Chased with Rocky and Chris Novy today. Hopes were not high, but we did manage to be at the right place at the right time. One cell formed ahead of the squall line near Hobart. It moved north towards us and merged with the line. As it did this, it produced a funnel cloud that lasted about a minute and a half. It reached about half way down at the most. It had a nice double helix shape at one point. There was also quite a bit of CGs with the line and some very small hail. After the tornado, the line bowed out on top of us as we tried to go east to get ahead of it. by the time we got out of the rain, it was dark.

Watched two fantastic supercells at one time. One of them went on to produce a tornado SW of Hill CIty. After that, we went to Hays and saw a tornado warned storm with lots of lightning. The police drove around anouncing "Tornado warning. Seek shelter now." We expected large hail, but all we got was high winds with small hail. It took a while to check into the hotel sice they staff and residents were all taking shelter in the basement of the McDonnalds next door.

This was the first chase day of Tour#2. We watched an outflow dominant storm near Perryton, TX.

We traveled to NE New Mexico to watch some storms. Our only real hope wa some lightning later in the evening. We visited the Capulan VOlcano which offered a fantastic view in all directions. Wen we came back down, the clouds engulfed the volcano.

No storms today, so we went sight seeing. We went to Monument Rocks in KS. SOmebody had climbed up to the top and was jumping around with no fear. Then when he tried to get down, he froze up and we had to help him get down.

Back down to Colorado. We got on a tornado warned storm and stayed ahead of it to around Last Chance. It had some nice structure and lightning, but if there was a tornado in it, it would have been rain-wrapped from our vantage point.

Today was a long drive. We made it up to Montana. We saw two nice supercells NW of Billings. They eventually blobbed out and got ahead of us.

We visited Tulia, TX where a tornado hit on March 21. Most of the town has been cleaned up already, but there are still clear signs of the tornado damage. After that, we saw Cadilac Ranch in Amarillo.

Today was a travel day. Target Lubbock. We took pictures of a windmill farm on the way. As we approached LBB, there was a low topped cell to the NE. We detoured over to get a closer look. It did look nice, but there was not much in the way of visible rotation.

We watched a cell aproach us in Sonora, TX until it died, then we went south to the Mexican border and watched a storm from across the border. Radar was down so there was no coverage that reached it, but based on the satellite picture and lightning network, it was impressive. Then the squall line caught up and merged with it near Del Rio.

We watched a squall line with an advancing outflow boundry ahead of it from south of Odessa, TX to Abalene, TX

This is the second day of tour#1. We only had hopes of some storms firing after dark near Midland, TX. We mad it to Big Springs when as watched data. A cell fired to our SW and we went for it, but it soon died off. We came back to Big Springs and had dinner and got our hotel rooms. By this time our expected storms fired up. We went a little out of town to find a viewing position for the lightning. It did not dissapoint us.

I chased today with Rocky Raschovich, Matt Crowther, Mike Thiess, and my wife, Lori and dog, Harley. We started in Woodward, OK. storms started very early in Oklahoma. Our only hope of seeing something good was farther north in KS. We saw hints that the dry-line could light up, so we went there. We witnessed a few storms along the dry-line, but were concerned that they were lining out too fast. We went to the tail-end-charlie and it organized rapidly to produce a fantastic looking storm with tornado under it. The tornado touched down several times.

I Chased today with Rocky Raschovich, Matt Crowther, Mike Thiess, and my wife, Lori and dog, Harley. We had high hopes for today, but things just didn't come together right. We did manage to see an LP supercell west of Pampa, TX.

Mike Thiess and I went out to the Texas Panhandle. We watched the first cell from near Wildorado, TX. It had a nice appearance to it, but was moving north and our road options made it impossible to keep up with. A second cell developed to our SW and road options were good. We dropped south to get a view of it. It had nice structure, but something was missing as it didn't get too well organized. We kept up to it back up to Wildorado. Another cell was more isolated and to our south. We dropped down to get in position for it near Tulia. It beat up to the town. We were just a few miles north of Tulia when we heard over the ham radio that Tulia was being hit had by a tornado. We desperately wanted to see it and get to our next east road option that we punched through the core with some baseball size hail. The windshield didn't make it intact. Just as we emerged out of the core, we saw the wall cloud exiting the town. It still had a view weak vortices spinning out of it at the time. As we tried to get to our east road, we ran into power lines that were down. We had to backtrack through town and found where the tornado had done quite a bit of damage, making it impassible.

I chased with Rocky Rascovich, Matt Biddle, and Mark McGowan. We traveled to NC Texas where se saw some embedded storms and lots of rain. On the way back, we were treated to a nice sunset.

I chased with Rocky Rascovich, Matt Starkey, and Mark McGowan. Our target was the Texas Panhandle. We ended up sitting in Conway. Soon, cells started to fire near Plainview, so we dropped south to Silverton. Just as we got there, a tornado formed south of Silverton. I called the Lubbock weather service office to report the tornado as it aproached Silverton. Luckily it just missed that town to the west. We eventually had to head east then north to stay up with the storm. Another storm took over just to the south of that storm. We watched as it produced a very photogenic tornado. After it dissipated, we tried to get north to McLean, but it got too dark and the storm was too dangerous to get a good view.

First day of Spring. I went out with Casey Crosbie to the Texas Panhandle in search of some photogenic storms. A cell formed well behind the dryline south of Amarillo. We had hoped that it would move east and cross the dryline. It had a lot of verga, but not much rain with it. After dark, another cell formed south of that one and provided us with a great lightning display.

Today we had high hopes for severe storms, but the confidence was not high in having storms before sunset. The risk was worth taking given that if storms did fire, they might produce tornadoes. In the very least, we expected a good lighting show after dark. Our target was Elk City, then points south from there. We continued on to Erick where we saw the first blips showing up on radar in the Texas Panhandle. We continued on to Shamrock where we got one more radar update. Storms were moving toward the NNE. We continued on to McLean, TX to get in the path of a storm. There we watched the storm as it developed a nice base, but it moved on north of us very fast. Another storm followed behind it. It looked good for a little while, then it started to look disorganized. We almost left it to get in position for another storm farther east. As we started to move, I noticed some very localized rotation. We watched this as it got better organized and finally formed a tornado. We called the report in and videotaped the entire life cycle of the tornado.
Video can be seen here.

We missed out on the brunt of the storm here in Shawnee, OK. Precip started out all freezing rain followed by a lot of sleet. We had a brief period of snow and it was topped off with a little more freezing rain.