Texas Tornadoes, Two Tornadic Supercells, StormTours.com

Texas Tornadoes, Two Tornadic Supercells

When: 2008 APR 23
Where: Anson to Lamesa Texas
Info: Tour 2
Images: 6
Video: No

Storm Chase Photos

Tour Director's Field Report

Our target today was Dawson County, Texas. Our target location was validated, however the storms fired a bit earlier than we expected. The day started out with early convection south of Wichita Falls and we intercepted a massive tornado warned supercell while on the way to our targeted area. The "first cell" produced a tornado near Anson, Texas which tore down several miles of power lines and snapped several telephone poles as if they were mere toothpicks. We were just seconds behind the tornado, but it was so occluded in rain that it wasn't visible to us. With the rule of "if you get behind it you'll never catch up" in mind, we decided to continue on course to our initial target location and there was a storm already anchored on the boundary that we desperately wanted to witness.

Things began to get a bit confusing with several supercells to our east and west and all of them were tornado warned. I continued to wonder if we should just turn back around and go east to try and catch back up to the first storm that we went through, but the most western storm was completely isolated and I knew that was the show to see - so we pressed on.

Since initiation fired a few hours earlier than originally expected we were trying hard to catch up to the western storm as we continued to blow west on Interstate 20, and I didn't initially see, or notice the tornado on the ground near Lamesa, Texas but thankfully I was snapping photos through the front windshield while we were in-route to the storm and did notice the tornado in my photographs after the event.

When we finally caught up to the storm the day was nearing it's end, but not before we captured some stunning images of the updraft base as it passed overhead. The supercell had incredible structure both from a distance while we were en-route and while we were under the updraft base near the end of the day.

In summary, we were just seconds behind a tornado that crossed Highway 281 near Anson, TX and witnessed numerous telephone poles that were snapped in half, lines down across the highway and uprooted trees and towards the end of the day we intercepted another tornadic supercell (as evident from the photo taken from the lead tour van).