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Share Article May 27 - Tornadoes; Everything's Bigger in Texas!
Dayna Vettese Thursday, May 28, 2015 at 1:32 AM Hello from Perryton, TX!
What a day! When we woke up this morning we did not anticipate multiple tornadoes to be in our near future... New photos added here.
We started off in Wichita Falls, TX this morning and decided to target Shamrock, TX then make our way north as storms began to initiate. After stopped in Shamrock, TX, we decided to head a little out of the town to get a better vantage point. Once out of the town we watched a cumulus cloud go from "slightly agitate" to full blown towering and anvil-ing cumulus.
Turbulent skies near Canadian, TX (May 27).It was starting to show some reflectivity on radar northwest of Canadian, TX (ironically). We drove to Canadian, TX and continued toward the storm on highway 83. It was already very mature and developing a wall cloud. We pulled up and watched. A very impressive wall cloud formed and a funnel emerged. The long, skinny funnel reached about half way down then retreated. The storm did this about three to four times never completely reaching the ground.
The storm started to take on characteristics of it dying (outflow) but it still looked interesting so we kept with it. It was barely moving which was great for us. We decided to reposition to get a better position on the storm. We headed back toward Canadian, TX then turned north on highway 60 and pulled over. It was certainly getting its act together again.
It started to pour so we sat in the vehicle for a bit then noticed a massive cone-shaped funnel forming. The rain cleared and a massive tornado touched down. It started as a large cone then evolved to a wide stove pipe. It became very wide but was not exactly a wedge. Again, the storm wasn't moving so we had a great position and just sat and watched. Eventually it began to rope out and dissipate.
The storm then got even more interesting. It developed three separate wall clouds! We had no idea which one would do something... After watching for a while we decided to move south to get a better view out of the rain since it had started to rain again.
South of Canadian, TX we came to a ranch type business. Pulling off the road there we had a great view over the valley and of the multiple wall clouds associated with this storm. And again, it was barely moving! The motion in the storm was amazing to watch. It formed several more wall clouds and put down at least two more brief tornadoes and a couple of more funnels.
Once the "tornado" show was over, we headed back into Canadian, TX and found shelter to ride out the core. It had mostly dissipated so we just got a lot (a lot!!!) of rain and lightning. It was then we saw news of injuries at a gas drilling plant outside of town that was hit by the tornado. We haven't heard anymore news other than that.
After dinner at The Cattle Exchange in town (soooo good!) we headed to our hotel in Perryton, TX. While venturing up the 83 we came across flooding. We couldn't make it across the water and they were closing the road so we had to take the long way around (a 30 minute drive became 1 hour). We did stop to do some lightning photography.
Our trip is coming to a close with a couple of more chase days left. Tomorrow still holds potential so we will narrow down a target in the morning.
The Storm Prediction Center's thunderstorm risk for tomorrow (Thursday).