| April 7th 2002 |
| April 7th, 2002 - This being my first time to chase with chase partner Geoffrey Calhoun, I was rather excited at the first opportunity of the year. After forecasting for several days for this day, I headed out late Saturday night to stay the night at Geoffrey's house. A moderate risk was in place for NW Texas around the Abliene area for early that day. After arriving at Geoffrey's house and a quick discussion of the next days setup , we got to bed knowning tomorrow could be a great chase day. After a later start than we had both planned we quickly dressed and things together and got on I-40 west to Oklahoma City then down I-44 to Chickasaw, and then we got on 81 south to Marlow , Oklahoma. At Marlow, we stopped a visit a friend of Geoffrey, Harry Sanders. While visiting with Harry, he was nice enough to allow us to use his computer to get data and check radar and see if any mesoscale discussion had been posted in or around the target area. After quickly looking at some surface observations and satalite images, we quickly said goodbye to Harry. At this point, we thought we might be really behind and might miss the show this day. We headed west quickly on Hwy 7, then south on Highway 65 until we reach Highway 70 and took a left there heading west. It was from there that we took another left and got back on I-44 and passed through Witchita Falls , Texas. While in route , we both heard radar updates over a local repeator. We heard of storms firing into two separate lines in and around Abliene already and knew we were too far to intercept any of the storms along those lines. As we continued to listen to radar updates from the local repeator, we heard of a new developing supercell in Haskell County , Texas. After hearing of this new cell developing , we decided to go after it. After passing through Witchita Falls, Texas, we headed southwest on Hwy 277 to seymour, Texas then south on Hwy 283 towards Throckmorton, Texas. While on Hwy 283, we heard over the local repeator of a PDS Tornado Watch being issused for the area. It was about 10 miles from Throckmorton that we saw the storm to our right. We then with through a brief rain, we approached a hill with a dirt road just off of Hwy 283. It was after getting off Hwy 283 that we saw the rain free base to our west. We went down the dirt road a bit and wait about five minutes of so, then rotation began to occur. The rotation from our vantage point at this point seemed weak for the first five minutes , but afterward began to pick up and we noticed that the RFD began punching in and a couple of multi-voriticies(fingers)from the intinal funnel appeared to dance close to the ground for several minutes. Then those lifted briefly , only to form a much larger funnel cloud, when produced a stove pipe tornado briefly and then quickly llifted and dropped again after a couple of minutes. The tornado after dropping again took on every shape you could possibily think of, a stove pipe , elephant trunk, amd almost a stove pipe. After observing the storm for about seven to eight minutes, we had to move from our position due to heavy rain moving into the area. We got back on hwy 83 and headed south toward Throckmorton, Texas. While we were heading south toward Throckmorton, I accidently put the cam on standby while heading down the road toward Throckmorton., so we never got the peak width of the tornado in its most mature stage. Finally, we pulled through the last of the rain and pulled to the side of the road along side a local skywarn spotter and watch the tornado rope out in its final stage of life. To the immediate north of the roping tornado , a new circulation formed and a funnel soon after, but the RFR never punched as cold air inflow killed any chance of a second tornado. Soon , we headead away from the storm as it was getting too close and was clearly being taken into the squall line and became linear. We headed to Graham , Texas to gas and head back on the long ride back to Bokshe, Oklahoma. For this being my first real chase and the first time ever to go out of state chasing, I couldnt ask for anything better. I saw my first tornado, and my partner saw his first in two years. This was an awesome way to begin my rookie year of chasing in a year that turn out not to be so great for chasers nationwide. Pictures can be found here. |