5/15/13: We Have a Tornado....or Three!

We woke up this morning looking at weather data for our possible chase locations today. I was a chase leader for the second time and I was looking to redeem myself after feeling a little less than enthused about the first time. Having stayed the night in Abilene, TX in order to setup for our chase today, we didn't think we would have to go far to see a few thunderstorms and some good structure. Our plan was to move a little northeast to Albany, TX and sit at the city park and wait for storms to fire off of the dry line bulge. The dry line is an area denoting the large dew point temperature gradients. On the west side of the dry line, dew points are mainly in the 30s while east of the dry line dew points may reach above 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Just east of this dry line is a popular place for severe weather to form. We had setup shop directly east of the dry line and waited a while. Right on queue, storms had begun to fire just west of the line and within 10 minutes, a storm had gone from not on radar to severely warned. We loaded up the vans and left the park where other chasers were also staying at and headed south to the storm. Just our luck, a storm had started to fire and head directly to where we had been sitting just as soon as we left the park. Unfortunately, neither of these storms were long lived and died off and were off the radar within another 20 minutes. So as we sat at a high school in Moran, TX just southeast of our original location in Albany, we noticed on the radar these storms firing about an hour to our east that had been consistently growing and remaining strong on radar. They were starting to become supercell thunderstorms, the thunderstorms known most for spawning tornadoes. Since nothing was or appeared to be initiating where we were currently at, we decided our best bet and our last bet would be to try to catch up to these storms that were to our east. Little did we know at the time, these storms would eventually make national news for the destruction they caused.

We started heading down Texas road 180 toward Mineral Wells, TX. As we were approaching Mineral Wells, looking to our southeast we could see really great storm structure with overshooting tops. The extent clouds can reach is the bottom of the stratosphere and then they will start forming laterally, which is why we have "anvil clouds." Anvil clouds are associated with thunderstorms and these overshooting tops result in an extremely strong updraft of air into the storm, which makes the clouds able to break through and into the stratosphere. Every storm that had eventually spawned a tornado tonight had an overshooting top. As we had eventually dropped south into Millsap, TX we had had our first sight of a tornado. This was one tornado this particular storm had dropped. Later on, although we did not see it, the storm dropped another tornado that had reported six fatalities and over 100 injuries. We continued to move in increments south and east following two storms now, both of which had tornadoes associated with them. We were tracking directly behind the storms and had no intentions of trying to punch through the storm, it would have resulted in major hail damage to the vans. We were watching the skyline along Granbury, TX and had a HAM radio in the van as well so we were able to hear the storm spotters with where the storm was tracking. We were looking directly at the tornado but could not see anything due to the tornado being wrapped in rain. We knew the tornado was there though because we watched power lines explode and transformers blow up and turn the sky blue. Night was starting to fall so chasing became more and more dangerous. Chasing at night is HIGHLY advised to be avoided. Sometimes it's hard enough to see a tornado in daylight if it's rain wrapped, so having no natural light makes it impossible to see a tornado. So naturally, because the storm was still dropping tornadoes and was tracking perpendicular to our intended route, we did a little night chasing! This was the time where we had seen what we thought was just a wall cloud due to its size, but later found out this was in fact a tornado as we had heard that it was causing destruction up to a mile wide. The only way we were able to see this tornado was because the lightning would light up the sky around the tornado, showing its monstrosity. While seeing tornadoes is an extremely exciting and awe inspiring experience, they can be equally devastating to towns and communities and cause fatalities.