On May 22, we started a fun Texas Panhandle chase by picking up Allsup’s burritos in Dalhart. Bill Hark joined Alethea Kontis and me for this delicious snack, while Jack Beven somehow missed our stop. Maybe he was avoiding the burritos. Regardless, we all caught up and proceeded to the Littlefield area north of Lubbock.
We watched a storm or storms — it was all pretty messy — and observed the beauty of a train moving over the Plains under a turbulent sky. But this storm wasn’t all we hoped.
A classic sight: A train on the Plains under storms near Littlefield, Texas.
While this tower percolated northwest of Abernathy, Texas, the gears were turning in the atmosphere, poised to create a wild show.
This turned out to be a fateful and fortunate decision, as the next hour would reveal. We were surrounded by storms, each with its own agenda, and the atmosphere was about to lend a hand.
Not only did we have the gorgeous convection to the east; a storm to the west was spitting out dust whirls and then … “Dudes!” A landspout. A nice one. We watched it churn for several minutes.
Jack observed that the storm to the north also had intriguing structure.
To the west, the storm's dust became something more – a nice landspout tornado.
The storm to our north, which had already attracted our attention with its mesocyclonic features, now seemed a likely target. So we headed north about two miles on the same dirt road to observe as these boundaries swept through our position.
A tornado forms under the storm to our north.
The dusty tendrils under the base soon showed signs of rotation. We weren’t sure if we were seeing another landspout or maybe a gustnado, but the spinning dust grew. We were watching a baby tornado!
I tend to give more attention to shooting stills than video these days, but this instance is a good example of why I find filming storms so valuable. When I reviewed the footage, I realized we’d seen a multivortex tornado before I even knew what was happening. Even the dusty tornado that evolved, which from our angle wasn’t immediately obvious, was much more visible on video.
Rain began to pelt us and the wind kicked up, so we decided to reposition. This was another one of those situations where, if we’d been more east than south of the tornado, we would’ve had a better view. We were driving alongside a “dust wedge,” as I jokingly called it — a dusty tornado. It wasn’t particularly strong, but it was impressive!
A frame grab from my rough phone video of the tornado to our north as we headed east. A "dust wedge" – not that strong but wow! Consider this an impressionistic image, because I did some editing to smooth out parts of the blocky pixellated sky.
I was glad I angled my phone out the window as I drove. I was paying attention to the road, and phone video isn’t of the quality I’d like, but the video captures the essence of the beast. My screen shot from the video had blocky pixellation, so I did some editing in Photoshop to try to smooth out the sky. Consider this an impressionistic but accurate depiction of the tornado.
As I saw a smaller funnel emerging from the cloud of dust — what was left of the tornado — I called out on the radio, and we stopped to watch. But we were being pounded by rain, in poor visibility, as the tornado moved south-southwest and died before it got to us. The best part of the show was over, just like that. But what an unexpected thrill!
Here’s a map showing our route. Click on the image to see a larger version.
You can see the National Weather Service’s report on the day here.
We ended the day at the Big Texan in Amarillo, meeting up with chasers Jennifer Mitchell and Jason Foster, to enjoy the traditional post-tornado steak. And the roaming singers played a funny version of “Margaritaville” for us, since most of us came from Florida. If you live in Florida, you can’t escape Margaritaville, even when you’re in Texas.
Click on any image to see a larger version and start a slide show.
And check out our chase update from the next day, in which we talk about this chase.