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Tornado - May 18, 2010

Dumas, Texas

Severe weather in the Texas Panhandle

 

May 18 - Dumas, Texas
TORNADO !! Today was an awesome day. A moderate risk was issued for parts of the Texas Panhandle and in mid afternoon a single storm fired up near Dalhart. We chased it as it quickly grew into a massive supercell storm that was slowly drifting northeast. We were sitting, watching it as it produced a well defined but distant, slender cone shaped tornado that lasted a few minutes before it dissipated
 
Moving on, the storm took on the most amazing shape and had the best looking structure I've seen in a long time. It looked like an alien ship coming down to land. The whole storm was rotating and was wrapped up with heavy rain and huge hail.
 
As we entered the town of Stinnet, the tornado sirens were blaring and we spotted twin funnel clouds snaking down from the sky just north of town. I don't know if either of them touched down or not. There were other tornadoes hidden in the rain, but the road network in that part of Texas is terrible and there was no safe way to get close.
 
We capped off a great day with a trip to the Big Texan steak ranch in Amarillo for a celebratory steak dinner.
 
I expect more action tomorrow, so it might be another few days before I get photos posted up on the blog. It's late now and I'm exhausted so off to bed I go.

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