Moments In Chasing (2) West Texas Supercells

The following is a blog post storm chasing series that highlights a moment(s) during one of my past chase expeditions. This is not a current ongoing event.. (Archived pulled from May 2005)

The photo above was taken back on May 12, 2005 in western Texas on a tornadic supercell not far from Plainview, Texas. Kersten and I arrvied on the storm as it was in it’s developing stage, after chasing the evening before up in southwest Kansas on our first day of chase expedition 2005. We met up with fellow storm chaser(s) Amos Magliocco, Eric Nguyen and Tony Laubach as they were already on the storm. Eric Nguyen was farther west on a muddy road closer to the wallcloud and had a much better view of the short-lived rope tornado that developed. We could see the small vortex and debris from our location, but it quickly became rain-wrapped and we lost sight of it.

While we were trying to get a better view on the storm, Eric Nguyen encountered another short-lived cone tornado that became rain wrapped as well as the supercell continued eastward. This supercell had at times some really impressive storm structure and the inflow was pretty cool too. I shot several time lapse segments over it’s life time that I will post maybe in another “Moments” review.

Now…monitoring radar at the time, we noticed a new supercell developing to our west and we opted to leave our current storm and head for the new one. We arrived a tad late and a too far east as other chaser’s were filming a nice barrel tornado and being creamed by very large hail. At one point we got a small brief look through the dust and rain as the barrel tornado was becoming rain wrapped. We were also hearing reports over the HAM that chaser’s were taking on major damage from the large hail with windows being smashed out. We encounted some isolated large stones, but nothing like what we were hearing over the two meter radio.

We stopped to pick up some of the large hail that was already on the ground half melted to video archive. The only way to see the nice barrel tornado was to place yourself deep into the large hail to get the best and up in your face view of the tornado. (See links below) Above you see me holding some of the large hail that was found on the ground. Overall the chase day was fun and a great way to start off the 2005 season at the time. We went on for another three weeks to see many supercells in many states during our annual Tornado Alley chase expedition. Kersten got to see some of her first tornadoes (small ones) and encounter large hail. I always really enjoy chasing in West Texas and this was one of those chases.