4/21/07 REPORTS: TX / KS / NE / CO [Archive]

Kevin Walter

04-22-2007, 12:55 AM

WOW indeed. Drifted west from Plainview to intercept the junk coming out of NM. Figured it might get its act together once it got to the better moisture and sure enough it did. Watched the Olton tornado form from just east of Olton; hung with it for almost its entire duration:

http://www.atmo.ttu.edu/walter/Storms_files/Olton%20Tornado%201.jpg

http://www.atmo.ttu.edu/walter/Storms_files/Olton%20Tornado%202.jpg

http://www.atmo.ttu.edu/walter/Storms_files/Olton%20Tornado%203.jpg

This storm went from unorganized junk to large-tornado-producing mothership in about 7 minutes. In fact, I happened to be time-lapsing the rain-free base through this transition. View that time-lapse here:

http://www.atmo.ttu.edu/walter/Storms.html

Continued on to intercept the new meso as it manifested a new wall cloud and put down the Tulia tornado. Drove through Tulia about 2 minutes after the twister, damage was bad:

http://www.atmo.ttu.edu/walter/Storms_files/Tulia_damage_1.JPEG

http://www.atmo.ttu.edu/walter/Storms_files/Tulia_damage_2.JPEG

Chased the churning meso and intermittent tornado north about 10 miles until the road was blocked by power poles:

http://www.atmo.ttu.edu/walter/Storms_files/road_blockage.JPEG

Another local late-afternoon multiple-tornado chase from Lubbock in spring 2007.

Kevin Walter

Brian Emfinger

04-22-2007, 01:13 AM

Chase Report Here
(http://www.realclearwx.com/42107.htm)
Video Here (http://www.realclearwx.com/42107vid.htm)

After jetting up to the area that spawned those storms that formed near the corner of New Mexico/Texas/&Oklahoma, we jetted back south after not being impressed and somehow ended up in perfect postion to get a few tornadoes. We were just east of Channing, Tx when the wall cloud we had been watching put down a tornado.
http://www.realclearwx.com/images/4210706.jpg

The tornado evolved quickly to a much large cone:
http://www.realclearwx.com/images/4210707.jpg

Then RFD cut off our view until we headed further east and we could barely see what was now a huge wedge to our north.
http://www.realclearwx.com/images/4210708.jpg

Later we caught back up to a long slender rope tornado:
http://www.realclearwx.com/images/4210710.jpg

Saw I believe only 3 tornadoes but will have to look over radar and everything to make sure. More pictures are on the chase report and should have some nice video tomorrow.... http://www.realclearwx.com/42107.htm

Bobby Prentice

04-22-2007, 02:52 AM

RJ Evans, Gene Rhoden and I observed numerous tornadoes of all shapes and sizes (from rope to wedege) from three tornadic supercells between Channing-Dumas-Sunray. Since the storms were moving NNE at a rapid rate, we did the passing train chase. Latch onto a supercell and chase the tornado as long as possible before moving east to intercept the next supercell moving up the line. Our emotions swung throughout the day from optimistic to pessimistic to euphoria.

The early storms over northwest TX Panhandle appeared to struggle as they moved NNE, so we dropped south after a supercell moving NNE roughly along US285 from Vega-Channing. Our road options were poor in the Canadian River Valley so we parked on TX354 about halfway between Four Way and Channing and let the storm approach. The storm appeared to have decent separation from the storm to its south. We continued to meander further west to get closer to the wall cloud moving N-NNE to our southwest.

The obedient supercell waited until we were in perfect position before the tornado formed ~4-7 miles to our southwest. It touched down as an elephant trunk for about 10 minutes before evolving into a multivortex cone then truncated cone that passed just east of Channing. We lost sight of the tornado to our northwest, caught on the wrong side of the hook. So we headed east and north to obtain a view from TX2202 southwest of Dumas (DUX).

Not sure what all happened during the time we lost sight of the tornado, but when we saw it again it was a truncted cone in the rain curtains to our W. An occlusion occured and we observed a new truncated cone and transparent rope (old meso?) from US87 ~7-10 miles west of Dumas. The large tornado was escaping our sight in the rain to the northwest, so we backtracked east a few miles then drove north on a paved county road about 4 miles or so.

Loe and behold the rain cleared and we saw the wedge about 1 mile to our NW moving NNE toward US287. This is very likely the same tornado which struck Cactus, TX. I haven't been so close to a wedge since Allison, TX (6/8/1995). We couln't keep up on the muddy roads and US287 looked closed, so we dropped south on US287 to Dumas then east on TX FM 152 about 15 miles or so to intercept the next supercell coming up from the south.

The supercell produced a multivortex cone about 5-7 miles to our WSW and a rope about 2-4 miles to our SSW that lifted about 1-2 miles before it hit us. We finally gave up on this storm at TX 281/1060 in extreme northeast Moore County (~10 E of Sunray) and waited as the next supercelll in the line approached.

Our final tornado of the evening was after dark around 0200z or so on the wsw-nw horizon. Appeared as a stovepipe with two power flashes observed. Might have morphed into a cone, but I couldn't tell for sure.

We decided to give the southern mega tornadic supercell a wide bearth and dropped south to Conway, TX before heading east on I-40. Fortunately, the squall line wasn't too bad where we crossed it between Groom-McLean even though GR level 3 showed supercell structures and periodic TVS's.

RJ's summary for the day...WOW! Gene says we should have our lucky donut box bronzed.

The 00z/SUN NAM suggests that monday looks like a probable day before the "big day" along the southern plains dryline with a MT airmass in place and good shear profiles. Tuesday looks like an outbreak over the southern plains with western OK in the crosshairs. Tuesday could be an historic outbreak if the NAM is correct.

Jason A.C. Brock

04-22-2007, 02:59 AM

I swear I had A gremlin with me today. I started out on the cells near Hereford filming what was a very nice structured rotating wall cloud.....them boom.... My camcorder shorted out. The storms did to....too much competition and the storm to my North near Dumas and the Storm to the South went wild.....I finally headed South Just in time to catch the Tulia tornado and at least got some stills of the amazing structure. Alot of excellent structure on all these cells today. Even a nice little LP behind the line was spinning like a top for awhile.
Camcorder is headed for the shop tomorrow but I do have a backup.....its jsut sad I didnt have it with me today :-(. I would have had some amazing timelapse of just the updrafts and rotating mesos on these beasts today.
Some other chase buddies of mine did better today tho tornado wise. Kenneth Mccallister I heard nabbed the Dumas tornadoes. Robert Sternadel was on the large Wedge down near Plainview and the tricountyweather.com guys got some very close video of the tornado near at Tulia. I believe their video may be on the Local Wichita Falls News tomorrow for those in this area.
These storms had it ALL WALL CLOUDS, LARGE HAIL, TORNADOES, MASSIVE ROTATION ON EVERY PART OF THE STORMS GREAT LIGHTNING
I was perturbed about my camcorder but I still got some amazing structure shots and did technically witness one tornado. Unfortunately it also had to be so damaging :-(.
Next time Im gonna hold back on the carebear kisses and rainbow hugs! ;-)
Im glad the chasers who were in the accident are ok....well as ok as you can be when a truck falls on you IM STILL THERE ARE SOME SHOT NERVES. :-(
Ill try to have some stills online tomorrow at http://www.texhomastormchasers.com and on the myspace page perhaps.
Panhandle magic is back in 2007!

Shane Adams

04-22-2007, 03:56 AM

Difficult but rewarding chase for Chad Lawson, Mickey Ptak, and myself in the northern TX panhandle. We managed to stay ESE/SE of the middle Deaf Smith county storm upon initiation and followed it north of I-40 as it dropped tornadoes from NW of Vega through southwest of Dumas. Not sure of exactly how many because of terrain/rain. and storm speeds, but we observed 4-6 tornadoes.

#1 NW of Vega from occluded meso
#2 SW of Channing
#3 SE/E NE Channing (long track wedge)
#4 (not sure if this was the same as #3 but have heard reports it was a different tornado)
#5 Just south of Dumas, from occluded meso, serpentine tornado maybe a half mile east of us......looked very much like the 1989 Hodges, TX tornado....incredible.
#6 Possible tornado just south of I-40 near Groom...so close to us we had to make a decision whether to stop or gun it...we gunned it. Feature appeared as a cigar-shaped tornado, then gradually tilted and elongated, lasted a few minutes...maybe half mile south of the interstate....still not certain it was on the ground or even a tornado but warning statements and wx-worx shear markers matched the location.

