4/13/07 REPORTS: TX / OK / AR

[Glenn Dixon]

We made it as far as Jacksboro, then began driving like we were lost. N. toward Seymour, no south toward Graham, no, north again. Finally made up my mind and went north. Got near Archer City while the local spotters were discussing lowerings and a possible wall cloud but got chased out by the squall line. Played dodge with pea-sized hail the rest of the way back to Denton. Didn't see much lightning nor an isolated base all day. I did, however, get to hear a spotter in one county (which shall remain nameless) refer to a dark lowering as 'omulous'.....

Not exactly the chase I had in mind when I left. Good for equipment testing I guess.

[matt patterson]

Some how managed to find myself in Ft Worth about 1/2 mile behind the tornado... Was wrapped in rain for the entire time with only a few clearings. saw some damage to a grocery store and some abandoned cars on the 121 hwy near Irving... Fairly dissapointing for a 500+ mile drive...

[Eugene Thieszen]

Walt Gish, Eric Sipes and I left Cordell at 10:30am for our initial target of Seymour, TX. Storms had begun to develop from W of Abilene N to Aspermont and Guthrie by the time we arrived. Stopped to fuel up and get some fast food. Storm moving from near Aspermont toward Rochester went tornado warned just before we left Seymour heading down 277 toward Munday. At Goree we turned N and observed the storm for a short time from a mile or two N of town before backtracking toward Seymour. We headed ESE of Seymour on SR114 and pulled off on the driveway of an equipment site about 3 miles down the road and watched the storm come toward us from the WSW. At 2:41 pm the storm quickly condensed a giant, violent wedge from a large wall-cloud about 3 miles to our WSW. We were able to watch it for only a couple of minutes before it became necessary to move up the road because the tornado was coming at us so rapidly. By the time we turned around at our next pull-off the tor was wrapped in rain and dust as it crossed SR 114 to our NW. We continued following the storm to near Lake Kickapoo, but we did not see any further tornadoes. At Archer City, we pondered intercepting the storm along I-20 heading for Fort Worth, but instead decided to call it a day since none of us liked the idea of chasing in or near an urban area.

Gene
WXtreme Chase Team

Chase Log and Video Captures
http://www.geocities.com/genet_99/wxtreme_2007_037.htm

[Bill Tabor]

Updated detail case study of this chase on my website:
http://www.tornadoxtreme.com/Chases_...ril_13_07.html

Gene Moore and I were exiting Haskell, Tx to the north about the time of the report of the tornado 3NNE of Rule (in Haskell county). This was likely about 5 or so miles from us. I verified this with our GPS log at 1:45. As we were leaving town Gene was joking to me saying "look there's a tornado" LOL. There was lifted, blowing dust in the field. To me it looked like a gustnado, or perhaps one of those very weak rear flank whirlies everyone always sees. Originally I was thinking this was no tornado. However the location aligns very well with the path of the circulation that later led to the now know wedge. So perhaps it is somewhat likely this was a legitimate tornado. Perhaps some other chaser will come up with an image? At the time we ignored this area. We were instead focused to it's northeast on the wrapped up embedded meso that was exibiting rotation as it neared Munday. For awhile we videotaped and photographed this area as we were just within the wrapping rain. Threatnet was showing 138mph. It lowered close to the ground and then occluded. We continued following it through Goree and down hwy 277 always in or near the hook which was almost always rain obscured to varying degrees. We were in 1" hail at times near Bomarton and beyond toward Seymore with much of the road covered with near golfball sized hail, and also a lot extending in the fields while we viewed the meso to our south. We arrived at Seymore to see larger hail nearing baseball. Gene saw one stone while I was on the phone that was 4" or so with spikes as I recall near a home that had lost a lot of siding from the hail. It's a shame we didn't stop to take detail pictures of this, but I was on the phone and another core was approaching, plus we were trying to get into position for a tube. It was very cold in this part of the storm, often with hail fog. I videotaped some of this. At 3:04 at the intersection of FM1790 & FM2180 we observed some strong turbulent motion and various lowerings, but while associated with the meso, they also appeared a bit undercut and cold, outflow dominant. We didn't like the looks of these and the fact that it was going into lower dewpoints colder temps and decided to bail south along the dryline and observe possible tornadic there.

