April 21, 2007 - Supercells and Strong Tornadoes near Dumas, TX


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Chase Summary: After spending the night in Amarillo I woke up and took a long look at data and the models. Around noon I decided that the area north of Amarillo looked best for tornadoes, so i headed north towards Dumas. The RUC was consistently showing a bullseye of 0-1 SRH in this area, along with adequate CAPE, although not as much as further south. In my years of chasing I've definitely learned to chase shear and not to worry about the forecasted CAPE too much, as long as it is adequate and forecast to be uncapped. I ended up sitting in Dumas for 2-3 hours waiting for storms to fire off to my west or southwest, and between 5 and 6pm they finally started to. At first I dropped south along 87 to Four Way, and I briefly thought about going after the Hereford storm since it was completely isolated and looked to be a little further east than everything else. I decided to stay put though since everything was moving my way anyways, and the road network to my southwest and north of I-40 was very poor.

Eventually the storm that crossed I-40 near Vega started looking very impressive on radar, so I went west on 354 towards Channing and waited for it. A large wall cloud quickly formed just above the horizon off to my southwest and started rolling towards me. A clear funnel then formed on the southeastern side of the wall and touched down somewhere southeast of Channing. As it raced towards me I repositioned a little to the west and videotaped the formation of a large wedge tornado. It eventually became rainwrapped as it moved north of 354, so I had to backtrack 15 miles or so back to my east to 2202 before heading north again.

Here's a radar and velocity image of the storm sometime around the time it started producing southeast of Channing.

Video - Part 1 (Tornado Video, 2min 17sec, 46.3 MB)

Video - Part 2 (Tornado Video, 4min 52sec, 26.5 MB)

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From 2202 north I filmed the formation of a new tornado off to my west somewhere WSW of Dumas. A few minutes later the wall cloud that formed the wedge came out of the rain and a long beautiful rope appeared. For a short time two tornadoes were then on the ground at once.

Video - Part 3 (Tornado Video, 3min 19sec, 39.0 MB)

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After watching the rope out I went north of Dumas on 287 and observed what appeared to be the left edge of a large rainwrapped tornado off to the NW. This was likely the same tornado that did significant damage to the town of Cactus. By this point I had decided to head east and get in front of the storm to my south, since the current storm was becoming extremely HP making it difficult to see much of anything. The police set up a roadblock on 287 so i had to wait until the original storm cleared Cactus before heading north and then east.

Video - Part 4 (Tornado Video, 59sec, 10.3 MB)

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Eventually I made it to 281 and headed east towards Sunray. I was forced to punch through the northern part of the core as I went through Sunray and eastward, as it turned very dark due to the storm and setting sun. After getting east of Sunray a safe distance I turned around and saw a beautiful meso off to my southwest, and a very long fat beaver's tail feeding into it. Then, as I looked off to my wsw I saw what appeared to be the right edge of a large tornado (maybe a wedge), likely passing just to the east of Sunray; fortunately the town was spared. It had now become very dark, but I could tell that the tornado was becoming rainwrapped and likely occluding. Sure enough, a new wall cloud formed a mile or two NW of my position, and a funnel formed on the west edge of this wall. I never actually saw the condensation reach the ground, but had it been lighter I think there's a good chance I would've seen some debris beneath it. I can't say for sure whether or not it was officially a tornado though, even after closely reviewing the video.

Here's a radar and velocity image of the storm as I watched it move east of Sunray. Note the extremely strong couplet in the velocity scan... This likely confirms that the tornado I saw was very large and strong at times.

Video - Part 5 (Tornado Video, 4min 13sec, 23.8 MB)

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This was a difficult chase due to the fast movement of the storms and the tough road network at times. Fortunately I made some good decisions and was able to position myself to see several tornadoes, and some were very nice. An excellent chase - 2007 has been ridiculously good so far and it's not even May yet! Wow!



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