Eugene Thieszen

04-22-2007, 04:05 AM

The WXtreme Chase Team intercepted and chased the Olton-Tulia storm (after briefly checking out a storm near Hereford) and saw several tornadoes. In addition observed a night-time tornado E of Happy from about 9:00 - 9:10pm on the storm that followed after. Here are several quickly posted pics. Website update and full chase account to follow:

http://www.geocities.com/genet_99/wxtreme_2007_039.htm

Gene
WXtreme Chase Team

Billy Griffin

04-22-2007, 04:08 AM

Wow... that about sums it up for me today! I played it solo today, just enjoying time out on the plains and chasing after almost two years away.
I had my eye on this system from the get-go. I noticed the Gulf of Alaska origin, and was able to track its progress while flying between Seattle and OK City all week.

Although I am very sad to have witnessed the damage, I am very thankful to have had the opportunity to chase today, and to catch up with some old friends along the way.

I targeted the northern TX panhandle, and it turned out a good call. It seemed like every cell I was on was dropping one or more tornadoes! I can't recall having that kind of luck in the past, that's for sure! The first tornado was near Channing, followed by two on the ground (at the same time) just west of Dumas, followed by a large wedge east of Dumas, followed by a brief tornado near Lake Meredith, followed by two night tornadoes south of Sunray! Photos posted below are actually video captures.

Tornado #1... view from approximately 7 miles east of Channing, TX.
http://www.billygriffin.com/ST Photos Hosting/4_21_2007 4_01 PM_0001.jpg
http://www.billygriffin.com/ST Photos Hosting/4_21_2007 4_05 PM_0001.jpg

Tornado #2... multi-vortex stage southwest of Dumas, TX.
http://www.billygriffin.com/ST Photos Hosting/4_21_2007 4_23 PM_0001.jpg

Tornado #3... small tornado with violent motion! Approximately 8 miles west of Dumas.
Tornadoes #2 and #3 were observed at the same time!
http://www.billygriffin.com/ST Photos Hosting/4_21_2007 4_27 PM_0001.jpg

Tornado #4... rope tornado just east of Four Way (south of Dumas).
This one died rather quickly, but the wedge soon appeared afterwards.
http://www.billygriffin.com/ST Photos Hosting/4_21_2007 4_27 PM_0003.jpg

Tornado #5... violent wedge east of Dumas, TX.
http://www.billygriffin.com/ST Photos Hosting/4_21_2007 5_00 PM_0002.jpg
http://www.billygriffin.com/ST Photos Hosting/4_21_2007 5_00 PM_0001.jpg

Tornadoes 6 & 7 were observed at night, so consequently, no video.

Jeff Snyder

04-22-2007, 04:09 AM

I went out towards AMA with Brandon, Gabe, and a several others this afternoon. It's almost 3am, so I won't say much other than give anyone a guess as to say that we ended up with a total tornado count of .... zero. The targeted storms SW of AMA, in the Hereford area. With each new cell that went up in this area and moved NNE, a new cell would develop to its SSW and collide with it. We witnessed at least two such collisions. Each time, we waited a little longer for the southernmost cell to come into view, thinking that the tail-end charlie (locally, at least, since there were more cells to the NW and W of LUB ) was the best bet given uninterrupted inflow. We did experience incredible inflow south of Bushland with a developing supercell that, of course, was heavily disrupted by developing convection to its south-southwest.

With radar looking like everything was congealing N of I40 with widespread initiation in a very linear manner, we opted to stay with a LPish cell that crossed N of I40 w of AMA near Bushland. Of course, while this was occurring, the cells that we watched earlier in the afternoon (one that passed very near Vega, and another that passed between AMA and Vega, the one that on which we experienced amazing inflow) discretized from the mess N of I40, and both went on to produce tornadoes (I believe). Meanwhile, it was getting to be 7pm, and we know we couldn't make it south to the Tulia cell before nightfall. So, we stayed with the LP storm in hopes that it too would become tornadic, but that was not to be the case (before nightfall, at least). In utter frustration, we dropped that storm and headed home in a manner that would allow us to experience the Tulia supercell as it crossed I40 near Groom. While in Groom, we noted very intense convergence (with a large area of >71kt inbound velocities on BV1), and a tight circulation soon developed very nearby. We busted east towards 70, and started heading north towards Pampa. At one time, SRV1 indicated a very intense, very tight circulation west of Hwy 70, between Groom and Pampa. Alas, as we approached this circulation, it weakened. Again, admitting the Mother Nature defeated us, we limped home.

Ugh. This day was so bad all I can do is laugh. We were on 3 storms during the afternoon and evening. Each storm had looked decent in it's initial stages, before more convection kept developing to the immediate SSW. EAch time this occurred, we turned our hopes to the new tail-end charlie (local, again, but there was a decent gap between the Oilton / Tulia cell and the cell(s) we were on). And each time, despite mergers and the abundance of nearby convection, the cell we left developed strong rotation and (again, if I've followed the warnings correctly) produced a tornado (or tornadoes) N of I40. Meanwhile, Gabe and I both had original targets in the Silverton to Plainview area that we had for the past couple of days, a target that would have allowed us to observe the tornadic supercell that roamed to the W and N of that area. Instead, we modified our target slightly based on fears of strong capping possibly inhibiting convection S of I40 (as the various RUC runs indicated), as well as fears over high LCLs. In addition, I believe the more recent NAM runs showed the best low-level shear near I40 through afternoon. So, with all that, we opted to stay near AMA. Bad choice. At least I can hang my hopes on the potential for two high-end severe weather days in the offiing...

I'm very curious as to why the cell we were on from Bushland to Marsh (and, eventually, east of Dumas) didn't really do much until near sunset as it approached Moore county... This storm was the local tail-end charlie, with it's inflow only interrupted by a dissipating left-split that was thrown of the Tulia cell. Structure was okay from time to time, but it was extremely disappointing to know that we left at least 2 supercells that would later produce substantial tornadoes.

Congrats to those who scored (sounds like almost everyone but us). It's been quite a 1-month stretch for western Texas and the TX panhandle region, and there's the potential for a similar event Monday.

Wesley Luginbyhl

04-22-2007, 05:37 AM

Got to Plainview around 2 pm after taking the scenic route across SW Oklahoma. I sat around there till 5pm with my g/f, Dave Haas, and Ryan Jarratt. I felt the southern Panhandle had the best chance for seeing something, so we stuck it out in Plainview most the aftternoon to take advantage of the EV-DO through my phone there. We moved west on initial development and realized the storms headed to Hereford could not be caught from where we were at, so we turned south and picked up the best one coming from west of the Lubbock region (my best decision of the day).

When we first saw the rain free base near Littlefield, it was nothing special. It stayed this way for 20 or 30 minutes when out of nowhere the storm seemed to stop moving for 10 minutes and exploded one of the best structures I have ever seen. It also sucked up more dirt off those fields around there than i though was possible. We stayed with the storm all the way to Claude. We are thinking we saw atleast 3 or 4 tornadoes with one after dark near Wayside. Almost made a major mistake towards the end of the first tornado (Olton) after going down a very muddy road since I didnt see many other options that might keep us with the storm. Baseball size hail helped me keep from getting stuck. My jeep was covered completely in mud by the time we saw pavement again. It was really stupid initially, but we ended up with a great view of the Olton tornado roping out. Had a few focusing issues with my camera today. All the dust being sucked up by the storm didnt help that any, but overall another very exciting chase.

Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk3K2x3YgeM

Here are the pics:
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/DSC_0066.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/DSC_0085-1.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/DSC_0093-1-1.jpg
SE of Wayside looking NW
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/IMG_0764.jpg
http://i135.photobucket.com/albums/q122/not_a_leader_of_men/IMG_0765.jpg

Gerard Jebaily

04-22-2007, 06:38 AM

Congrats to those who scored (sounds like almost everyone but us). It's been quite a 1-month stretch for western Texas and the TX panhandle region, and there's the potential for a similar event Monday.

Jeff, your's and Gabe's day sounds suprisingly familiar to ours. A good many of us from OU made our way to amarillo, then to canyon to start the day. We met up with a few others along the way. You played the situation exactly the same, you even intercepted the same storms we were in the same area. We both witnessed exactly the same frustrating situation. We however let go of our north targets early after being cut off from a hail core to our north, and a muddy east road option, and loosing one of our vehilcles in our convoy.
We ended up headind down to tulia and arriving instantly after the tornado had struck. Our goal was to try to catch the tail end of that massive storm and possibly wait for the next one to come through which was takign a similar path and intensifying in strength. The hail core had jus passed and we caught the last bits of it with some smaller hail. We stopped and picked up quite a few large stones (3 inch +) and made our way into tulia to intercept the second storm aimed to take the same direction as the first. As we neared Tulia, we heared that there was massive damage and we went in to offer any assistance possible. The poor town jus got nailed right in the center of town.
We ended the day late and its 530 am and i jus arrived home. I wanted to let you know quickly that you were not the only one who got a zero tornado count for the day. However we saw plenty of spectacular storms, so im not too disapointed in it. But it was jus one of those "unlucky" days for many people, and in many many respects.

