April 26, 2015
Statistics
Initial Target
Start
End
Storm Intercepts
Tornadoes
Hail
Wind
Features
Miles
Abilene, TX
Weatherford, TX 10:08 AM 4/26/2015
Glen Rose, TX 10:01 PM 4/26/2015
Lueders, TX; Bluff Dale, TX; Hico, TX
0
0.75"
60 mph
Funnel, Wall Cloud
435
Summary
Dryline chase in central TX. Targeted Abilene for afternoon tornadic supercells. Intercepted tornado warned storm near Lueders noting tight low level circulation overhead before storm fell apart. Retargeted for HP Tail End Charlie near Bluff Dale noting dramatic structure and RFD core. Trailing cell exhibited LP to Classic structure and brief funnel at twilight. Impacted by training supercells at hotel after dark.
Photography courtesy Jennifer Brindley Ubl
Crew and Equipment
Chase partners: Jennifer Brindley Ubl, Payton Ware, and caravanning with TIV crew: Sean Casey, Justin Walker, and Herb Stein. Equipment: Canon 60D, Canon t2i, Canon EFS 10-22, Canon EF 50mm, Sony HDR-xr500v..
Video
Details
This was our first official chase with the TIV crew this season. I had been brought on as a forecaster and navigator for the season and assigned to the TIV's follow/support vehicle. Our goal was to find tornadoes and deploy probes in their paths, filming our encounters for a new Sean Casey IMAX movie. The string of days surrounding this chase warranted bringing the whole team out for the first time. Missing though was Doghouse, the usual support vehicle for the TIV, which was still sitting in Tulsa. Brindley and I would be chasing in the van, which Sean had dubbed "Bubbles".
Justin Walker, the TIV's forecaster/navigator and Herb Stein, TIV's driver, and I discuss the day's plan.
Payton, the support vehicle cameraman, would be riding with us in the van and shooting on a 5k Red Epic camera.
TIV takes the lead, Justin navigating, and Herb driving as we roll out from Weatherford making for the day's target of Abilene.
A clear, dark blue vault extends overhead, but storms are exploding 50 miles away to our north and south. Darkening the distant horizons and sending wisps of cirrus overhead from their anvils.
The TIV carries two stick probes on its tail end, yellow masts with anenometers affixed to the top and instrumention in the bases. Herb Stein readies the data loggers and attaches the propellers to the RM Young anemometers:
We hold our ground wait for a clear winner not wanting to jump the gun and pick the wrong storm. My anxiety builds, however, as we sit under blue skies while two monster supercells churn nearby.
Turning north and east for the intercept, the hook end of the storm comes into view, shrouded by RFD precipitation.
Near Anson, we pick up a northeast highway that parallels the storm and comes in behind a classic, block wall cloud. Our storm and approach is looking great.
The storm cycles and a large bowl lowering starts to take shape. We turn north for the intercept. The massive cloud structure dwarfs the TIV from our perspective.
Sean is ready for action, sporting his helmet and Red camera. The wall cloud is losing definition again though. The storm is not cooperating.
However, as the area where the huge bowl mass had once been now moves overhead, the storm opens up and presents incredibly dramatic structure. The clouds churn with a tight rotation as a vortex twists away in the base. The scene is surreal, mesmerizing, and nearly overhead. Brindley shoots an extreme wide angle capturing us and the vortex, the top of the image looking straight up. The feature spins at tornadic speeds. We anticipate the condensation funnel's descent and our intercept, but it doesn't happen. Within a couple minutes the whirlpool dissperses in the storm's base and the storm moves off to the east as it too began to dissipate. It was a great catch and would make for a dramatic shot in the film though.
We stopped in Albany at a rustic gas station to regroup with a new plan of attack as our storm was falling apart, and tornado reports were streaming in on the Tail End Charlie storm. The new plan was to split up, divide and conquer, and send Bubbles south. We'd be playing a huge game of catch up, but we wanted every chance to get our tornado shots. TIV would stay north on the closer supercells.
