Chase Log: 2006: Week 1

5/1/06, Washington County, MO (1 Tornado)
5/2/06, Childress County, TX (1 Funnel)
5/4/06, Tom Green County, TX (4 Tornadoes)
5/4/06, Concho County, TX (2 Tornadoes)
5/4/06, Mason County, TX (1 Funnel, 2 Tornadoes)
5/5/06, Dawson County, TX (4 Tornadoes)
5/5/06, Martin County, TX (2 Tornadoes)

Details:

4/30/06

We leave Chicago area in the early afternoon.   We start heading south on 55.  Even though our target area is Missouri or further south, we will not be able to get there before storms initiate.  So we are just hoping to see something here in Illinois.  The environment in Illinois is not as conducive to tornados but may be able to produce.  We end up having a severe thunderstorm watch box, caught a couple of severe t-storms with wall clouds and some rotation.   Nothing great, but we were on storms in a watch box.

5/1/06

Today we will have plenty of time to get into position.   However, the area that we are targeting is in Missouri and unless the storms are isolated we will be having a short day.    We head south on 55 out of Litchfield, IL.   We go through St. Louis and keep heading south.  We finally stop near Perryville, MO.  We have lunch at Taco Bell and just sit in the parking lot all afternoon waiting for storms to fire.  Finally, after hours of waiting, storms fired near Springfield, MO. and start moving east toward us.   We plot a course west and keep an eye on the storm with our lightning detector and on downloaded Doppler radar.   We end up intercepting the storm in the middle of the Mark Twain National Forest.  This is the reason why we usually will not chase in forested areas.  What we could see of the storm was incredible, with very continuous and strong lightning.  However, the possibly tornadic part is obscured by trees.   We worked our way closer to the storm on Route 32, and then some dirt roads.   There was not a view anywhere, so we decide to turn around and head east to an area that had some broken views.  After about 20 minutes we got back to the area with some views of the storm.   Immediately we see a large rotating wall cloud to our north.  Within a minute there is a debris cloud on the ground.  Success, our second day out and our first tornado.  We follow the storm for a hour and, backlit by lightning, we see a couple of funnels.  The storm then gusts itself out.   So we call it a night.

5/2/06

We have a long way to go to get to our target area today.  We need to be in the Texas panhandle this afternoon and will have to push to get there.  We hop on 44 and cross MO and into OK.  At Oklahoma City we take 40 west towards the panhandle.  When we get closer to the panhandle storms have already initiated and warnings are out already.  We will never be able to get to them even though they are near 40.   Some storms have fired south of those and we take 30 south in Oklahoma and then head towards Wellington in Texas on 203.  The storm looks good but gusts itself out and falls apart.  This leaves us with one option, go south to another storm.  So we head south towards Childress on 83.  The main portion of the storm was to the east of us, but sometimes you can get luck on the back side of storms.   We fight through some light rain, then some moderate rain, and come into a rain-free area.   Low and behold a weak, mid-level funnel is just to our southwest.  Although it was moving towards us and passed almost directly over us, it was too weak to cause any problems.  So we watched it for a minute until it dissipated and then kept heading south to Childress.  We were hoping to catch up with the stronger part of the storm.   However, Childress was completely flooded and that made us call it a night.

5/3/06

Well we didn’t have far to go on this day.  Storms were going to fire close to where we are starting.  After moving only 50 miles all day, storms started firing.  The storms firing around Childress and south were weak and not looking like they would produce.  So we headed west on 70 where we were seeing stronger storms on the radar.  We ended up seeing a nice shelf cloud.  Some weak rotation in a wall cloud, some 60 mph winds.   Nothing to write home about.  So we called it a day.

5/4/06

This day we started out in Lubbock and headed South toward San Angelo.  We stopped in Sterling City and decided to set up there.  A deputy sheriff pulled up and asked what we were doing.  We told him we were just waiting for storms to fire and were going to play some frisbee.  So he directed us to an even better park down by a river.  He actually escorted us there and we had a good visit with him.  Around 3 p.m., I noticed a storm firing down near San Angelo.  We said our good bye to the deputy and continued on southeast on 87.   We stopped in San Angelo and got some fast food and ate it on the road.  That was a good decision, because on the storm we were following there was a very big wall cloud.   It didn’t take long for this storm to start producing land spout tornados.  The first one lasted for a couple of minutes and moved due west at almost a walking pace.  After videotaping it for a couple of minutes, we decided to keep moving east southeast on 87.  On the way to the town of Vick, several more land spout tornados occurred.  Then one developed directly beneath the wall cloud.  Dirt swirled up from the ground all the way up to the wall cloud.  What a pretty sight!   Following the storm further east it produced another land spout before gusting itself out.  Next we waited to see if the outflow would produce another storm.   Nothing was happening, but a storm 25 miles to the south was going strong, so even though we had the problem going around the storms’ back side the other day by Childress with the flooding, I thought it was worth a shot.   After maneuvering around for a couple of hours we finally were on the south side of the storm trying to keep up with it.   On 29 we saw another funnel dipping out of the clouds so we kept trying.  Wall cloud rotating after wall cloud, we were right in the battlezone.    We were done in by roads though.  Nothing going due east.  Finally right at sunset some cumulus fired due west of us, and it didn’t take long for a wall cloud to develop and two condensation funnels to drop down.  At this point though it was getting to dark and so we called it a day and headed for Fredricksburg.

5/5/06

On this day We needed to get west so we left Fredricksburg on 290 then hoped on 10.   A jet stream was entering the panhandle from the west through New Mexico.  We wanted to be there for that.  This looked to be the best day for tornados.  Monitoring weather information, storms started initiating in New Mexico and so we started to head north up 137.   When we got near Lamesa I decided to take 180 west into the storm.   When we were on 180, something wasn’t right. The storm was not where it was shown on my last radar check.   Then it occurred to me that we hit a right mover.  So we pulled a u-turn and hit the first south dirt road.  That was when the hail started.  First pea size and then marble and then golf balls.  We were still 15 miles away from it.  I stopped to look for secondary updrafts and saw a huge rotating meso.   Off to our west, this was unbelievable that it was shooting hail out of the anvil and landing that far away from the updraft.  We kept heading south and east to get out of the hail but to still have a great view of the storm.  Slowly but surely the storm started to spin up land spouts and a rope tornado.  Then finally rain and dust shrouded a condensation funnel in the shape of an elephant trunk and dropped down.  While moving south and east we stayed under the meso and caught a couple more good land spout tornadoes from about half a mile away.  What a storm!   Now we just have the drive home.