Joey Ketcham

04-22-2007, 07:35 AM

I just now returned home, I'm tired so keeping it short.

We stayed with a storm with rapid rotation that did produce a funnel a time or two, it never dropped. We got screwed at the end, we got stuck in Amarillo behind the storms as they were to our east, southeast with many reports of tornadoes, wall clouds, and very large hail.

Craig Maire II

04-22-2007, 08:34 AM

After 2 days of driving I'm VERY tired and still am going to chase today in northeast Kansas or southeast Nebraska but here is what I saw yesterday:

1. Wall clouds and great storm structure
2. 3 tornados (2 on the ground at the same time near Dumas)
3. Watched the large tornadic supercell cross the road north of Dumas along highway 287 (had to pull over) and was amazed to see all the tumble weeds in the area "run" towards the storm!:eek: :D
4. Saw a nice funnel cloud form northeast of Cactus Texas
5. Saw a large amount of damage in the Cactus Texas area:eek:

Tony Laubach

04-22-2007, 10:12 AM

A difficult chase to say the least, but all thing's considered, it was worth-while!

Short and sweet on this report as my video and stills weren't the greatest. My crew (Jon, Jenn, and Ed) along with Verne and sons headed into AMA from the east as storms began to fire. We let several storms north of 40 go as we positioned north of AMA to get on storms coming up from the south. We got on our first storms as they were flying north/northeast. We saw our first two tornadoes from the storm southwest of Channing from FM2202 in Bautista near a house with a scared sheep (it was baaaing away behind us). It was here where we met with Tyler and chased with him the remainder of the day.

Verne and sons shot west on 354 while we continued north into Dumas, stopping for a quick top-off before heading east on 152. Our goal at this point was to get east then south to get on the next group of storms, but the storm we were trying to leave dropped another tornado on the west side of Dumas which later became the Cactus wedge. We filmed it for a bit and sat as that tornado disappeared in the rain. We then witnessed our forth and final tornado which from our view looked pretty weak, but turned out to be the long snakey rope tornado.

We stairstepped east and north through Sunray into McKibeen and finally stopped at the 520/207 junction southwest of Spearman to try and get a view of the tornatic storm we raced to get out of the way of. Reports of a tornado with this storm, but again, we were probably too far east to see it.

While we missed the biggest shows of the day from being as far east as we were, we spared ourselves the issues of trying to drive through the damage paths near Cactus and obviously stayed clear of the worst of the storms. Speed, direction, and how the storms were clustered made this a difficult chase to say the least. Even as I didn't score the best vids or stills on this chase, I consider myself lucky to have bagged 4 tornados on this day, regardless how far away we were.

I'll probably turn the keys over to Jon for part of the trip home and crank out my log from there. Nothing great to post in terms of stills as most of the better shots went to the photographers of the group, Jon and Jenn.

Great chase overall considering how things worked out. Feels more like an appetizer to the upcoming days in the Plains. My heart goes out to those in Tulia and Cactus who were hit pretty hard last night. Two chases in Texas in which, as Eric N says, came out to be pretty sobering.

Random stats...

3/3 on Texas trips this season (2/23, 4/13, 4/21) and 4 of my last 4 trips to Texas have ended with at least one tornado (including 5/5/06).
Today's tornado count was 4 which brings my season up to 6 and career up to 56.

http://www.tornadoeskick.com/images/2007/071221_04.jpg
Our third tornado looking west from just east of Dumas on 297.

Jim Bishop

04-22-2007, 10:39 AM

I ended up on the Hereford storm like many others. I was originally on the storm just to it's north-northwest. But I saw a large inflow band to my south, along with the north side of a crisp updraft. I got a hold of Arron Ruppert and in the 10 second cell connection he had, he told me that storm was south and slightly east of my cell. So I dove south towards Hereford and stopped in Dawn (60/809). (I saw the DOW and some film crew too).

This storm look absolutely amazing - simply incredible structure. I repositioned to 1062/809. Within 15 min it had a rapidly rotating wall cloud and funnel. Out of nowhere this feature died. I went north on 809 along with the 30 other chasers I saw. It seemed a new meso rapidly developed to the north-northeast, but it was rain-wrapped. I can only assume this is where the possible rain wrapped tornado occurred. At the same time another storm was forming on this ones flanking line, and I guess that's why it didn't produce a tornado at that time.

I punched through some hail, go to I-40, went about 1 mile east and was just south of a new wall cloud. That's that last good feature I saw from this storm until near dark. Meanwhile the Amarillo radio had live coverage of the tornadoes occurring in the Dumas & Tulia areas. I had no data and it was already almost 8pm, so diving south or gunning it north was pointless.

So a very frustrating chase indeed, and it sounds like many others share my frustration. However if I had data at my fingertips I probably could have dove south towards the Tulia storm and got a tornado. So I think I am either going to purchase Threatnet with a credit card, or have a dedicated nowcaster for any chase I go on from now on. I dedicate too much time, money and energy on chasing only to miss tornadoes, laregly due to no data when it counts.

Brian Stertz

04-22-2007, 10:46 AM

Short Summary:

Chased the first tornado warned supercell near Dawn and it had a nice funnel that never could connect. That supercell raced north, and we intercepted the next t-warned supercell that came out of the Hereford area. It seemed very stretched out and failed to organize sufficiently to produce a tornado. I am wondering if this one was underneath the main jet core as stretched out as it appeared. Our last chance was to get on the tornadic supercell that was moving out of the Hart-Edmonson area. We decided to make the run for it as it represented our last chance for a daylight score. We dropped south on I-29 and a few miles past Happy, we headed dead long into the severe bear's cage. Tennis ball and almost softball hail severely pounded us for about 10 mins. as the tornado moved across the north part of Tulia. We finally got into view of the tornado and could see it doing the damage through the rain and hail. The fairly large tornado (probably on the order of 300-400 yds. wide and multiple vortex) moved northeast from Tulia and copious amts. of debris started to "rain" out on us. We watched the tornado from the distance as it moved towards Wayside and into the Palo Duro Canyon area. We certainly paid the price for the tornado score, but got the tornado before dark so the frustrating day was a bit more satisfying. Thanks to Jeff Piotrowski for his updates from the field.

Jimmy Deguara

04-22-2007, 10:53 AM

I guess i can only say I got the one tornado in Colorado - it seems like it had large or wedge status. Sorry I can only see what was on the view finder. The storm scale rotation of what eventually turned HP and rainwrapped the tornado was incredible! Despite its rapid motion reported at (60 miles per hour but slowed to 45 miles/hr), I felt it dragging E to even NE winds toward the notch. The location of this tornado was perhaps 5miles SW of Granada, CO and I guess SE of Lamar.

This chased turned out to be very difficult given I was chasing alone. At one stage I lost data whilst I was playing the notch - this forced me to stay ahead and away from my plan unfortanately of heading S with the line. I am still happy that I have got my first tornado for 2007.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

Michael O'Keeffe

04-22-2007, 12:00 PM

Me and my crew were on the storm in Baca county, CO that was TOR warned. We may have POSSIBLY seen the tornado that was reported 8 miles SE of Campo. We were for sure we saw a funnel, but we are unclear if there was debris on the ground. We unfortunetly got caught with no road options east which forced us into the core. The core consisted mainly of nickel sized hail, but came down intensly. Then, Wx Worx went down while in the middle of the core. We finally made it out as the storm lined out as we were treated to an awesome lightning display.

Very pissed we missed the TX Panhandle tornadoes as we ate lunch in Dumas, but stupidly thought a northern play would be better.

Let this be a lesson for all of you, never leave your original target.

Zac Goode

04-22-2007, 12:17 PM

Wow what a day!!!! Saw a few tors . The first was near Channing I believe. The second was the monster near dumas. The third one snuck up on us and was quite scary. I believe we were near sunray. Heres a couple of pics.