Brindley, Payton, and I raced southeast to get on to Tail End Charlie. Coming into the town of Dublin, we found ourselves in the immediate wake of the supercell. Inches of hail had fallen and accumulated on the ground. The roads and landscape turned white like it was winter. Cars were losing traction and even sliding off the road in places. Our forward speed came to a crawl as we negotiated the hail and got stuck behind puttering local traffic.
We manuevered south of the storm and were finally able to get in front of it using the criss crossing roads of the Texas grid. The storm had long since transitioned into a high-precipitation mode, but the structure was still other worldly. A gigantic updraft that looked like it had been carved from a solid mass of stone soared overhead and twisted with barber pole striations. The storm was still tornado warned, but any tornado would most likely be obscured from our view.
The core of the supercell was tracking right up our road, forcing us to drop out of the path to the south. We stayed as long as safely possible, time lapsing the approach, while a long line of chasers came up the highway bailing east to also get out of the way.
We'd have little chance of shooting a tornado while the RFD obscured the base. However, we had no other safe approach. A cone tornado was reported shortly after this, partially visible from within the inflow notch to the north before it dissipated after a couple minutes. The storm had a long history of producing tornadoes, but apparently none of them were very photogenic.
A dry surge under the base cleaned out some of the RFD and a rather classic looking wall cloud was visible to the north. We watched it closely for tornadoes, but spotted none.
A gorgeous LP to Classic type supercell appeared to in the west sky as we moved north of Hico, suspended in clear blue skies with a skinny barber pole updraft tower, mammatus studded anvil, and inflow bands feeding into the base. We stopped a few miles short of it to time lapse and let the storm organize as it came to us.
A wall cloud being molded by RFD started to appear under the base along with the characteristic horeshoe shape. The storm picked up a tornado warning. We moved north slightly to get directly down stream of the feature in anticipation of a close tornado shot.
A mesmerizing blue green RFD core approached, rain bands spiralling around the feature. I had seen similar structure on a number of other storms that produced tornadoes within a couple minutes of exhibiting this structure. With the last of the sunset light, we hoped we were about to get our shot of the day.
The blue green circulation moved overhead, passing just to our north. The center of rotation seemed to become less focused, the structure fading, and we began to lose hope. Then, in the last of the twilight, a rope funnel descended from the base. It was extremely difficult to shoot in the low light, but Brindley was able to snag a good still of it. We watched it snake along in the clouds for a couple minutes before it vanished. It would be the closest thing we'd see to a tornado all day. Down the road we could hear laughter and voices. It was too dark to see anybody, but the laughs were unmistakable. It was Adam Lucio and Ben Holcomb. We called back to them in the darkness, before moving up the around to keep up with the storm. The clouds broke overhead momentarily revealing the moon and moonlit anvil. It was a moment of wonder that you just couldn't properly catch with the camera. Such moments seem to make the chase so much more magical.
Darkness fell and the TIV crew headed to Glen Rose to get a room for the night. There were still tornado warned supercells near us though, so Brindley, Payton, and I decided to stay out hoping to catch a nocturnal tube. We watched scuddy gust fronts from afar, the lightning momentarily illuminating a variety of shapes but no tornadoes that we could see.
It was getting late and folks were getting tired and hungry after a long day so we decided to call it and head into Glen Rose to meet up with the TIV crew.
Conclusion
We didn't get our tornado shot, but what a well rounded chase with a taste of almost every facet of severe weather. With dramatic structure, hail drifts, amazing whirlpool circulations and a funnel, providing for some usable IMAX footage, we counted this chase as a success. The tornadoes that we did miss turned out to be rather lackluster, mostly rain wrapped or brief, small spinups.
Lessons Learned
- Maybe default to the Tail End Charlie storm unless there are a lot of good reasons for picking one further north up the line.
- Try to avoid hail drifts when coming in behind your target storm.
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