6/4 Festival Of Vortices
A pretty crazy chase yesterday. Of ALL the days I left my video cameras at home, I had to pick today. I could have had some really great video. Argh! Saw numerous gustnadoes including some very intense ones. I also believe a couple of "technical" tornadoes occurred as well across Deaf Smith county.
I followed one of those near Dawn, TX and was immediately behind it. Rotation was very tight and pretty intense unlike a typical gustnado. It lasted for a good 5 minutes with several upward motions of dust and vegetative debris. I distinctly noted strongly converging winds at the surface colliding at the vortex's center thanks to the plowed fields. NE winds merging with N and NW winds. There was some agitated rotation above it in the cloud base, so a tornado? There were some large tree limbs downed in Dawn. Later south of Hereford I believe, a very large and intense dust swirl organized and again took on characteristics more of a tornadic circulation complete with agitated rotation just above it.
Since these "tornadoes" occurred along the gust front, one could easily debate the definitions of such vorticies. I've accepted the fact over the years that mother nature doesn't always color within the lines and sometimes blurs across man's arrogant attempts to box her in. I simply refer to these vortices as "hybrids" as I cannot think of another way to define it. Still, it was pretty wild observing them up close and personal!! Very fun chase!! :-)
Later on near Needmore, TX, I encountered true ZERO visibility in blowing dirt (not dust...dirt!). I had no choice but to stop in the middle of the road as I literally could not even see even the end of my hood!! The dirt combined with with some rain to coat my driver side windows with a thick layer of west Texas red dirt. I would try to crawl along only to catch a brief glimpse that I was nearly off the road in the grass on one side or the other of the narrow FM road. I finally found a little side road to pull over and ride it out so as not to get hit by any idiot driver. Finally, the core arrived and dumped some intense rain and nickle hail to settle the blowing dirt and clean my windows. For about 3 minutes, my driver's side window was a miniature mudslide. :-)
Pics will be forthcoming. I have to hit the road to work and wait for today's setup to materialize. Latest model data doesn't have me too excited for today around the Panhandle region. But, I will have my video cameras just in case....which will ensure nothing worth videoing will occur today. LOL!! Unfortunately, the dry air problem we've experienced most of the season west of the I-35 corridor and in particular W TX and the Panhandles is going to be a real pain for awhile. The GFS wants to keep this region scoured out of any appreciable surface moisture for anything within my chase range for the next week. I'm not so sure that the GFS is correct though. We shall see. I'd love to be heading to NE CO today. I'll have to settle for the table scraps on the floor closer to home.
Oh and for those wondering about my lack of streaming video, I have resolved some technical issues and should be be back doing that again today.
I followed one of those near Dawn, TX and was immediately behind it. Rotation was very tight and pretty intense unlike a typical gustnado. It lasted for a good 5 minutes with several upward motions of dust and vegetative debris. I distinctly noted strongly converging winds at the surface colliding at the vortex's center thanks to the plowed fields. NE winds merging with N and NW winds. There was some agitated rotation above it in the cloud base, so a tornado? There were some large tree limbs downed in Dawn. Later south of Hereford I believe, a very large and intense dust swirl organized and again took on characteristics more of a tornadic circulation complete with agitated rotation just above it.
Since these "tornadoes" occurred along the gust front, one could easily debate the definitions of such vorticies. I've accepted the fact over the years that mother nature doesn't always color within the lines and sometimes blurs across man's arrogant attempts to box her in. I simply refer to these vortices as "hybrids" as I cannot think of another way to define it. Still, it was pretty wild observing them up close and personal!! Very fun chase!! :-)
Later on near Needmore, TX, I encountered true ZERO visibility in blowing dirt (not dust...dirt!). I had no choice but to stop in the middle of the road as I literally could not even see even the end of my hood!! The dirt combined with with some rain to coat my driver side windows with a thick layer of west Texas red dirt. I would try to crawl along only to catch a brief glimpse that I was nearly off the road in the grass on one side or the other of the narrow FM road. I finally found a little side road to pull over and ride it out so as not to get hit by any idiot driver. Finally, the core arrived and dumped some intense rain and nickle hail to settle the blowing dirt and clean my windows. For about 3 minutes, my driver's side window was a miniature mudslide. :-)
Pics will be forthcoming. I have to hit the road to work and wait for today's setup to materialize. Latest model data doesn't have me too excited for today around the Panhandle region. But, I will have my video cameras just in case....which will ensure nothing worth videoing will occur today. LOL!! Unfortunately, the dry air problem we've experienced most of the season west of the I-35 corridor and in particular W TX and the Panhandles is going to be a real pain for awhile. The GFS wants to keep this region scoured out of any appreciable surface moisture for anything within my chase range for the next week. I'm not so sure that the GFS is correct though. We shall see. I'd love to be heading to NE CO today. I'll have to settle for the table scraps on the floor closer to home.
Oh and for those wondering about my lack of streaming video, I have resolved some technical issues and should be be back doing that again today.
posted by Steve Miller TX at 6/05/2009 07:03:00 AM
1 Comments:
Call them what they are. You sound right on. Many people who do not see many tornadoes are jealous of you seeing an actual tornado and will try to cut you down. If you are seeing rotation and/or a funnel at cloud base and the dirt/debris cloud is spinning and being pulled up to the cloud base, that is a tornado.
Mark Lingl
Weather Gods Inc.
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