| May 5th, 2002 |
| May 5th, 2002 - After several days of anticipation from previous model runs leading up to this day , I headed up to Geoffrey Colhoun's house to spend saturday night up there to prepare for Sunday's chase. It was in May 5, 2001, that my chase partner missed a tornado in Cordell, Ok after leaving the storm for another storm that day. The day would start for me around 6am , as I woke and quickly ran models for the day to narrow down the target area for the day. The model runs showed to some extent what would be an imaginary warm from coming north from south Texas Panhandle , while a dryline with a wave was moving across New Mexico. The uncertainly came from where the front would form and move north or not. This would have set up another point of initation that day in the moderate risk area. After seeing this, we both decided to wait till 8am to see the outlook that would soon come out. This outlook also talked of the uncertain situation developed in model runs, so we left and got on I-40 , then I-35 to Lawton , OK. We arrived around 12:30 and decided to go for data at the library which would open at 1pm. A check of models and sfc observations , showed the dryline in extreme eastern NM very close to the TX line. It was at this point we left the library and got on Hwy 62 heading west, then north on Hwy 83, then west again on Hwy 256 to Memphis, TX. The stop at Memphis would provide a point to fuel up for the rest of the chase, but also an interesting experiience with some people traveling in a Winnabago RV. It seems the people in the RV where very interest in the fact we were chasers and they followed us to the gas station. A women would come out of the RV to explain that her and her husband had a daughter in the Air Force that wo a weather reporter. She would explain how their daughter was very interrested in chasing. After a quick photo, we explained to them that we had a storm to catch and left Memphis. At this point, we got on Hwy 287 and headed weast towards Amarillo. Arrviing in Amarillo, I turned on the TV to check radar on the local stations. While checking radar , the Noaa Radio went off with a warning for Deaf Smith County and we decided to immediately go after the storm. We turned onto I -27 south and headed to Canyon, Tx and pulled off to observe the storm produced several wallclouds and a brief funnel. It had came apparent from observing this that the storm's inflow was being cut off by other storms. A check of the local TV radar confirmed this as another storm to the south was quickly strengthening and placed undered a severe thunderstorm warning. We saw this and quick got back on I-27 and headed south toward Happy. We pulled off the Happy Exit and came to a Texas Farm road intersection(will post at a later time) and went south while observing a large wallcloud. At this point we pulled off about a mile and a half south of Happy up to a driving while leading up to railroad tracks to observe the wall cloud which now had a lowered funnel. The RFD quickly punched kicking up tons of dust in the process. The tornado from my point of view started out multivortex then a wedge. After obseving the tornado for several minutes, we saw the core heading out way and quickly headed south on Hw87, missing the second tornado that would tear through Happy. After hearing of the damage, we went to see what if anything we could do to help those affected by the tornado. After doing so, we headed back toward home on what was a long drive home, with one stop in OKC at the Waffle House. The chase mileage totaled 1100 miles. The pictures will be posted soon. |