James Siler

04-22-2007, 12:30 PM

ME and my chasing partners ,Sergio B. and Jason H. experinced like Jeff S. nothing in the way of tornado's. How ever did see several funnels but unsure if any ever made contact with the ground. From Jeff's report it sounds like me and him were genrally thinking the same way today. We got on the storm thatwould pass west of Bushland as it tried to produce. While driving through Bushland they were blowing the sirens. Followed north on 2381 merging into 1061. After all that had fell apart decided to turn around and drop south to try and race to the Tulia storm but heading back south encounterd a hail shaft on a developing storm that then forced me to seek shelter under a train bridge. Got some new dents now!
After getting back to I-40 we hauled it east bound junctoning on to 287 souteast to Claude. We headed on to Goodnight due to the warning had been dropped.We took 294 north to Groom were just about a mile SW of Groom we pulled over and watched an area that would again become warned. We saw a very large cone shaped lowering slowly becoming visiable in the rain moving out of the SW towards what appeared to be our genral direction. Decided to repostion and while entering Groom noticed the lights flickering until they went out. Didn't see any power flash's. Headed east on the I-40 service road till we got to Hwy 70 north to Pampa. W parked on the bridge over I-40 behind a Texas trooper until we decided to head back home due to if there was someting NW of us on the ground it was rain wrapped and didn't want to take that chance. Hopeing to have the time and money to chase on Tuesday. Have a great day everyone.

Glenn Dixon

04-22-2007, 01:02 PM

I am posting this as a form of therapy. It's whiney. You've been warned.

First, let me just say that I am VERY glad to hear that Eric and Amos escaped with their lives. That's some scary **** there! Outlaw chasers should take note.

Second, when you see a radar image of a generally north/south line of storms in the TX panhandle, go south (if you can) until you see clear skies. Many saw tornadoes north of I-40 today but the odds say you'll generally be teased (and hailed on) until you realize it is too late to catch the storm(s) with unrestricted inflow south of you.

Third, nothing add insult to injury on a busted chase day like a squall line following you home, trying to blow you off the road, drown you and generally making life miserable.

Fourth, cute video of golf ball sized hail bouncing in the grass won't ease your pain the next day.

ok, that's all.......

Michael Carlson

04-22-2007, 02:22 PM

Witnessed 5 tornadoes yesterday from the supercell that formed near Channing, TX, moved west of Dumas, TX, with my dad Verne Carlson and my brother Eric Carlson. I took some stills but mainly focused on video here is some of the shots I got.
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b107/tornadicdisaster/DSC_0060.jpg
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b107/tornadicdisaster/DSC_0047.jpg

Chase Report 4/21/07 (http://michaelcarlsonphoto.blogspot.com/2007/04/chase-report-tx-042107.html)

Robert Edmonds

04-22-2007, 02:40 PM

I didn't see any tornadoes. I did see some nice structure though, and some quarter sized hail. I started off sitting most of the day out in Dumas. Once the storms began I kept working south trying to get into a position where I could be on one storm while feeling comfortable that I would not be over taken by another. Once I was in Amarillo I stopped getting radar data. From there I decide to go south since I was still getting strikes data, and I could see the storm to the south. The radar came back a few minutes before, and so I began working my way around the storm. I must have come into Tulia coming from the west a few minutes after the tornado. However, I didn't see it or the damage because I didn't drive into the town I just stayed on the west side of the freeway before deciding go back to Amarillo. Infact didn't even know a tornado had actually touched down till I kept seeing allot of Emergency vehicles going south, and found some news on the radio.

Zac Flamig

04-22-2007, 04:38 PM

I have to say on this trip we really got more than we bargained for.

We started the day at about 8AM, after a few quick stops we departed Norman for the Texas Panhandle. The initial target was Plainview but after a stop for lunch in Amarillo we modified the target to Canyon.
Upon heading to Canyon we realized that we would need a place to stop for wifi so we headed for the local Holiday Inn and Best Western. We got there to find some other friends, the TIV, a DOW, and the Discovery Channel.
So we sat around there for awhile waiting for initiation and the storms to fire. Once the storms did start going we headed for Hereford to intercept several of the cells there. Our intercept was successful and we followed the storm to the north a ways and watched it wrap up to produce this nice lowering.
http://www.valhallalegends.com/zorm/pics/2007-04-21/IMG_4454.jpg
However, as near as we can tell it never made it all the way to the ground so we had no confirmed tornadoes for the day. After this the lowering dissipated and we went to chase after it only to run into a hail core. We reevaluated the situation and decided to head for the southern storms instead with an attempt to intercept them at Tulia.
Here is where things started to get really ugly really fast. Getting radar updates from our lead car Gerard we knew that the storm was moving almost directly over the city and that we would not make it in time to intercept it. We continued forward in hopes of intercepting the second cell behind it. Before that could happen however we stopped to look at the hail that had fallen on the side of the road, it was in the 3" range. We weren't really all that far from Tulia when we made this stop to look at the hail and while we where stopped we heard someone call out on one of the amateur frequencies about search and rescue going on in nearby houses.
Since one of the members of our convey is an EMT in the state of Texas this became the priority and the chasing was over with for the day. Proceeding south on US 87 into Tulia we found debris in the road and downed powerlines at an intersection in the road. This is a picture I took of that intersection.
http://www.valhallalegends.com/zorm/pics/2007-04-21/IMG_4474.jpg
Coming across this we made contact with the deputies and first responders at the scene inquiring how we could help. They ordered us to go back north on US 87 and block the road off ahead of the first debris and wait to be relieved. We promptly carried out this task and blocked the road while watching daylight fade. We were at this location for around two hours, not all of which was time waiting to be relieved actually, they had a proper roadblock set up quickly but we were then waiting for further information on how we could assist. The decision was finally made to send us to the police headquarters in Tulia so we went there while waiting for further word.
We were waiting around for the press conference that happened that you can see in some of the video David Drummond took, we where just around the corner in the hallway from all of that actually.
Once the news conference happened contact was made with what we believed to be the Incident Commander, he quickly directed us inside towards police dispatch. Apparently the police dispatchers had been on since 3PM and were very worn out from the event and the immediate aftermath. After a quick 30 second briefing on what happened and how to manage everything, Matthew Morris, Chris Pape, Nikki Acton, Sara, James and myself basically took over the police dispatchers job of answering the phones and keeping up with radio traffic. Keep in mind that some of the group have experience in doing this so it wasn't like we got randomly pulled off the street and that the actual dispatchers were never more than a yell away. They just needed a break and some relaxation. We stuck around assisting with this from about 10PM until 3AM. Around 3:30AM we finally made it out of Tulia and headed back towards Norman. After making it to just east of Amarillo we decided it was time for a quick nap and stopped to catch some sleep in the vehicles before continuing onward towards home. We finally made it into Norman around noontime on Sunday. Even though the chase could be considered a bust we definitely got our fill of excitement.

Adam Atkins

04-22-2007, 04:46 PM

Kiel Ortega, Tiffany Meyers and myself all started to head south towards the would-be Olton, Tulia monster when the Hereford storm went tornado warned...first mistake. Chased it to I-40 and it went to @#^! much to our dismay. So we're between tornadic storms and were very indecisive.

Ended up on a nice little LP that went up on the rear flank of the Hereford storm and it was my first tornadic LP sup, not bad for a consolation. Developed a wall cloud with very fast rotation within a span of 5 minutes or so. Followed it NNE up HW 287 north of AMA. We drove underneath the circulation after its first occlusion. A steel road sign directly out my driver's side door bent 90 degrees and paralleled the ground....this was concurrent with strong west winds, so might have been strong RFD or tornadic circulation. Saw a couple small funnels/possibly tornadoes south of Dumas after dark, then called it a day.
http://weather.ou.edu/%7Eaatkins/P4210021_1.JPGhttp://weather.ou.edu/%7Eaatkins/P4210022_1.JPG

Joey Ketcham

04-22-2007, 06:31 PM

Here is some video southwest of Amarillo Texas, I sped the video up..

http://www.kschaser.com/Videos/april21stwallcloud.wmv

Shane Hale

04-22-2007, 06:53 PM

We saw a possible tornado touchdown NE of hereford texas but can not confirm it.

These are a couple videos from yesterday. Ray I think this is the lowering you guys saw we were at 1062/2943 NE of Hereford. Also are two videos from the Wayside Tornado just E. of Happy. Tony will have the full report.

http://media.putfile.com/Hereford-TX-Funnel-Cloud

http://media.putfile.com/Wayside-TX-Funnel-Cloud

http://media.putfile.com/Wayside-TX-Tornado

Sam Barricklow

04-22-2007, 06:55 PM

First, congrtatulations to all who intercepted tornadoes yesterday, especially near and NE of Channing.

