3/23/07 REPORTS: NM, TX, OK, KS, CO

[Tony Laubach]

COMPLETE MARCH 23, 2007 STORM CHASE LOG HERE! (http://www.tornadoeskick.com/logs070323.html)

Took the local day-before-the-day chase with Jon Van de Grift and Jennifer Brindley here in Northeastern Colorado and were rewarded for our patience as we got on a storm shortly after 3pm which moved off the Palmer Divide and slowly trekked north and east towards Fort Morgan. After nearly bailing on it a couple times, we finally watched it move into the higher dew air and quickly go severe over Fort Morgan. By this time, dark had fallen, but we were greeted with a great light show and incredible structure which quickly made the trip worth-while. All this was basically to position ourselves for Saturday's setup. We met with Mike Umscheid in Deer Trail and chased around with him today!

COMPLETE MARCH 23, 2007 STORM CHASE LOG HERE! (http://www.tornadoeskick.com/logs070323.html)

http://www.tornadoeskick.com/images/2007/070323_021.jpg

http://www.tornadoeskick.com/images/2007/070323_057.jpg

http://www.tornadoeskick.com/images/2007/070323_113.jpg

http://www.tornadoeskick.com/images/2007/070323_123.jpg

COMPLETE MARCH 23, 2007 STORM CHASE LOG HERE! (http://www.tornadoeskick.com/logs070323.html)

[Jay McCoy]

I will post a full report tomorrow but a quick summation. I, Kanani, And Bill Turner chased the tornado warned storm in SE New Mexico that went through crossroads and up through Rosevelt and Curry counties and ended up hitting Clovis. We had to backtrack numerous times due to limited roads but finally got in the right spot at the right time about 2 miles east of Arch, NM on hwy 746 just before 8:30pm where it dropped 3 tornados simultaniously. 1 small cone, 1 banana shaped, and 1 large multiple vortex. All 3 were backlit with lightning and a number of powerflashes from each. Looking west they were at 11:30, 1:00, and the wedge at 3:00 in relation to our position. All maybe a mile or less away. We had to backtrack once again and didnt get close to it again until near Farwell due east of Clovis. As we pulled in to Farwell for a quick splash of gas the sirens were going off and we were getting reports from Jason Boggs of a large tornado striking Clovis at that moment. By then it was well after dark and the whole system was rapidly coming at us so we decided to head NE on hwy 60 and call it a night.

Hopefully the video turns out. The only way we could see them was the lightning and powerflashes.

****Edit*** I ran into a couple of chasers in a white vehicle with a mesonet on top west of Bledsoe on NM hwy 262 that I had met before but I coulnt think of your names to save my life. If you read this let me know your names. I was in the white explorer with the lights. After the wall moved north you went west and I backtracked east to try and keep up with it. ****

[Jason Boggs]

Short report here. Like Jay said, I saw a large wedge tornado east of Portales with multiple power flashes. Here is a video link to the power flashes. I will try to upload the tornado video later.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZCNjioF0TI

[Simon Brewer]

Solo chase in SE New Mexico: 2 tornadoes north of Lovington, got in bad possition and missed one or two on my storm, but had a great time. Favorite part of the chase was when the 'Lovington' storm was in 'LP-Mode'; absolutely gorgeous!

Simon

[Jim Bishop]

I left Work/Houston at 8:30am and gunnned it to extreme Eastern New Mexico. I missed the tornadoes Simon and Reed got by about 10-30min! Actually, after speaking with Simon last night, I now know that I saw the funnel stage of the last tornado way of to my northwest as I crossed into New Mexico, but I didn't get to my north road option in time to see the tornado. Ran into Simon and Aaron northeast of Tatum, NM. The storm did get better organized before dark and really wrapped up, showing a nice meso, beaver's tail and spectactular lightning. Stopped for the night in Lubbock.

[Jason A.C. Brock]

I headed out from Wichita Falls about 11am and headed for the Lubbock area hoping storms would move into or eventually form in the Northern Part of the moderate risk. I was surprised as many were of the storms firing North of AMA but I was also a little upset storms had formed further West than I had hoped. I finally decided in order to see anything at all Id have to book it toward the cell that was producing tornadoes which moved into the Crossroads NM area. This perfect isolated storm jsut did not want to cross over into Texas at all. I finall caught the storm near Crossroads as it was putting down a rather impressive stovepipe type tornado under a nicely rotating wall cloud. As I got closer wanting to better my view the tornado dissipated quickly and all I could film was some low contrast video. I did watch the wall cloud change or morph into a numerber of scary looking things for awhile tho. I finally headed home from Dora NM and back to Wichita Falls. Ill post pics video and all that good stuff later this weekend perhaps. A tornado in March in New Mexico...I never thought I myself would have believed it. Lets hope nature has more storms left for April and May.
Again there was problems with chasers parking in the road again. I wont mention whom they were. I know the side of the road way muddy...but thats why you find a dry mud free place to pull over. I know we all wanted to see the tornado but the spotter and I who were coming down the road 60mph hate surprises. New Mexico should install some shoulders tho thats for sure.

