It was developing into a very nice supercell rather fast right in front of us and had good inflow into it most of the time. It was sucking up alot of scud with a nice RFD to our west and soon began to develop a wall cloud with numerous areas of interest.
It really started to get its act together as it started raining but soon had rain falling into its updraft so we headed east to give it time. About 3 minutes after leaving this location some people spotted a tornado back to our west as we were driving east we spotted a tornado coming down. Only a few got pictures of it as it was brief but was tornado number one. After this is when all the hordes of chasers. There were so many chasers between Vortex 2, locals, the Discovery Channel idiots, tour groups, and others out.
We ended up southwest west of Dumas, TX and pulled over to continue to watch its development. At this point it never screamed tornado and never had the classic clear slot RFD occlusion. Most of the time it looked shelfish as it looked like a HP mess for awhile with it raining into the mesocyclone.
After this we headed through Dumas and then east. This took quite awhile with so many people out and having to go through a town. As we got onto the road out of town we spotted a small tornado back to our WSW. There were reports of a large tornado in Dumas but we didnt see it and dont believe it considering the one we saw was small and brief and just south of town. We continued east with other chasers to get a good view of it and went probably about 10 miles east of Dumas and stopped and were rewarded to amazing structure with the supercell, It was amazing in its own.
After about 5 minutes at this location, hail began to fall out east of the storm due to the strong upper level winds. We headed back east for a few miles and went south of the main road where all the chasers were to get a nice view of the storm by ourselves with nobody around.
On Tuesday our target was the TX PH as we left LBB in the morning and headed for
This thing was turning into a HP mess with alot of rain falling into the updraft as time went on which meant you had to be on the northeast side of the meso to see anything. We continued to follow it to Stinnett where it was a mess with alot of chasers.
We decided to leave this storm for a rapidly developing supercell near Romero, TX. We busted back west and finally caught up to it just northeast of Dalhart at right when it became dark and was throwing out cold air....so with crappy lightning we decided to leave and head to the hotel but as we were heading east low level rotation increased quite a bit and inflow picked up so about after 10 seconds of looking north while driving for lightning flashes, someone saw what looked to be a tornado off to our north illuminated by the lightning. It ended up being a pretty good size tornado a mile from us. It was on the ground for around 5 minutes before lifting. It was so great getting my first night tornado I couldn't of been more giddy.
We went east again with a supercell northwest of Stratford showing descent rotation show we went north to check it out but were having data problems but were still able to get radar on Victor's phone. The area of interest was pretty close to us as we were nearing the town. We stopped to get gas where hail was covering the ground and we were actually not allowed in the gas station due to the weather im guessing.
The storm slowly moved south and we were just south of town when the storm was just east of town when someone spotted a tornado thanks to the lightning behind us. We got out and sure enough a large tornado was on the ground with inflow winds probably around 40mph! That was the 4th tornado of the day! It was my best chase day and was so much fun.
Write up for the next day in OK coming soon!
Matt
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