May 5, 2002: Tx Panhandle Multi-Vortex Tornado

Cinco De Mayo is quickly becoming my favorite holiday. One year after we saw our 1st tornado, we were treated to an awsome tornadic supercell in the eastern Tx panhandle. This storm did not produce a tornado as large as the Happy Tx tornado to our south, but the tornado was still impressive. This was by far our most exciting chase yet. We had a few close calls involving CG's and tornadoes, one of which occured at night on the way to the KOCO satellite truck. It was quite a challenge trying to chase this storm on the poor road network which exsists in the NE Tx panhandle. In order to even get in position on the storm, we had to make a desiscion whether or not to core punch the supercell. We diecided on core punching, despite the fact that the NWS had just issued a tornado warning for out storm. We were greated with golfball hail, lots of CG's, and one hell of a lowering! We made it through in one piece and stopped to take some time lapse of the mesocyclone. The supercell then became somewhat disorganized and headed into an area with no roads. About half an hour to 45 minutes later, we caught back up with it and drove through the back side of the hook. As we pulled alongside the mesocyclone, it became apparent that the rotation was rapidly increasing. We ran into numerous chasers at this point, including Gene Rhoden, Hank Baker, Val Caster, and a number of chasing tours. As we raced along side the mesocyclone a lagre bowl formed under the wall cloud, and a number of small vorticies raced around the edge of circulation. Soon, a rather large cigar chape torando dropped less than 1/2 mile south of the vehicle. The video we shot was incredible. It grew wider and larger in size. We raced ahead of it, dropped south of it's path, and filmed it as it passed less than a couple hundred yards from us. After it passed, we went further on down the road and stopped for some more stills as another short lived tornado formed. RFD began to slam us as the tornado lifted back up into the clouds and rotate out from under the wall cloud. The storm later produced a spectacular lightning show that night, and went on to produce one or two more tornadoes as well, all after dark.

NOTE: I haven't scanned any of the images from this chase yet. I hope to update soon!