At 4:37 southwest of Graford we observed a large cone shape funnel like lowering for awhile to our wnw associated with the area of rotation that was also becoming part of a bowing shape a cycle or so later on radar. Took some shots of this. Here we also drove in occasional nickel hail and fairly heavy precip. Took shortcut around Mineral Wells as bow was inbound with tornado warning, but it was starting to look like more outflow crap so we continued south and sampled other storms along the way. None of them looked like much including those that Threatnet was showing had about 161mph shear. Later in Lampassas after a brief stop at 7:45 we were treated to billiant CG bolts very nearby in the clear ahead of the precip approaching from the west. At one point the lightning stuck a very large, long wire and illuminated it for awhile. Very cool. Tried to get some video of this, but without much success.

In summary, early on at Haskell we pretty well had picked a perfect spot with great timing as the cell was strenghtening and becoming potentially tornadic. We enjoyed this chase, but overall felt let down and a bit dissipointed as we thought the day had much more tornadic chase potential. It felt good to be out though. Additionally based on what we saw of the warm front anchor cell near Haskell / Munday, etc we didn't have a lot of faith in it's capabilities over toward DFW, but I suppose any thing is possible.

EDIT: I now see the post above mine about the wedge. Very interesting. Please see my additional comment in the Discussion (DISC) thread.
EDIT2: In retrospect, now realizing there was a wedge just at arms reach from us that we couldn't see obviously lends credibility to the whole DFW torn scenario. In actuality this was the scenario we originally anticipated as the anchor storm rode east along the warm frontal boundary.

Also, this really is dissipointing now, to realize we were there at a location further west almost an hour before the other chasers that caught the wedge from looking back east, and realize we got cut off and forced out of position. Our intent was to follow close, observe, and seek the next opportunity to get back in front to the E and SE, but by the time that happened - sadly, so had the wedge. Congratulations to the rest of you guys for snagging a great catch!

[Randy Denzer]

Josh Jans, Allan Detrich and myself got a late start and left Brian / College station at about 1300. Got up to I 20 just as the cell west of Mineral Wells took off. hesitated as we watched the cell to our southwest develope and "poof", everything lined out and we got to see LOTS of rain and pea sized hail. This was in no way what we expected today.


Hats off to those who scored today, it was a tough chase.

[Brian Emfinger]

Couldnt leave Arkansas till 11am so we didnt get into target area until afternoon. We were on the eastern edge of storms for what was basically all day. First storm we got on was the tornado warned cell in Palo Pinto? county. We were very near the supposed circulation but it was already getting very outflow dominant:


When we got to Weatherford we saw the only interesting thing of the day:


Couldnt tell for sure but there seemed to be some hints of rotation with that. Then we had to go THROUGH Weatherford when everyone was getting off work and well it took quite a while. The storm above is what probably what went on to become the Fort Worth/Dallas storm. We had decided earlier that we would not chase anything in there and so being held up in Weatherford in the end really didnt matter.

Once through Weatherford we starting playing the keep heading south till you find a storm even though everything looks like crap game....and it was sooo fun!

The only storm that even appeared at all like anything worthwhile was the tornado warned storm coming out of Hamilton county. It didnt look as bad as the others on radar but it looked pretty much the same as the others when we got to it. We did get some nickel size hail around Laguna Park but it was brief and for a for a little bit there was some nice inflow in there but it just didnt last.

[Tony Cook]

Intercepted the Seymour cell near Archer City (post-tornado). It still had a warning, but cloud base was visually unimpressive. There was nice inflow, but that was about it. The forward flank of the storm went past me, and it took a while to get back in front of it again. I stayed in front of it all the way to Fort Worth, where it began to really get its act together again. Running into the FW metro and out of road options, I stupidly went south on I35W (this was about 5:30, I think). The storm crossed 35W with gusty winds, and I shot video of a couple of nice lowerings (one possibly rotating) along the forward flank. Will post vidcaps if I find anything worthwhile. There was a tornado warning for the cell at the time, but the main rotation was still 10+ miles south of me. Watched painfully on radar as the storm moved through FW and into the Dallas metro, developing that monster hook, and all the while, getting further east of me.