[Eugene Thieszen]

Walt Gish, Eric Sipes and I left Cordell around noon headed for an initial target on the NM border west of Lubbock. At Plainview we headed west toward Portales as cells fired along the front range, initially heading toward the cell coming N from near Roswell. When it began to disintegrate we instead chose to go South from Portales on 206 to meet the cell coming N from south of Tatum. Saw three relatively brief touchdowns looking to the W along SR 125 between 6:30 and 6:40 CDT. Then later on after dark saw what we thought were three tornados around 8:15 - 8:30 ESE of Portales.

Link to chase account and vid captures: http://www.geocities.com/genet_99/wxtreme_2007_031.htm

[edward oneal]

Quick chase south of Dodge City got off work after 5:30PM headed south to severe warned storm near Minneola lots of hail dime to nickel size covering US 283 snowplows had to be called out to clear roadway.http://spotted.dodgeglobe.com/pages/photo_page.php?mm=1537270&gallery=309966
http://spotted.dodgeglobe.com/pages/big_photo.php?mm=1537264&gallery=309966

[Reed Timmer]

Here is a link to the video clip from yesterday in NM...the last stovepipe shown in the video was actually the first tornado seen about 20 mi north of Lovington. THere's also a radar image at approximately the same time...I believe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0wQdRcgSoI

http://tornadovideos.net/UserFiles/Image/blog/2007/March/radar.jpg

[BrandonWhittington]

Went after the supercell that was increasing in intensity over in Moore County, TX. Intercepted it around the Stratford area and chased it all the way past Turpin. Video stills below are in order from the time I saw them. Congrats to all the NM chasers...

[Jay McCoy]

Then later on after dark saw what we thought were three tornados around 8:15 - 8:30 ESE of Portales.

I can confirm that. That would be the 3 tornados we caught just east of Arch which is ESE of Portales on hwy 746 (NM hwy88). Arch is maybe 10-12 miles SE of Portales. Read my report for more info on them.

[Jason Boggs]

Here are some video stills when the tornado was south of Clovis near Cameo.

http://img71.imageshack.us/img71/6765/dsc00001pt0.jpg

http://img75.imageshack.us/img75/4219/dsc00002af0.jpg

http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/2978/dsc00005pj2.jpg

HERE ARE SOME DAMAGE SHOTS ON THE SOUTH SIDE OF CLOVIS:

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/275/img0253ez2.jpg

http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/7577/img0254op8.jpg

http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/2835/img0259tj8.jpg

http://img126.imageshack.us/img126/9295/img0262ib0.jpg

http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/3285/img0267jm0.jpg




HERE IS A VIDEO CLIP OF THE POWER FLASHES ALONG WITH THE WEDGE TORNADO:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=b3_8AcIh0NA

[Dal Archer]

Wow! Congrats to all. (Reed, you and Joel got some great footage once again!)

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

I started the day with no plans of chasing, so I actually got a full nights sleep before this one. After seeing the models that mourning I was convinced enough to move south from Borger to Amarillo and make a decision from there. I was able to talk my friend Andrew into going after his plans for the evening got cancelled. We went SW and ended up in Muleshoe, got internet and notice the storms SW of us in NM. We vetured futher SW till we got the north side of Lovington, NM where we met up with the first storm to cross our paths. The storm intensified rapidily dropping a few small funnels followed by a large lowering just west of Lovington. As the storm moved north of the city, the structure got better every minute. It then dropped the first tornado near Tatum, NM, the largest tornado of the afternoon that we saw. After going through Tatum we took a road NE out of town (state highway 125) figuring the storm had made a right turn more to the east at this point, but it didn't. It cycled up and down over the next 30 minutes dropping a decent needle and then a small rope to our west. Our road took us a good ways east of the storm till we got into the TX panhandle again. We found a northbound road and got back in range just before dark. Structure of this storm was still amazing, but it only dropped one more funnel that we saw NW of the Bledsoe, TX area. We stayed with this storm up to Rogers and lost good visibility and broke of the chase due to a lacking of road options.

