Tag Archives | tornadoes

May 1st Seymour, Texas Tornadoes

May 1st was a great setup. An outflow boundary lay in northern Texas with 70 degree dewpoints to its south. High CAPE, strong shear and lift along the boundary would cause several tornado warned supercells to form. However, only one would produce any tornadoes. We sat in Seymour for a couple hours waiting for initiation to occur at the triple point just southwest of town. Soon, a storm developed and shot to 55,000 feet in height. We blasted south through intense rain and lightning only to be greeted by the first tornado about 7 miles to our west. Poor road networks prevented us from getting close to this beauty! It lasted about 10 minutes and dissipated. Not long afterwards, a new meso formed to the east and started rotating intensely. A multivortex tornado touched down and lifted several times before a slender cone tornado formed. It bounced around the ground for a few minutes before lifting. We were about 1 mile from it when it occurred! You could hear the waterfall sound of the rear flank downdraft winds as it crossed to highway just north of us. Eventually the storm weakened as we blasted west to another tornado warned supercell. This storm became high precipitation quickly, but it tried hard to drop another tornado to our north. I cannot confirm if it did or not based on our position, but it spun wildly. Enjoy the photos!

April 14th Kansas/Oklahoma Tornadoes

April 14th was a day that held great promise of long track violent tornadoes. SPC issued a High Risk for the area. We decided that we’d play the dryline down wind to allow storms to intensify as the raced at 50-60 mph towards us. The ultimate goal was to end up in northwest Oklahoma by mid afternoon, by dropping south with each storm until we got to within an hour of initiation point. Only thing is, nature would have the last laugh with us. We captured a tornado warned storm near Macksville that was racing towards Salina. When we saw it, it had weakened considerably, so we let it go. This would be the storm that RE-INTENSIFIED and produced several photogenic strong tornadoes near Salina. So, we dropped further south to a pair of tornado warned supercells heading towards Kingman. First one weakened as well, but briefly intensified and produced a short lived truncated elephant trunk shaped tornado. The second supercell  pulsed up and down and produced two brief tornadoes not far from Pretty Prairie. Finally, seeing the storm of the day develop and immediately start producing tornadoes east of Woodward, we blasted south and made Manchester, OK right at dark. A very strong cone, then wedge formed and passed within 400 yards of us and raced into southern Kansas. We stayed with the storm, crossing multiple damage paths and witnessing several more tornadoes before we couldn’t stay up with it as it approached Wichita. This storm would produce anywhere from 15-20 tornadoes along its path from Woodward to northeast of El Dorado. Here’s a few pics from the day, overall a great deal of tornadoes intercepted, but what could have been in daylight for us, just wasn’t meant to be.