The Dimmit storm appeared to be going downhill as it moved over the Canadian River valley, and the Hereford storm was looking pretty good to the southeast. I assumed, incorrectly, that the Hereford storm would cut off the inflow to the Dimmit storm and become dominant. So, I left the Dimmit storm, punched through the Hereford storm's wrapping hail curtain on I40, to be treated to a rain wrapped meso that appeared to have a fairly high base. At that point, I was between storms.

Before leaving the Dimmit storm while it was still south of the Canadian River valley, I noted what appeared to be a distant tornado on either a southwest flank of the Dimmit storm, or on the flank of another storm west of the Dimmit storm. This was prior to the Dimmit storm dropping into the river valley. Also noted a 162 mph shear marker back at Vega (AP induced?), which was another reason for moving south. Highway 385 would have provided an easy path to stay with the storm, even with the fast movement NNE.

Later in the evening, I raced down highway 287 to get ahead of the Littlefield/Tulia storm. As I was eating large quantities of dust in the tremendous inflow, I noted a large, low wall cloud or tornado silhouetted by lightning that crossed the highway just west of Claude. Inching as close as possible to the passing storm, my attention was abruptly drawn to a new lowering that quickly developed almost overhead. Almost simultaneously, a shear marker appeared overhead on ThreatNet, prompting a quick retreat to the east. As the storm moved over I-40 farther NE, reports were heard of a wedge tornado and damage, followed by tornado warnings for the storm near LeFors.

Back to the Dimmit storm - I was north of 385 when the Dimmit storm moved across I40. The storm produced a large meso, with a long tail cloud, and an RFD induced collar cloud, which provided one of my few photo ops for the day. I did shoot quite a bit of video, including video of the Tulia storm as it passed over highwa 287 in a hybrid classic/HP configuration.

I had an uncomfortable feeling when the ThreatNet outage showed me how much I have come to depend upon this device for navigating close to cores.

Drove back to Garland, arriving at about 4 AM. Photos and video captures later.

Alex Lamers

04-22-2007, 07:03 PM

Well a very interesting day to say the least. I'll keep it sort of brief even though we saw quite a bit. Me, Sam Dienst, his girlfriend Cassie, and Brandon Smith all headed out to the Texas Panhandle. We were on the east side of Amarillo around noon and we were gonna look at wifi for a bit but we think they cut off our internet feed so we hopped on I-27 and went south to Canyon, TX which was where we wound up setting up shop until initiation. We were there for about an hour (1:30pm-2:30pm) when the DOW crew rolled up. We saw the DOW and the tornado intercept vehicle. That thing is a tank. That was interesting.

CU field started going up around 4pm or just after but we couldn't lock in on any particular areas of interest and decided to wait until a couple of cells got established and then head after them since we weren't in bad position at all. This happened around 5:30pm and we raced off to the southwest down Highway 60 out of Canyon towards Hereford, Texas. We got on a cell initially that looked pretty decent. WxWorx was putting out some decent 70-90mph shear markers on it occasionally and 1.5-2" hail markers. It gave us great shots of the supercell on approach, beautiful looking structure with the sun just poking out the side of the anvil. It was very picturesque. (http://s150.photobucket.com/albums/s113/ajlamers/?action=view&current=Firststorm6.jpg)

However, a storm developed to the south of Hereford and we decided to loop around the FFD of that and intercept it from the southeast on Highway 60 again. As we were underneath the anvil it produced some fairly large hail for being lofted that far away from the updraft (quarters). As we got on Highway 60 again the mesocyclone was obvious. (http://s150.photobucket.com/albums/s113/ajlamers/?action=view&current=Tornadicstorm2.jpg)

We moved north to intercept on what seemed to be a good north-south road. I was in charge of navigation and radar so I got no pictures of this but Brandon Smith did and I'm sure he'll post them on here eventually. We saw a small funnel form. It at first appeared to be scud just being lifted into the cloud base but it definately turned into a cone shaped funnel with the tip nearly touching the ground based on timestamps in about a minute's time. We were surprised at how quickly the circulation got organized. Zac, on the same storm is right, no confirmed tornado...yet. We enhanced one of the photos we took and there are definately two little vortices spinning off the bottom of that condensation funnel and what appeared to be a pretty transparent tube extending to the ground. We shall see. IMHO there was a brief tornado spinup WAY out in a field out there. We were a bit closer to the funnel than some others in the area (seemed like we were the only ones around - to be short lived) maybe a mile and a half to two miles. The inflow was INTENSE. It was blowing tumbleweed and dust and all sorts of crap across the street.

Anyways that receded into the cloud base and for the next 20 minutes funnels kept coming down and going back up into the cloud base. I think the circulations just kept occluding and it could never get anything fairly substantial established. Here is the arcing mesocyclone cloud (http://s150.photobucket.com/albums/s113/ajlamers/?action=view&current=Tornadicstorm5.jpg) as it was churning pretty good where the little tendrils are off the base. Here is the short video I shot (http://s150.photobucket.com/albums/s113/ajlamers/?action=view&current=P4210051.flv) when we stopped briefly, you can see the meso much better with the striations in the cloud. We tried to get northeast again but got bogged down in muddy back roads. We looked back out our window and thought we saw another funnel but other people were in better position probably to see that one. We were in light rain and quarter to maybe ping-pong ball size hail at the time too...it made it harder to see.

Headed south to try and intercept the storm headed towards Tulia then. We obviously didn't get there in time as we were approaching from the north but got a couple nice shots of the supercell as we approached from the north. Time on them was 7:52pm or right before the tornado was reported. Picture 1 (http://s150.photobucket.com/albums/s113/ajlamers/?action=view&current=Tulia.jpg) and Picture 2 (http://s150.photobucket.com/albums/s113/ajlamers/?action=view&current=Tulia1.jpg). We got into town not knowing about the tornado figuring we might try and get a fading twilight look at the backside of it or maybe the storm off to its southwest. The town was trashed. Power was out and there was little light so I didn't get any good pictures. Looked like some trees that were stripped of their branches/leaves to just leave limbs and trunks. Grain trailer type thing (those things you always see tractors towing) was tossed in the middle of the street. Didn't see any of the neighborhoods and we were on the northern end of the damage path so I don't know how bad it was. Metal was wrapped around some trees. Probably will be a strong tornado IMO. Emergency vehicles were swarming the area for hours. We didn't want to be a bother and get in the way of S.A.R. efforts so we got out of the way. Got to a gas station on Highway 86 and I-27 and watched another sup come in at night. Noticed a funnel maybe 6-7 miles north lowering off the base and backlit by lightning. Tornado warning was out on that but we didn't see anything touching the ground.

We then let the squall line to our west overtake us, drove north for supper, then headed back to Norman. We passed back through the squall line and encountered blinding (literally) downpours, constant lightning and probably 60-65 mph gusts. Semi was jack-knifed and only about a 100 ft backup on I-40 east so it couldn't have been more than 5 minutes ahead of us. We were wondering why there wasn't a SVR out on the radio.

That's basically it. Lots of funnels. Perhaps one brief tornado. Lots of hail/wind in between. Plus the Tulia damage. It was a tiring day. Sort of kicking myself for not getting on the Dumas storm but we liked the corridor south of Amarillo all day. Just got hung up in a number of ways or we would have intercepted the Tulia storm and got that tornado. We were VERY close. But I'm happy with the sheer volume of severe weather we saw. Very impressive lightshow on the way home before I dozed off too!

We'll see what AMA says about Eastern Deaf Smith County north of Hereford. It's so brief and in the middle of a field so I'm not sure it even warrants a damage survey. But I am convinced there was a brief spinup back in there.

AJL

Gerard Jebaily

04-22-2007, 08:20 PM

Here are a few images of the storm damage in Tulia. My camera batteries died on me, the spares were dead too :( Not to mention i couldnt film or photograph since i was busy helping.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v319/StmChser/DSC01617.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v319/StmChser/DSC01613.jpg

Jason Boggs

04-22-2007, 09:41 PM

Myself and Damon Shaw started off in Hereford with a tornado warned cell that was pretty high based. Followed it north and it began to lower and rotate. Got a possible tornado as a funnel lowered at least 75% down but could never see an actual debris whirl on the ground. Decided to go south to catch the storm that was firing near Olton. As we neared Tulia the storm showed a base but it was nothing to write home about. Got a mile or so east of Tulia and in a matter of less than 5 minutes the wall cloud went from slight rotation to a drill bit tornado. Followed the tornado north until we were stopped by downed power lines in the road. Man, what a chase! Glad to see that nobody was killed yesterday. I will be posting some damage photos in Tulia. I went to Tulia today to asess the damage with the Mets from KAMR-TV. We think it might very well be EF-3 damage in the hardest hit areas. I will be posting LOTS of damage photos later tonight on my chasenews blog. The link to the blog is at the bottom of this report.

