What an incredible storm this was!! After spending almost too much time east of Childress, we drove northeast and were greeted with this beautiful storm. From a distance it did not look that impressive. But as we approached it from the south, the incredible structure of this HP/classic supercell became obvious. This was a special storm!!! One of the top 10 in my book ever! From the highly striated liberty bell updraft, to the FF tornado it produced, this storm was a force to be dealt with carefully. We drove northeast of Skellytown and ended up northwest of Pampa to get the best view we could. And what a view it was!!!!

The FF of this storm was very electrified. The striated updraft had clear evidence of major RFD erosion, and I am afraid it produced a rather large rain wrapped tornado that was just out of vision. As the rain cleared the occluded updraft, a rather large block shaped lowering was visible which could have attested to producing a large tornado that we just couldn’t see. Enjoy the photos of this beast.

2002, elephant trunk, lightning, May 2002, supercell, Texas, tornado