Weekend Update & Cooke County Survey
On Friday, I honed my target down to Abilene where I intercepted a SVR storm with decent rotation. However, all I got out of it was a few pics of a pretty impressive shelf cloud which I'll post pics of later this evening. I dropped down towards Ballinger after a more isolated cell, but it never got going....but did see some disorganized rotation and some hooking precip cores. I finally stopped long enough to determine that the warm front had popped north of I-20...amazingly. I saw a cell approaching Palo Pinto county along this warm front, and I decided to try and catch it. About the time I discovered 287 was closed south of Baird, I saw that cell starting to rotate.
After an agonizing detour, I got back onto I-20 near Eastland about the time the TOR went out for it. I intercepted it near Springtown and got right into the notch. I stayed with it until Eagle Mountain Lake. All along the way, I kept seeing an awesome barrel shaped updraft with striations and a blocky wall cloud under it. At one point, a couple of lightning flashes illuminated a cone-shaped structure of the base...but no tornado. I barely kept up with it through Denton county where I observed a couple of power flashes. A note here about the Denton County spotters....they were really great. It's still frustrating though to hear reports of light rain, lightning and 30mph winds when a potential tornado is bearing down on Denton....despite repeated pleas by net control to the contrary. Fortunately, this didn't cause a problem. The storm waned and I called a day back home.
I made a big mistake of NOT doing any data analysis for Saturday and caste my blind fate to the Day1 outlooks from the SPC. I made a long trip to Texarkana for nothing. Ugh.
Sunday, I did my own extensive damage survey of the Cooke County storm that hammered that area Friday. I know the NWS-FTW did one Saturday, but I wanted to do one for myself. It was the first serious and detailed survey I've ever done. I traversed the entire damage areas around Gainesville and Lindsay using my GPS to plot all of my observations. I'll detail it all graphically when I have the time, but in general, the pattern was a classic downburst fanning out in a 90 degree pattern. The northern sections were S to N while the southern sections were W to E. Overall, it's pretty obvious that winds reached 100mph in some spots.
The disturbing part of it were the several mobile homes that were either destroyed or severely damaged and even rolled over. People were in these homes at the time resulting in several injuries including broken limbs, some cracked ribs, and serious bruises/contusions. A couple of the victims were gracious enough to tell me their harrowing stories. One gentleman whose home was destroyed just NE of the airport was busy running a tractor cleaning things up...all the while nursing cracked ribs and serious facial contusions. You have to admire and respect that kind of tenacity. He told me that he was watching everything out the back window when he looked down and saw the floor peeling away where the support anchors were attached. He said that the ride was on then. The next thing he knew, he was outside in the field face down. He and his wife are okaythough...as are the other victims of this storm. Thank goodness.
I also met up with Chris McLauglin who helps run the Cooke County EOC. We had a nice discussion about all that went on that day. He got caught in the storm in his car and which was shoved sideways several feet. Yikes. The EOC center actually went down in the storm killing their communications. He took over control from his car while running GR3 on his laptop. :-) He showed me around their barn that had been destoyed. Part of it was anchored with a large telephone pole buried pretty deep into the ground. It was pulled up along with the barn. Everything was tossed about 30-50 feet.
Overall, the damage from this storm was incredible for just downburst winds. Alot of it resembled tornado damage in a way. One thing is for sure which is clearly evident in my pictures....do not ride out storms in a mobile home. It's a very very very very bad idea. Some brick & morter homes right next to the ones destroyed sustained only minor roof damage and a few broken windows.
The pics: http://www.texastailchaser.com/stormsurveys/20060428/pictures/
After an agonizing detour, I got back onto I-20 near Eastland about the time the TOR went out for it. I intercepted it near Springtown and got right into the notch. I stayed with it until Eagle Mountain Lake. All along the way, I kept seeing an awesome barrel shaped updraft with striations and a blocky wall cloud under it. At one point, a couple of lightning flashes illuminated a cone-shaped structure of the base...but no tornado. I barely kept up with it through Denton county where I observed a couple of power flashes. A note here about the Denton County spotters....they were really great. It's still frustrating though to hear reports of light rain, lightning and 30mph winds when a potential tornado is bearing down on Denton....despite repeated pleas by net control to the contrary. Fortunately, this didn't cause a problem. The storm waned and I called a day back home.
I made a big mistake of NOT doing any data analysis for Saturday and caste my blind fate to the Day1 outlooks from the SPC. I made a long trip to Texarkana for nothing. Ugh.
Sunday, I did my own extensive damage survey of the Cooke County storm that hammered that area Friday. I know the NWS-FTW did one Saturday, but I wanted to do one for myself. It was the first serious and detailed survey I've ever done. I traversed the entire damage areas around Gainesville and Lindsay using my GPS to plot all of my observations. I'll detail it all graphically when I have the time, but in general, the pattern was a classic downburst fanning out in a 90 degree pattern. The northern sections were S to N while the southern sections were W to E. Overall, it's pretty obvious that winds reached 100mph in some spots.
The disturbing part of it were the several mobile homes that were either destroyed or severely damaged and even rolled over. People were in these homes at the time resulting in several injuries including broken limbs, some cracked ribs, and serious bruises/contusions. A couple of the victims were gracious enough to tell me their harrowing stories. One gentleman whose home was destroyed just NE of the airport was busy running a tractor cleaning things up...all the while nursing cracked ribs and serious facial contusions. You have to admire and respect that kind of tenacity. He told me that he was watching everything out the back window when he looked down and saw the floor peeling away where the support anchors were attached. He said that the ride was on then. The next thing he knew, he was outside in the field face down. He and his wife are okaythough...as are the other victims of this storm. Thank goodness.
I also met up with Chris McLauglin who helps run the Cooke County EOC. We had a nice discussion about all that went on that day. He got caught in the storm in his car and which was shoved sideways several feet. Yikes. The EOC center actually went down in the storm killing their communications. He took over control from his car while running GR3 on his laptop. :-) He showed me around their barn that had been destoyed. Part of it was anchored with a large telephone pole buried pretty deep into the ground. It was pulled up along with the barn. Everything was tossed about 30-50 feet.
Overall, the damage from this storm was incredible for just downburst winds. Alot of it resembled tornado damage in a way. One thing is for sure which is clearly evident in my pictures....do not ride out storms in a mobile home. It's a very very very very bad idea. Some brick & morter homes right next to the ones destroyed sustained only minor roof damage and a few broken windows.
The pics: http://www.texastailchaser.com/stormsurveys/20060428/pictures/
posted by Steve Miller TX at 5/01/2006 09:23:00 AM
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