Reports & Pictures Chase Day 19

[Paul Sherman]

New Thread for Steves Report and Pictures

We chose this as a Travel Day for hopefully a Big Tornado Day Tomorrow.

Paul S

**Over to you Steve**

[stevestorms]

Thanks Paul, well the day started, with a drive down from Lawton all the way down to Aberlene and the i20, once there we wanted to drive out from under the junk and get into some clear air, Baron showed that a blast east should see it clear near Sweerwater to Colorado City, so we made the later found somet to eat fueled the car and found Wifi this was around 3pm it was around 90f outside winds from the SE it was looking grim I really wanted to believe that somet would pop, we knew we had to head north so around 1800 we headed on a route to take us nearer the dryline and North to Lubbock and Amarillo.

On the way to Lamesa i spotted Towers somewhere towards Seminole so we gave chase, the cell kept splittiting and changing focus but once we got onto it just off Lamesa tx we found that the whole base was rain free on our road with heavy precip to our north so we drove right under it and onto the SE side to the rear of the core where we found our prize a roating meso with wall cloud,it was deadly quite only to be broken with loud deep long thunder Matin and I with one chaser tour group watched as it tried real hard to put a Tornado down Funnels out of the base but just couldnt make that final step the whole thing looked almost staionary! but it drifted ever so slowly NW to a point where we needed to move to see it do its last Dance , RIGHT NOW IT GETS INTERESTING <_< we only had to make a mile north to turn west and run along the SE side of the cell again the only prob was the sky was green and it was very very green in front but it was such a short distance we thought we could make it ---NOPE :o we got to the junction and was getting Munched!!!! a farm to my left had some large buildings we couldnt really see them well but we did a bit of rallying in the jeep at speed diving under some grain hoppers, the hail was about 1" maybe more but it just kept coming we sat and we sat the car was still taking hits but I was glad we wasnt exposed on the road, after a very long 30 mins or so it stopped!! now thats a long time to be under attack we were gona leave and pulled out top the road and something told me to go and hide again we dived under the hoppers only to get a second round but this was getting very windy and the hail was getting bigger I see a space in a large tin cow shed where 2 other cars and ducked and i went for it flying out from under the hoppers we drove straight into a drainage ditch :wub: but the jeep just bounced straight out and we shot into the shed for complete cover as the larger now 2" started to gun the area, it was so loud we had to shout in each others faces to get heard this Supercell was stationary historically in this part of the Alley they are well known to be very slow or stop and this one had stopped we were trapped under a staionary supercell just west of Lamesa we waited and waited tons and tons of car wrecking ice slamming down on us very heavy rain strong winds and loads of lightning we lost Baron so we had no eyes but one of the blokes under cover managed to get a radar download on his phone I was fairly confident that as it was sationary and it had to choke its self off from the air and sure enough EVENTUALLY thats what happened and we were free men again to do our 300 mile drive to the Big T WOW!! I have never in 9 years of USA chases had that happen :lol:

Has anyone got satelite images of it ??

Edited May 15, 2009 by stevestorms

[nsrobins]

Glad it was worth the effort, Steve. I didn't think initiation would be that far west to be honest but it sounds like it was a lone wolf so had plenty of time to just sit there and deliver.

Great account by the way - I can almost feel the suspension crunch as you railroaded that ditch!

Edited May 15, 2009 by nsrobins

[stevestorms]

LOL it was INSANE !!! it was stationary for around 90 mins and we were trapped along with others oh btw there was much bigger hail we could here it on the roof of cow shed but the pic was all we could safely get that flew into our cover :-)

Edited May 15, 2009 by stevestorms

[NL]

Quite an account there Steve considering it looked like you were on a 'no-go, i saved an

earlier sat image image which showed very little happening.

Ive just retrieved this from the sat archives as i went to bed thinking it was 'game postponed'!!