4/22 Paducah Texas Supercell and Large Tornado
From Zack Biggs:
I had been looking at the forecast for the panhandle event about a week in advance and thought that I wouldn't ever chase it since it looked to be too far to the North West. About a day before the event the Storm Prediction Center showed that the area around Childress would be primed for significant supercells. So, I decided to go ahead and head on up to Childress to see what would happen.
Left the Dallas area around 12:30pm and arrived in Childress around 5:00pm. Large Supercells developed to the north west towards Amarillo and I could see the anvils from where I was.
James Langford was my nowcaster on this trip and was a big time help since internet was spotty. He informed me of cells firing to my south-west and they looked to be headed right up towards Childress. I did finally find a spot with internet coverage and was able to watch the storms develop down by Lubbock and north east of there moving towards Childress and areas to the south of Childress.
One storm began to become dominate and the anvil darkened the south-western horizon. It looked like it would either pass just to my south or directly over me... so I decided to head south to the town of Paducah on highway 62/83.
Arrived in Paducah but noticed the storm looked to pass well to my north between Childress and Paducah, so repositioned again a little north and east of Paducah to watch the storm.
I could now see definite supercell structure and what appeared to be a large wall cloud off to my west-north-west. It was far on the horizon and couldn't be sure exactly what was going on. An inflow band was feeding into the supercell just to my south and swung overhead as the storm approached. Clouds in that band were zipping into the the base of the supercell at alarming speed. It was also interesting to see clouds to the right of the wall cloud feeding into it from off the rain in the forward flank downdraft.
One of the locals informed me that a tornado had been confirmed. As the storm got closer the wall cloud became more pronounced.
I did not know it at the time but what I was actually looking at was a very large tornado rather than a mere wall cloud. Video and pictures from other storm chasers who had a better view confirmed it.
Here is a video from Connor who was somewhere to my north west and had a much better view of the tornado. He also had much better zoom on his lens.
http://texasstormchasers.com/2010/04...-video-online/
All in all a very successful chase and learned a lot from it such as how distance can play a big part in being able to verify what the storm is doing.
Also learned why people can often be surprised by large tornadoes as it is really not often obvious what they are when they are that large and wrapped in rain.
Read MoreI had been looking at the forecast for the panhandle event about a week in advance and thought that I wouldn't ever chase it since it looked to be too far to the North West. About a day before the event the Storm Prediction Center showed that the area around Childress would be primed for significant supercells. So, I decided to go ahead and head on up to Childress to see what would happen.
Left the Dallas area around 12:30pm and arrived in Childress around 5:00pm. Large Supercells developed to the north west towards Amarillo and I could see the anvils from where I was.
James Langford was my nowcaster on this trip and was a big time help since internet was spotty. He informed me of cells firing to my south-west and they looked to be headed right up towards Childress. I did finally find a spot with internet coverage and was able to watch the storms develop down by Lubbock and north east of there moving towards Childress and areas to the south of Childress.
One storm began to become dominate and the anvil darkened the south-western horizon. It looked like it would either pass just to my south or directly over me... so I decided to head south to the town of Paducah on highway 62/83.
Arrived in Paducah but noticed the storm looked to pass well to my north between Childress and Paducah, so repositioned again a little north and east of Paducah to watch the storm.
I could now see definite supercell structure and what appeared to be a large wall cloud off to my west-north-west. It was far on the horizon and couldn't be sure exactly what was going on. An inflow band was feeding into the supercell just to my south and swung overhead as the storm approached. Clouds in that band were zipping into the the base of the supercell at alarming speed. It was also interesting to see clouds to the right of the wall cloud feeding into it from off the rain in the forward flank downdraft.
One of the locals informed me that a tornado had been confirmed. As the storm got closer the wall cloud became more pronounced.
I did not know it at the time but what I was actually looking at was a very large tornado rather than a mere wall cloud. Video and pictures from other storm chasers who had a better view confirmed it.
Here is a video from Connor who was somewhere to my north west and had a much better view of the tornado. He also had much better zoom on his lens.
http://texasstormchasers.com/2010/04...-video-online/
All in all a very successful chase and learned a lot from it such as how distance can play a big part in being able to verify what the storm is doing.
Also learned why people can often be surprised by large tornadoes as it is really not often obvious what they are when they are that large and wrapped in rain.