Spent the next hour and change slowing to a crawl at every highway overpass until I finally went through some neighborhoods in South FW and escaped on Highwy 287. From there, it was a white knuckle drive back to Austin, as marginally severe cells translated along and across I-35.


Thanks to Shane Hale for excellent nowcasting help, and road advice near Fort Worth (which I should have listened to). Congrats to TonyL and anyone else who managed a tornado out of this system. My April tornado count is still 0...

Miles: 646
Quarts of Oil: 1+

TonyC

[Mikey Gribble]

Ryan Shirk and I decided to chase at the last minute and left Wichita a little after 10AM. We went West of Dallas and intercepted the storm that went through Dallas about 45 miles West of DFW. It never looked very impressive. It kind of appeared outflow dominant after we got on it. As it started to move into the metro area we started contemplating whether we should call it a day or try to stay with the storm through DFW. There wasn't a tornado warning on it and we both figured that if the storm was showing the slightest possibility of producing a tornado the NWS would have already put a warning out because of the high population density in DFW. In addition to that, the storm didn't look good at the time. There wasn't a lowering, no fast vertical motion, and no rotation, so we decided to stop at Whataburger and eat some dinner before heading home. 10 minutes later the storm produced a tornado due East of us (right where we would have been). It felt similiar to getting kicked in the junk.

[Jason A.C. Brock]

was on 114 as the wedge passed over 114 to my due West ABOUT 1/4 mile away at most. One had to be in perfect position to see the thing. It appeared at first as tho strong inflow was pushing dirt off the fround then it was wrapping upward into the updraft as I watched a wall cloud to the SW. However a new wall cloud had formed closer to the precip core and when the tornado touched down it wrapped this precip around it very quickly. Ill have to review the video but until the thing was about to cross 114 to my West I wasnt even aware it was a huge tornado. You could see the massive inflow and upward vertical motion jsut before this occured however. It was actually some of the most intense VERTICAL motion ive seen on a storm. I will have to post video and pics later however as my laptop is having issues. There ertainly was a tornado....you jsut had to be in perfect position for a great shot of it....better poition thatn I was anyways :-(. I heard Tony Laubach has a great pic of this wedge. Maybe he can shed more light on the subject.
I went on south to sample the storms as they moved into DFW...I saw numerous dwoned trees and powerlines and got into alot of golfball size hail near Springtown Texas. To make a long story short my chase was cut short in Fort Worth due to my finding out where the Texas Motorspeedway is lol.


Edit : Updated....... I have posted pics & Video of the monster HP supercell storm that Moved from Haskell County Texas into Knox Baylor & Archer Counties of Western North Texas on 4/13/07. You can see the amazing cloud motion and rotation this storm had in our videos and timelapse videos as well ass see video of the large hail that later moved into Springtown Texas West of Fort Worth Texas. These storms would eventually move into the Dallas Fort Worth metro producing as many as 3 tornadoes.
If you look closely at some of the video you can see a large rain wrapped tornado cross 114 SE of Seymour Texas. This is a perfect example of why it is not a good idea to go out looking for tornadoes yourself unless you have the proper training and or have been chasing storms for awhile. Monsters hidden in the shadows such as these can fool even the most seasoned chasers.

Video can be found http://www.texhomastormchasers.com and clicking the 4/13/07 link at the bottom left on the buttons margin.

Or you can also go to the page directly at http://www.texhomastormchasers.com/41307.html

BE SURE TO BROWSE THE PAGE AND LOOK FOR ALL THE VIDEO LINKS AS WELL AS CHECK OUT SOME OF THE RADAR IMAGES OF THIS AMAZING STORM AND CHECK OUT THE REST OF THE SITE.

[Rodney Harper]

Well we weren't exactly chasing but we were working in Saginaw when Tarrant went Tor warned. We decided to head back home cause our son was there by himself. We core punched the storm just on the SE side of Eagle Mountain Lake and noticed to very ominous lowerings to our south which would be Ft. Worth and one to our NE probably not a mile apart. We didn't get more than a few quarter sized stones as we punched and heavy rain. As we got home in Azle there was golfball hail all over the ground. Although not the smartest idea to punch a storm of that nature it was lucky for us since there was 3" hail where we were working and a poss Tor soon after. It was definately some of the best motion I have seen near home since the Alvarado Tor of 2005. Whew.