As we began to venture home, about a mile into TX we came across another chaser who got stuck on the worst muddy road I have ever seen. While trying to flag down other vehicles to get enough rope to try and pull out the SUV out, one guy who stopped told us he didnt have any rope but said he was trying to get back to his house, because it had been hit by a tornado. This was the first I had heard of any damage of the day, but would not be the last. After failing to get enough rope, we went to Muleshoe for gas and then turned back into the storms to go to Clovis to drop off our new passenger at a hotel so he could get someone to tow him out in the mourning. We had no clue Clovis had no power. Clovis was a mess, to say the least. He was able to get a hotel even though they had no power. We then ventured futher into Clovis, to find out that everyone in town driving around trying to find damage. Every street had an inch to over a foot of water flowing down it and it was still raining. After seeing a destroyed house and trees everywhere, we called it quits for the day and returned to Amarillo. Then, this mourning I came across 3 snapped powerlines north of Panhandle, TX. I figured they were the result of straight line winds last night.

2 for 3 this year on chases, with 5 tornadoes. Starting to make up for the 0 for 20+ for the past 2 years.

Here are a couple photos:
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/DSC_0215-2-1.jpg

http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/DSC_0243-1-1.jpg

damage in Clovis
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/IMG_0680.jpg

Here is the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SSvQFtnLxg

[Jason A.C. Brock]

Ive added some pics of the Crossroads area wall cloud as well as some lightning shots from Near Dora. I will post some video later on youtube and you can find that link by going to http://www.texhomastormchasers.com and you can see the pics by looking under the profile pics at http://www.myspace.com/texhomastormchasers

[Mickey Ptak]

At 8:30pm on March 23 2007 Chad Lawson and I filmed a large and destructive tornado that hit the south side Clovis, NM. We have not heard of any fatalities but many structures were damaged. Below are a few images of this nighttime tornado.
http://www.mesomick.com/pages/Image/Weather/20070323/March232007CHADNightTimeTornadoImage3.jpg


There was a young man in this pickup truck going south bound on HWY 18. As you can see his truck was crushed by what looks to be some sort of metal frame.
http://www.mesomick.com/pages/Image/Weather/20070323/March232007CHADNightTimeTornadoDanage2.jpg


Prior to dark, Chad and I also filmed many rotating wall-clouds and a few funnels. The image below is of an area of rotation just to our west which was on the east side of the RFD and the main meso. This had moderate rotation and was close to producing a tornado but did not. (Jay McCoy was also here with us as well.)

http://www.mesomick.com/pages/Image/Weather/20070323/March232007CHADDayTimeMeso1EastSideOfRFDImage%203. jpg

However, before occluding it did form into a cone funnel (http://www.mesomick.com/pages/Image/Weather/20070323/March232007CHADDayTimeMeso1EastSideOfRFDConeFunnel Image2.jpg)backlit by a nice CG bolt and sun light.


Here is a wide angle look at the entire low level structure of this supercell. To the right is main meso with what could have been a tornado(?). To the left is the circulation on the east side of the RFD.

http://www.mesomick.com/pages/Image/Weather/20070323/March232007DayTimeMeso1.jpg

As this meso moved off to the north we had to find new routes around the storm. While doing so filmed yet another funnel (http://www.mesomick.com/pages/Image/Weather/20070323/March232007CHADDayTimeMeso1Image2.jpg)and large hail (http://www.mesomick.com/pages/Image/Weather/20070323/March232007DayTimeMesoHail.jpg).


Chase mileage = 1054 miles
I will have a video blog on this system up as soon as I can.

Mick

EDIT:

****Edit*** I ran into a couple of chasers in a white vehicle with a mesonet on top west of Bledsoe on NM hwy 262 that I had met before but I coulnt think of your names to save my life. If you read this let me know your names. I was in the white explorer with the lights. After the wall moved north you went west and I backtracked east to try and keep up with it. ****

That was Chad and I. This makes the third time we have run into you while filming a tornadic storm. May 2 2006, Feb 23 2007, and of course today March 23 2007.

[Randy Denzer]

