Great Plains Storm Chase 08

Day 8:



Half way there! This can be good and bad.

....We headed out of Gainesville, TX around 11:00 and went through the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Not exactly sure where our destination would be but we were hoping to intercept some storms in South Central Texas. We did just that. Once we got out of the vans for a photo opportunity of a nicely structured super cell with a wall cloud... a funnel popped out of it directly over our heads. Mike Brown realized that we were too close and issued us all back in the vans, so we could get to a better location. This occurred just outside of Brady County, Texas. A tornado was reported about 5 miles outside of Brady County but we never saw the funnel cloud actually touch the ground. We were passed by Doppler on Wheels from Norman, OK. This is a truck with a Doppler Radar on the back that scans into the storm. We were also passed by the T.I.V. ( Tornado Intercept Vehicle) armored car off the hit TV show "Chasers" on the Discovery Channel. On top of that we got some very good pictures of mamatus clouds. This was a very good chase day, even if we didn't see an actual tornado. When we went through Brady, TX we saw storm damage. There were trees and limbs down in the road along with toppled fences and signs. It looked as though they were hit by the rear flank downdraft or straight line winds coming from the outflow off of the storm. We pulled into Brookwood, TX and called it a night.

~Leah Dailey

X-Ray