Guess this thread drowns out all the hoopla about the moisture return!

HERE IS THE VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewAEETv-Amg

HERE ARE A FEW DAMAGE PHOTOS IN TULIA:
http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/5159/semionsidewg0.jpg

http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/8199/damagefc1.jpg

http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/9363/leaningpoleshd1.jpg

http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/8756/rollaconenp6.jpg

Like I said, many more photos will be at my chasenews website.

Jimmy Deguara

04-22-2007, 11:50 PM

Some incredible tornadoes in Texas mentioned in this thread - what a great day for those who got onto those storms!

For those who would like to see what I was trying to comment about in my post earlier of the Colorado tornado - the following is the link:
http://australiasevereweather.com/video/movies/2007/colorado_wedge_tornado_2007.wmv

it's 23 mb so be careful

My apologies about the unedited version - I just don't have all the resources and was lucky to get that online.

Added to my observations in my first post, I am thinking that I had taken a a photograph but it may have turned out blurry of a possible satellite funnel/tornado. This developed rapidly on the western side of the major circulation. I wished I had been filming at the time. My photographs were not the best at all.

Tony Cook

04-22-2007, 11:59 PM

Departed Austin 5 a.m. with chase partner Shane Hale, aiming initially for the southern TX panhandle. Ended up in Dimmit at 4 p.m. after stops in Plainview and Tulia to observe the shallow Cu field which translated east out of the area. Around 5 p.m., cells fired just to our West, and the chase was on.

We tackled the storm that went through Hereford with a warning, then got caught between that cell and a new cell that moved up from our South. Still reviewing the footage on what happened here, but we ended up shooting west to avoid golfballs from the southern cell. It produced a couple of elevated funnels close to our location shortly thereafter, but did not look visually impressive. We decided to let it go, and to head down towards the intensifying cell that was SW of Tulia. The cell which had just pounded us with hail tightened up shortly thereafter, producing a nice wall cloud in the northern distance (pretty sure this was one of the tornado producers up near I-40, but not sure which one), but it was too far gone by then.

We dropped south to Happy, watching the Tulia cell from the North, but unaware that it was producing a destrutctive tornado. At Happy, we turned east on 1075 and waited for the Tulia cell to cross the highway in front of us. There was possibly an anticylonic flare on the Northwestern edge of the cell, and although this feature was right in front of us, low levels were obscured by heavy precip. South of this feature, cyclonic rotation developed, and a notch became evident in the reflectivity field. We waited until the core of the storm passed, and moved quickly east towards the notch.

We began to see lowerings just to the north of the highway as the last bits of daylight faded. We continued east to highway 2301 in the SW corner of Armstrong county. At 8:45 CDT, turned North on 2301, and a large tornado became apparent, illuminated by frequent lightning. We went north, and then east on 285, with the tornado persisting just to our north. At least two other lowerings approached the surface near the main tornado, and may have touched down during this time. The main tornado moved just to the east of Wayside, assuming wedge-like characteristics. At 8:55, we turned North on 207, and lost sight of the tornado as we dropped down into a canyon on the curvy highway. When we emerged from the canyon walls, the tornado was no longer visible. Believe that the circulation crossed the highway to our north several minutes later, and we were blasted by heavy rain and RFD. We stopped the chase there.

Images of the Wayside tornado, some with adjacent lowerings, taken 8:45-8:55 CDT:

http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/21Apr2007/Wayside3_0002.jpg

http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/21Apr2007/Wayside3_0006.jpg

http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/21Apr2007/Wayside3_0010.jpg

http://home.austin.rr.com/chasing/21Apr2007/Wayside3_0015.jpg

Shane has also posted video from this tornado, and an earlier funnel NE of Hereford:

http://media.putfile.com/Hereford-TX-Funnel-Cloud

http://media.putfile.com/Wayside-TX-Funnel-Cloud

http://media.putfile.com/Wayside-TX-Tornado

Miles:1557
Quarts of Oil: 3

TonyC

Seth Price

04-23-2007, 12:54 AM

I didn't get to see too much. I was rebuilding my computer and just so happened to check the SPC site around 12:30pm. We pretty much followed the back end of the squall line into TX. We did see a wall cloud along 86 between Nazareth and Tulia, but no tornado. At that point, we were just looking for a place to stay, the chase was over as it was after dark.

Bill Tabor

04-23-2007, 01:02 AM

EDIT2: Ok latest thinking per Gene and I is the second wedge was really the Tulia wallcloud from a distance. Will have to see if our pics show any of the tornadic tendrils extending down. I tell you what that is one amazing - huge wallcloud - looks just like a wedge from a distance. Oh PS: I also verified with my gps log and the time we stopped to take pictures of that "wedge" coordinated well with the direction and time of the Tulia tornado within a few minutes. So this is likely the case.

EDIT1:
Correction to my post: After reviewing gps logs I see the tornado which started near Fieldton and ended 6 to 10 miles NE or ENE of Hilburn was on the ground for 49 minutes! Time was exactly 6:50 pm CDT to 7:39 pm CDT. Change times 38 minutes to 49 minutes below.

WOW! What an amazing day! Need I say more than this?!

On the southern primary producing storm from the get go, Gene Moore, David Douglas and I caught 3 tornadoes and possibly a 4th. There were two wedges, and one long tracked damaging tornado on the ground for approximately 38 minutes. Additionally we caught a night tornado east of Happy from 8:57 to 9:10 headed toward Wayside. This tornado had no warning on it and I don't believe is logged even though Gene called it in. After the second wedge ended west of Tulia, Gene got a shot of what appears to be the Tulia tornado but the quality is poor which would make a fourth.

Briefly, this was an exceptional exciting chase punctuated with shocking surprises. One tornado broke power poles which criss crossed the road requiring us to follow, and then smashed nearby homes - lifting the roof off of one strong brick structure. At one point near the tornado we were hammered by a strong (possibly RFD related) area of rotation / shear which side swiped the vehicle pushing the back in a brief fish tail. For a moment I thought we might overturn as it appeared a tornado was forming over us - fortunately that did not happen. We additionally had intermittent computer difficulty as the gps kept going out in the middle of the action and the radar wasn't updating. Completely lost Amarillo / Lubbock radar at one point. Compouding this as we navigated the very tornadic supercells at night, in the core we encountered a couple of road blocks in the form of an impassible muddy road and a train blocking the highway entrance which forced us to go west as a new tornadic storm was approaching from the south. The integrity of our windows got a bit dicey in the increasingly large hail, as we opted west for another road option on the flooding roadway then back east to try the other highway entrance at the Interstate.... More later.

I just got back from many many hours of driving and very tired. No pictures to post for now. Gene does have a quick one up at the moment in the meantime http://www.chaseday.com/chaseday5.htm. I believe I got a lot of the action on dashcam. Will update with pics and a more detailed account as time allows. WOW!

Jenn Brindley

04-23-2007, 01:13 AM

Hey everyone,

Well just now getting home and had a chance to edit up some photos for you guys. I was with Tony Laubach and Jon Van De Grift - had an amazing day, followed by a sobering evening and a sobering day today. We were quite far from the tornadoes, and being slightly north-east, it was difficult to photograph (the tornadoes being rain wrapped.)

Here are a few images of the tornadoes:

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m1/jennybeanjcb/Chase/April%2021%2007/5.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m1/jennybeanjcb/Chase/April%2021%2007/DSC_0168.jpg

http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m1/jennybeanjcb/Chase/April%2021%2007/2.jpg

And of course, clear skies shortly after... the moon was beautiful.
http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m1/jennybeanjcb/Chase/April%2021%2007/DSC_0247.jpg

Jenn

Dick McGowan

04-23-2007, 02:26 AM

Darin Brunin, Jordan Wrecke and I intercepted a beautiful supercell near Granada, CO. We are fairly certain there was a brief tornado early on, and will try and post video of it later.

All of these are shot at 10 mm, so we were closer than it appears...
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/granada3web.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/granada2web.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y230/DickTwister/granada1web.jpg

Jimmy Deguara

04-23-2007, 10:43 AM

Hi Dick,

I passed this from the northern side - got a some good hail too. I have timelapse as it developed to my W and SW - were you south of Granada?

Did you see the second supercell that developed - perhaps exploded behind this? Actually it could be on the back end of the last photograph. That was the large tornado producer.

