4708

April 7, 2008

Northwest Texas

Today I targeted southwest Oklahoma as did many chasers. In the afternoon, a nice cumulus field was observed in parts of western north Texas with nothing in Oklahoma going on at the time. We watched the storm grow from north of the Red River and quickly shot south when it went tornado warned. I approached the storm from the west on 287 after making it to Oklaunion. The storm itself was centered over and to the north of Electra, TX when we approached. Stopping in Harrold, we observed the rapidly rotating meso as it crossed over 287 near Harrold. We decided to exit at Harrold and take 240 directly east into the storm (kinda stupid but it paid off). Here we could still view the rotating base to the southeast before it crossed the road. A tornado was reported here and we could barley see it but there was a dust swirl in the field.

We continued to slowly move east as the meso, and possible rainwrapped tornado, crossed the road front of us. Rain was filling into the back side blocking the view of anything going on and like I said before, I didn't want to go too far and end up being a tornado crossing the road. With time I figured it had crossed the road and I pulled forward and quickly got a view of a tornado in the field to my northeast about a mile away.

The brown debris swirl near the base was what caught my eye and I started filming. As seen in the pictures, rain was coming sideways right into the car as I filmed making the shot difficult. Soon after, the rain became too intense and we could not view the tornado from our location anymore. Moving east and watching back to the north again, we got a clear view of the same tornado dissipating.

He did have a better view from this angle, and better video, but the rain was still entering the car soaking the cameras and obstructing the view. We watched it dissipate then continued east and finally back to 287 down towards Wichita Falls where we shot some structure shots of the storm as it slowly weakened.

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