I went storm chasing for the first time yesterday–really tornado chasing; chasing regular thunderstorms just seems to be boring. I was completely on my own and didn’t go with any other chasers or these lamer chaser tour thingees (though hey if you want to pay me a few thousand bucks I’ll be happy to drive you around the central plains). Always wanted to do something like this, and see what it was like. And I have some free time on my hands. Only cost is gas (and hopefully not a damaged car). My only instrumentation was my cell phone and my eyes; I thought about getting a weather radio but didn’t.
People had been looking at Thursday for the last 1-2 weeks as the first classic big storm/tornado setup for the year around the Texas/Oklahoma panhandle area, which due to an unrelated system had already been seeing severe storms and tornadoes the last two days. So I decided to head to Childress, which was roughly at the center of the original center of the probability zone and re-evaluate from there after some food. Lots of low clouds around, hard to get a good read on cells in the distance, but some were already brewing up in the panhandle so I decided to trend further north, town by town. Eventually I wound up in the small town of McLean, TX, on I-40, about 50 miles east of Amarillo, and everything was going nuts. A line of cells was moving along I-40 and just to the north of town, spewing tornadoes and looking all kinds of nasty. Two cells in particular, right next to each other, were each individually tornado warned. The winds, flowing into the storm’s direction as it move e/ne, were tremendous. The first cell already had a tornado on the ground and was moving north of town; getting to it seemed like a dangerous proposition though. And the entire cell was hail/rain wrapped–no way to see anything unless you crossed out in front of it. Also a dangerous proposition at that point. The one next to it though, just crossing the interstate, looked like something better for viewing purposes. If I could get a good spot.
I flitted west a little bit along the interstate, got onto a service road and got to a rise and parked–the service road itself ends a few hundred yards west, where the news crews (and a helicopter), a ton of spotters/chasers, and a county sheriff’s deputy wound up parking. I think I got a slightly better spot to be honest but whatever. The storms stretched from the northeast to the west but there wasn’t much to see for a long while. The second cell was creeping to the north and finally a wall cloud started to lower… and then a spindly tornado crept down off the front, moved a bit, went up, and came back down again, all the time rotating around the wall cloud. The second time it was much thicker and lasted about a minute; then it retreated and tried to come down a third time but couldn’t really hold. There wasn’t a lot of lightning amazingly enough. Watched for about 10 minutes more, than the rain came.
Tried to reposition east to see what would happen, but it rained way too hard and after about 30 minutes gave up–and there was a tornadic cell approaching Childress from the southeast, a good 50 minutes away. Since it was my fastest way back home I hightailed it over there, but it was getting late… by the time I got there, it was 8. It was mostly dark and raining cats and dogs like crazy. And the lightning was intense. Honestly I don’t think I had been around so much lightning before in my entire life. I gassed up and checked the reports; tornado on the ground, just to the south, moving east. Basically it would cut off my eastern escape route, potentially very quickly. Do I try to get in front of it–in this crazy storm–or stay behind and potentially get trapped for awhile? I decided to get in front of it and at first seemed like a very bad idea–the roads were swamped with water, I was sandwiched by 18-wheelers flinging water around like crazy, and it seemed like we were barely going anywhere. Eventually I got out in front of them, sped up, and kept looking to the south–looking for a tornado in all that lightning. Hell I barely needed to use my headlights there was just so much. Eventually I got out of the rain and parked next to another news crew, who pretty much did the same thing a bit earlier and was waiting for the tornado. I gave up after awhile and went home, trying to get some lightning pics and not succeeding much.
The tornado never made it; the storm slowed down a lot and the tornado didn’t get to the highway. I am glad I left though; the storm system practically stalled right over town and took forever to move east. After about 13+ hours of driving and chasing, had finally made it back to Dallas.
The End. OR IS IT???
— Alan