Regards,

Jimmy Deguara

Darin Brunin

04-23-2007, 11:59 AM

Hi Jimmy,

From what Dick told me on the phone a couple of minutes ago, you were in the red van and we would have been in almost the same exact location as you when this was taken on the second supercell that formed southwest of Granada.

http://tornadolive.com/0421071.jpg

Paul Stofer

04-23-2007, 01:23 PM

I left Dallas around 8:30AM and headed for my initial target around Lubbock, Texas. I went West on I-20 past Abilene and then North towards Lubbock on 84. I arrived in Lubbock around 1:30PM and gathered data while grabbing a quick bite to eat. I shifted my target a little and continued North on 27 towards Plainview. I traveled North and eventually got to Tulia, Texas. I met with a few other chasers and sat on the Western side of Tulia watching the dryline move East. While watching the dryline, I poured over some data and got some nowcasting from my Friends Jeremy Wilson (http://www.holytornado.com/) and Aaron Hughes (http://www.holytornado.com/). Storms began to fire to our Southwest so I, along with a female friend we met at our observation point, blasted West on 86 towards Dimmit to try to intercept the now rotating storm. As we passed through Nazareth, Mobile Threat Net radar was showing incredible shear on our storm. We went North on 385 and intercepted the storm near Hereford, TX. The storm now had a Tornado Warning on it and had great structure. We pulled to the side of the road and watched the storm develop a wall cloud. About a minute later a very raggedy looking funnel dropped, and we watched Tornado number 1 for the day move slowly to our North. We took some photos and video, then continued to chase the tornado until it disappeared into a rain and hail core. We began to get quarter sized hail, and our route to follow the storm turned into a very muddy 1 lane road. Before we got stuck, I kicked on the 4x4 and we turned around and got back to paved road. At this time the tornado turned into a very large cone, but we were blinded by the core and had no road options. We went back North and eventually made it to US60 and made our way towards Canyon, Texas. At this time a very large "wedge" tornado was being reported near Tulia. We raced Southeast and made it to Ranch Road 2698, which is a few minutes north of downtown Tulia, as the Tulia tornado and its core passed in front of us through town. We parked near an overpass in the grass while golfball hail fell and the tornado passed in front of us. The core of the storm passed to our East and we got back onto the highway and continued South to attempt to find an exit to turn around and go back North on 27. We found the exit and went back Northbound where we passed the tornado debris path. We exited 2698 and went East past Tulia after the Tornado had hit town. On 2698, our route was once again blocked by power lines and poles crossing the road. At this time it was getting dark, and we would be unable to keep up with the Tulia tornado. We turned around and went back South on 27 out of Tulia. A new area of rotation formed to the Southwest of Tulia, just to our West. We pulled over and watched it for a few minutes. The storm went tornado warned as it went to our Northwest and dropped a cone tornado. This storm had a very well defined hook on radar. We observed tornado number 2 just NW of Plainview for about 10 minutes before it disappeared as well. At this time we called it the end of the day and got dinner in Plainview before heading back towards Dallas. Sorry about the large picture, I don't know how to make it a thumbnail or smaller within the StormTrack Forum. I will upload more photos to my website later tonight after work at > www.stormpursuit.com/2007documents.htm (http://www.stormpursuit.com/2007documents.htm)

http://www.stormpursuit.com/pictures/tornadic/Picture0201.jpg
http://www.stormpursuit.com/pictures/structure/041420073.jpg

Joey Ketcham

04-23-2007, 01:33 PM

Just curious..

Did anyone happen to get video or take a picture of the tornado that crossed I40 west of Amarillo at about 7PM?

Greg Stumpf

04-23-2007, 01:53 PM

Just curious..

Did anyone happen to get video or take a picture of the tornado that crossed I40 west of Amarillo at about 7PM?
What tornado, and what mile marker (approx)?

Joey Ketcham

04-23-2007, 01:56 PM

What tornado, and what mile marker (approx)?

I really don't know to be honest. It was at about 7:30PM about 5-6 miles west of Amarillo in the southweest part of Potter County, my chase partner and I actually got caught in the tornado's circulation. Mike Scantlin, fellow ST member, was with us and got a picture of the tornado..

Wish I had more details such as mile marker.

David Douglas

04-23-2007, 02:38 PM

Chased with Bill Tabor and Gene Moore today. We saw 3-4 Tornadoes in total. See Bill's description for more information. Here are a few quick pictures. In the last picture, notice the power lines down on the road. The photo was taken from the tornado track. At this point we were just south of Olton. After dark we saw a tornado East of 27 at the Happy intersection. We first saw this tornado at 8:57. We all saw this visually and Gene caught this on his video camera.

Caleb Kimbrough

04-23-2007, 08:45 PM

The Tornadojunkies team made the trip down to Texas from Manhattan... We camped East of Amarillo (...or Amadillo as all the truckers call it) about a half an hour at a Love's. We were there for most of the afternoon and talked to quite a few other chasers that stopped by.

When storms started to fire to the West we headed out and got on the cell that eventually produced the Dumas tornado. We followed it North for a ways and then decided to drop back towards Amarillo and get on a more southern cell. Unfortunately we missed out on the tornado in Dumas, although we did get quite a good show from the cell while we followed it. We drove through nickel/quarter size hail on the Interstate and eventually headed North towards Dumas. We arrived just after it got dark and the Entire town was out of power. It was a pretty surreal scenario...

All in all, a pretty good chase day...if a bit frustrating. We should of stayed with the cell we were originally on but we didn't, I guess it's just another lesson learned.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow... Finally a close to home chase day, and quite a good day it is shaping up to be! It'll be nice not to have to dread an 8+ hour drive home for once. Plus, the roads up here in Kansas are a million times better than Nebraska and Texas.

Here are a few photos:

The storm that eventually went on to produce the Dumas tornado. This was just North of the interstate a few miles.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w84/tornadojunkies/IMG_7413.jpg

This was looking South from the same spot. We saw a looot of rotation going on.

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w84/tornadojunkies/IMG_7433.jpg

Further up the road a little ways we encountered a power line that was on fire:

http://i174.photobucket.com/albums/w84/tornadojunkies/IMG_7455.jpg

Brian Swiatowy

04-23-2007, 09:19 PM

Doug Black and I picked up the storm as it arrived in Hereford. We stayed ahead of it up to and through Wildorado then over to Bushland. Like a lot of people, we saw the brief tornado north-northwest of Bushland. We dashed north and then northeast to get to the Loop (335) to pick up the Dumas Highway (87/287). We got to around Masterson and by then, the storm was getting much more organized with a lot lower base. By the time we got to Four Way (Hwy 87/287, 354, and 1913 junction), the storm was very well defined and we were still in a great position to keep an eye on the wall cloud. A small jog down 1913 put us in the perfect spot to watch the several small tornadoes form including twins and a multiple-vortex phase. We had to go farther east becase the rain and hail quickly wrapped in behind the tornado. The tornado increased in strength rapidly from there become a well-defined wedge with a serpentine funnel forming from the right side of the wedge at one point. We had to try to keep up with it, but the roads weren't favorable. So by the time we caught back up to it, it was back to just a well-defined mesocyclone. We saw one more tornado in the dark light up by lightning.
Overall, it was a tough chase day, but a very rewarding one as I got the chance to see the largest tornado I've ever witnessed. Video taken by Doug...screen caps of that video shown below
http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic/142997TSx5/1033041.jpg

http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic/142997TSx5/1033042.jpg

http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic/142997TSx5/1033043.jpg

http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic/142997TSx5/1033044.jpg
(http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic.php?u=142997TSx5&i=1033044)

Tom Romero

04-24-2007, 12:24 PM

My wife and chase partner Lori and I and the Santa Fe Chase left from NM at 8am. After some discussion we decided to head to Amarillo instead of our initial target of Plainview.

We hung out in the Barnes & Noble parking lot in west Amarillo looking at data.

Tornado #1
The first tornado occurred jus north of Vega. We were a ways from it. It was a nice elephant trunk. Unfortunately our picture didn’t turn out. We had to backtrack as our east /west road options were going to run out before we intercepted the cell.

