of both tornadoes.

RATED EF-2 (MAX WINDS 110-137 MPH)
PATH LENGTH: 5 MILES ESTIMATED
MAX WIDTH: 200 YARDS
TORNADO BEGAN 8:23 PM...ENDED 8:38 PM
0 FATALITIES / 0 INJURIES

THE TORNADO LIKELY DEVELOPED TWO MILES SOUTHEAST OF MCLEAN IN
SOUTHEASTERN GRAY COUNTY /IT IS UNCLEAR IF THE TORNADO CROSSED
INTERSTATE 40/. THE TORNADO MOVED NORTH NORTHEAST ACROSS EASTERN
PORTIONS OF MCLEAN. A MAX WIND SPEED OF 127 MPH WAS REPORTED AT 8:35
PM AT THE WEST TEXAS MESONET WEATHER STATION...1 MILE EAST OF MCLEAN.
THE TORNADO LIFTED 3 MILES NORTHEAST OF MCLEAN.

MAJOR DAMAGE ASSOCIATED WITH THIS TORNADO INCLUDED THE FOLLOWING.
THE TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION METEOROLOGICAL TOWER WAS
BENT AT A 90 DEGREE ANGLE TO THE GROUND 1 MILE SOUTHEAST OF MCLEAN.
APPROXIMATELY 500 YARDS TO THE NORTH NORTHEAST OF THIS TOWER...A
METAL VETERINARY CLINIC HAD A TXDOT HIGHWAY SIGN IMPACT THE BUILDING
AND PENETRATE THE METAL SIDING AND ALSO LOST PART OF THE TIN FROM
THE ROOF. ONE HUNDRED YARDS TO THE NORTH AND SLIGHTLY WEST OF THE
VETERINARY CLINIC WAS A HOUSE THAT SUFFERED EXTENSIVE ROOF DAMAGE.
A SMALL SECTION OF THE ROOF WAS COMPLETELY REMOVED. ALTHOUGH ONLY A
SMALL SECTION OF THE ROOF WAS DESTROYED...INDICATIONS THROUGHOUT THE
HOUSE SHOW THAT THE ENTIRE ROOF STRUCTURE ATTEMPTED TO BE LIFTED
FROM THE WALLS. A LARGE BARN WAS ALSO DESTROYED ALONG WITH SOME
TREE DAMAGE OCCURRED JUST NORTHEAST OF MCLEAN DURING THE FINAL
STAGES OF THE TORNADO.

MINOR DAMAGE WAS ENCOUNTERED ALONG COUNTY ROAD Y...WHERE METAL
ROOFING WAS LOST FROM A LARGE METAL SHED. METAL LAWN AND PORCH
FURNITURE WAS MANGLED AND RELOCATED...A LARGE SATELLITE DISH
SUFFERED MINOR DAMAGE TO ITS MESH LINING...AND A FEW LARGE BRANCHES
WERE SNAPPED FROM NEARBY TREES. AN EMPTY FERTILIZER BIN ALSO
DISAPPEARED. THE TORNADO DISSIPATED NORTH OF COUNTY ROAD Y.

 

[Gerard Jebaily]

Here are the video captures I have. The first two are in order of a the tornado looking north between 745-755 if I recall as I was approaching Mclean from the south. I was alot closer to the tornado than I had thought after looking at the video captures. The second two are of the tornado as it crossed over I-40 and took out the mesonet site.

I created an animated .gif image of about 6 frames of the powerflash which clearly illuminates a thick stove pipe tornado. I was never sure if this tornado continued on towards kellerville or if it lifted and another dropped but after reading the report I can see that my captures were not what you were looking for.

Edit: Pictures now embedded instead of url

 

[jeremy wilson]

My wife and myself got way to close to the stovepipe in Gerards pics. In fact my windshield wipers were lifted off the glass, twisted around and slammed down so hard my windshield cracked.

Needless to say we had to stop and catch our breath and lost this tornado. As we sped north we saw what appeared to be a large wedge north of I-40 with multiple powerflashes.

My camera crapped out on me about 20 minutes prior to the stovepipe that wrecked my wipers so i have no footage. I dropped it while running back to my truck after local emergency folk decided to let the angry mob of chasers through thier roadblock when a funnel crossed the road right in front of us. I believe this funnel/wallcloud/meso was responsible for the above tornados.

On a side note, I amazed myself by continuing to chase after dark with a violent tornado tearing up west texas right in front of me even though I knew I would get no footage that night. This was my wifes first tornado intercept day (five tornados in all) and she concluded that I was legally insane because of that nights events.

I realized that night that I was totally and absoulutly addicted to chasing not because of the footage I would show off later but because it was embedded in my blood.

 

[Earl Faubion]

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showpost.php?p=129154&postcount=62

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

http://www.stormtrack.org/forum/showpost.php?p=129154&postcount=62

Do have any others stills from that time? You were looking north-NW from I-40 right?

That is the area I am curious about and I have some video stills that look just like that from that same time period, but I am not totally convinced that is not rain being wrapped around the tornado which is a few miles north of that. In my video, if you continue to follow that area it is along the back egde of the meso as the storm pulls north and you can see what looks to be the smooth wall of a wedge north of that rainshaft. That "rain shaft" very well could be the tornado (it is what I had my camera focused on that evening), but the more I watch the video, the more it looks like a rain shaft to me. It could have been rain wrapped, but I guess we will never know.

 

[Earl Faubion]

The view in the photo is looking slightly north of due west, the streak of light in the lower part of the frame is from the headlights of vehicle traveling north on 453. I was on the north service road of I-40 because westbound traffic was temporarily shut down. The time on that frame (8:50PM) should be accurate plus or minus one minute.

That frame is the best I have of the wedge on that storm. Other frames suggest it may have been there but are not conclusive. I'll be happy to share them with you. Look for an email at the address shown on your web site.