I left Austin solo at about 9:30 and headed north at a casual speed in the new chase van. Ran out of gas on I-20 just east of Coahoma not knowing the darn gas gauge was a little off and had to walk about a half mile for gas. Finally reached my target of Seminole at about 4:30ish. Chris Howell and Shane Motley were my remote forecasters and after much discussion they agreed for me to catch the splitting cell southwest of Hobbs, NM. I got to Hobbs and shot north through a sea of tumbleweeds to Lovington to get closer to the cell. As I got to Lovington I was able to videotape a short lived wedge to the northwest of town just north of us 82 (tornado #1). I was able to get the funnel roping out before returning to town to head north on 206. As I caught up with the cell again it had reformed the wedge just west of McDonald (Tornado #2). I was taping from SR 206 and was approached by a NM State Trouper to inquire about the tornado’s path. I lead him into Mcdonald, NM while shooting video (A police escort!). The tornado turned into a tube then became rain wrapped and dissipated. I continued up SR 206 through Tatum and eventually caught up with the cell about 1 mile north of Tatum. I was able to pull over and watched as the cell formed another short lived wedge to my west (Tornado #3). I again jumped about a mile ahead and was now waiting for the cell to cross SR 206. The cell had regenerated and was incredibly well defined. The precip cleared the immediate area as the shovepipe formed (Tornado #4). The action at the base of this tornado was incredible and this was by far the best of the tornados I filmed. After this dissipated I moved another mile north and filmed the rope tornado form (Tornado #5). This dissipated and turned into another funnel with light debris as it crossed the road (Funnel #6). It then quickly wrapped into precip. The cell went across SR 206 at Crossroads, NM dropping quarter sized hail and moving into an area with very few roads. Myself and another chase team made a big mistake that took us 8 miles east of the cell trying desperately to find a north road to get back to it. By the time I got back to the cell it was getting dark and I had blown the water pump on my van. I limped into Lubbock to get to the TV station and get some sleep.

The videos will be posted on www.mcwar.org tomorrow

[Tim Marshall]

The Marshall's had a great day today observing 3 tornadoes near Tatum, NM. We left Dallas and drove west on I-20, making the critical decision at Big Spring to head west to Eunice, NM. There we saw a pathetic tail-end charlie storm shear over and nearly die twice. But when the storm approached Lovington, the base enlarged and a large wall cloud developed and began rotating fast. However, it took a while for the circulation to tighten as the cloud bases were relatively high. But, when I saw the precipitation core decend behind the wall cloud, I knew a tornado was imminent. The first tornado was a stove pipe as shown by Wesley and we had a great unobstructed view of this tornado before it became wrapped in rain. We got up close and personal with the elephant trunk tornado #2 (also shown by Wesley) that occurred outside the wall cloud and got some great footage/images. The third tornado was a thin rope and only lasted less than one minute. We then came across an accident just north of the town of Crossroads. A woman flipped her SUV in the hail (up to 2 in.) that covered the road. We assisted her until police arrived but that pretty much ended the chase. By that time, it was getting dark and we decided to let the storm go. We saw on the XM, that a bow echo roared in from the west and merged with the supercell near Clovis. The comma head echo went right over the town. TM

[Matt Chatelain]

We got on the Lovington storm just as it had developed. It had amazing "LP" structure that lasted for the first hour of its life. We were actually north of the core and could see the entire base. Once it approached Lovington it got its act together rapidly. Our radar went from 55 dbz to a core of 80 dbz in just two scans. Thats when we took SH 206 north and followed the storm as it dropped several tornadoes, from Tatum to Crossroads. We were using Curtis Mcdonald's new HD camera and the video is amazing! I'll post the video on youtube hopefully by today or tomorrow. Best chase so far for me, great day!

Edit - here is the video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6bm_kWwtRDA

[Randy Denzer]

All those reporting Chase reports for the Hobbs NM Cell please contact me if you are interested in putting together a chapter for the "Storms of 2007" DVD. I would need your complete log, media and anything you would like to add to a story about this day. You can contact me at randy@randydenzer.com

Thanks and what a fun day!

[Scott Olson]

http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/TS3.jpg


http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/Ts6.jpg


http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/ts11.jpg



Full report and pictures at:
http://axisofnature.com/2007/?p=26

[Jody Radzik]

http://atman.net/nmupdraft/032307WIPPsc.jpg

I've got a very sad story to tell you all. On Friday, March 23, I was about 30 miles southeast of Carlsbad when I spied a nice supercell spinning up over the WIPP facility. I stopped off the highway and got these photos:

http://nmupdraft.blogspot.com/2007/03/chase-two-mistakes-were-made.html

As far as I could tell, this cell occluded itself. Thus, it appeared to lose its power. I figured that was it and went to futzing about online as I waited on cells to come up behind it.

As you all probably know, it merely reformed itself northeast and rolled toward Texas, dropping the Tatum tornado and 2-inch hailstones. When I finally finished dilly-dallying, I went north on NM 203 from Lovington toward Portales. There I came upon a load of big hail on the road and the other, smarter chasers who got to see the tornado. I was so distraught that I didn't stop to socialize, thinking that I may get lucky and see something up ahead (or maybe I was just too embarrassed to have been so close yet still missed the thing.)

Valuable lessons were learned on this chase, my third during a severe weather outlook. One was to keep chasing even if it looks like a cell is dissipating. It may just be reforming. The other is to get a 2-meter radio and license so I can hear what the other chasers are seeing.

Jody Radzik
nmupdraft.org