Tornado #2
This tornado was so large we didn’t realize we were looking at it. We were south of Dumas looking west. I believe this may have been wedge in Channing.

http://www.tarecords.com/dumas1.jpg

http://www.tarecords.com/dumas2.jpg

Tornado 3, 4, and 5
We observed these tornadoes just west of Dumas on highway 87. As we arrived a funnel was just starting to form to the southwest.

http://www.tarecords.com/dumas3.jpg http://www.tarecords.com/dumas4.jpg

As we were looking to our south one of our crew pointed out the well defined elephant trunk tornado just to the north.

http://www.tarecords.com/dumas5.jpg

As the southern funnel touched down we were watching two tornadoes on the ground simultaneously.

http://www.tarecords.com/dumas6.jpg

The southern funnel lifted and soon after another tornado touched down much closer to us (likely the same tornado recycling). The other tornado remained on the ground all this time appearing not to move at all. At one point it grew larger and threw out lots of debris before it became a rope.

http://www.tarecords.com/dumas7.jpg

http://www.tarecords.com/dumas8.jpg

The tornado crossed the road in front of us, taking out the power lines as it did, and quickly became a very large stovepipe.

http://www.tarecords.com/dumas9.jpg

http://www.tarecords.com/dumas11.jpg

We attempted to chase them further north but the police closed the road ahead of us and by the time we got further northeast it was dark.

As we headed towards Stratford it became evident that the power was out in virtually every town in the area. We ended up having to drive about 100 miles back to Amarillo.

We owe a great deal to Rich Hamel for nowcasting and and to all the posters here.

What a day!

Donald Giuliano

04-25-2007, 04:26 PM

Here's a still of the Channing tornado, viewed from the northeast, and another of the (eventual) Cactus tornado just after it touched down southwest of Dumas (also viewed from the northeast). Wish we more/better stills, but there was too much lightning/light precip as we viewed the Channing wedge to get out of the car, and it was too fast-paced a chase to really get any good stills after that. We did get good video, though, except for a lens cap problem when we had dual-tornadoes after dark on the third storm we intercepted near Sunray. :p

http://ounhat.com/images/05FirstTornadoOfTheDay.jpg

http://ounhat.com/images/10Tornado2.jpg

Shane Adams

04-25-2007, 11:46 PM

Mickey Ptak

04-26-2007, 11:23 AM

After reviewing Verne/Michael Carlson's images and one of Chad Lawson's, I now realize there were TWO tornadoes east of Channing simultaneously; the teardrop-shaped one I saw initially with a lightning strike and a large wedge.....we saw the wedge later on in its life northeast of Channing, and assumed it was the teardrop tornado from earlier.....but now I realize these were two different tornadoes. Cool, that makes a lucky 7 for this day now :D

Here is the image Shane is talking about. 10 ENE of Channing, TX
http://www.mesomick.com/pages/images/chase/04212007/ChadLawsonApril212007TXPAN.jpg

Of course by looking at this vidio capture it looks as if there are THREE tornadoes at the same time. :confused: :eek:

Mick

Dustin Wilcox

04-26-2007, 05:55 PM

Finally got a chase report up on my site, included are a few images and a couple of large video files.

http://www.severechase.com/4-21-07.htm

Jimmy Deguara

04-26-2007, 07:31 PM

21st April 2007 2 Tornadic supercells with very large tornado - Colorado (tornado captured on video provided in previous post)
http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/thumbs/2007/0421jd02.jpg (http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2007/0421jd02.jpg) http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/thumbs/2007/0421jd03.jpg (http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2007/0421jd03.jpg) http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/thumbs/2007/0421jd07.jpg (http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2007/0421jd07.jpg) http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/thumbs/2007/0421jd14.jpg (http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2007/0421jd14.jpg) http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/thumbs/2007/0421jd16.jpg (http://www.australiasevereweather.com/photography/photos/2007/0421jd16.jpg)
More pics here
http://australiansevereweather.com.au/photography/photos/2007/jd20070421.html

Alex Lamers

04-26-2007, 11:50 PM

Well it appears I should have followed the original storm to Dumas but we still saw a lot of interesting stuff. Here is my chase account - click here (http://themicroburst.blogspot.com/2007/04/late-chase-account-april-21-2007.html).

A couple of funnels and a nice supercell with what was at least feet from being a tornado. I'm still convinced it was a brief spinup in Eastern Deaf Smith County but I'm not expecting it to be ruled as such officially.

AJL

Reed Timmer

04-27-2007, 09:53 PM

Here are some video frame captures of the nighttime tornado we saw from SR 285 between Happy and Wayside, TX as it moved through the Palo Duro, Canyon. After observing the tornado, we ran into the damage path on SR 285 a few miles down the road. Telephone poles were knocked over, blocking the road, and cows were wandering outside their fence. This tornado looked very strong.
http://tornadovideos.net//UserFiles/Image/blog/2007/April/blogtulianight1.jpg

http://tornadovideos.net//UserFiles/Image/blog/2007/April/blogtulianight2.jpg

http://tornadovideos.net//UserFiles/Image/blog/2007/April/blogtulianight3.jpg

http://tornadovideos.net//UserFiles/Image/blog/2007/April/blogtulianight4%281%29.jpg

http://tornadovideos.net//UserFiles/Image/blog/2007/April/blogtulianight5.jpg

Scott Olson

04-28-2007, 06:57 PM

The decision this day was between southern South Dakota and the Texas Panhandle. I had thought Texas looked like a slam dunk all week, namely because of the GFS and ECMWF agreement on nice directional shear (towards the base of the trough) and a more approtiate intiating boundary (dryline). However, I had already made many trips down south this year to limited success and was encouraged at the presence of a warm front across south-central South Dakota and into east central South Dakota. This area had comparable levels of instability and slightly higher dewpoints (lower LCL’s). The directional shear wasn’t so great but the speed shear still made for effective bulk shear supportive of supercells (45-55kts). Enhancement along the boundary looked to provide a favorable environment for at least landspouts. So let the first home territory chase of 2007 begin.

I pulled into Pierre around noon. Originally I had favored more of a Kennebec location but I was relying more on the assumption of the northward moving boundary intiating. After two more hours of looking at data, I decided that storm intiation was more likely to the south and that a weak low pressure system (that was well present in the early afternoon) could provide much needed localized enhancement for tornadoes. I went south of Presho and started noticing some weak dis-organized storms going up near North Platte. I didn’t want to get pulled in to quickly, the warm front was just starting to pull north of I90 and may still intiate. However, my main concern with the front was that boundary orientation would provide a feeding ground of rain-cooled air for other storms. This was because the boundary was oriented to the shear vector and only spotty development and strong deviant motion could have brought in a good tornado risk. Nonetheless, as I checked the radar I noticed that those weak showers had formed into a single decent looking cell. That was good enough for me and I blasted south of Presho for an intercept. The storm quickly strengthend and obtained several areas of radar indicated rotation. However as I neared about 20 miles north of the Nebraska border the cell began to fall apart. As this occured the cell southwest of it took to the throne and quickly became supercellular, obtaining several areas of rotation. I headed south, planning to intercept near Springview. Watching the evolution on radar, the cell went from a more classic appearance to HP and then to various degrees of health and undercutting. I arrived in Springview and headed a bit west as a tornado warning was issued to my SW.

http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/Picture%20029%20copy.jpg

I setup the tripod, than the winds kicked in with a vengence. Noticing with interest, the winds weren’t blowing away from the cell or even from the south, they were blowing from the east and with impressive ferocity that made use of the tripod impossible (and wearing a hat). Quickly back north and through Springview, I then headed east on Highway 12. I quickly noticed that the beginning of the stronger low level winds that was responsible for the high wind advisories/warnings for the area. Surface winds started coming out of the south at 25-30kts. After only a couple miles I looked south and saw the dirt being torn from the ground and a small concentrated spin-up present. Well if it isn’t a gustnado! Not so much of a surprise given the strong winds from the environment and storm that were converging right there.

http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/Picture%20037%20copy.jpg

Further east I stopped again and was treated to even better structure.

http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/Picture%20046%20copy.jpg

I headed further east and pulled north onto highway 137. It was then that I saw what clearly appeared to be a tube shape structure with the classic definition that I’ve come to expect. I stopped and took some video of it. I just couldn’t see any rotation and I was less than a 1/2 mile away so certainly it was not for lack of a diffenitive vantage point. After making the decision to continue I took one look at the radar and road options, it was clear decisions were limited. One highway went only east for a long ways, the other went north. The storms were moving northeast and would soon cross the Missouri River. I headed north to give a little more chance to this storm. Near Burke, it was beginning to move away but a nice updraft and meso were still keeping it together.

I stood outside of the car and gave it my farewell and I also declared my intention that we would meet again on the other side of the Missouri River.

http://axisofnature.com/2007/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/Picture%20055%20copy.jpg

More pictures & full account HERE (http://axisofnature.com/2007/?p=59)