Reports & Pictures Chase Day 1

[Paul Sherman]

Absolutely great chase day for our first day. We started in DFW & I had a prelimary chase target of between Sulphur Springs and Mount Pleasant in NE Texas. This would put us firmly in the warm sector and in the best area for rotating storms. At 6pm things were not looking great but a few cells fired south of us near Tyler and a massive hailstorm near Dallas. I chose to go for the cell to our SSW Which was in the much better environment for Tornadoes, on route to the storm a Tornado watch was issued and our now supercell was strengthening. Upon getting to Gilmore we went west to intercept the NE Moving Storm about 15 miles further down Highway 49. Then took a SW Option to run along the SE Quadrant of the Storm. The terrain was shocking with Pine Trees and few views, so we needed a bit of luck. I got to a crossroads and blasted back North and finally a better view to our South west came. The Supercell now did a hard right turn throwing its forward flank behind us and leaving us perfectly in the Hook for about 20 minutes. We started to take sporadic Golfball sized hail and an amazing Bears Cage rained down Cg Bolts on the road in front of us. At this time the rotation was becoming crazy with a solid wall cloud about 2 miles to our West. Numerous Funnel clouds came down and rapid rising motion behind a row of trees looked like a Multi Vortex was on the ground although we could not confirm at the time, wrapping rain curtains were moving from SW To NE At high speed. I positioned us further South and again rapid rotation was literally on the road in front of us. By now darkness was starting to fall so Lightning became the our main goal.....or so we thought. Upon racing back east and then North we came along highway 281 and had a close shave with the Hughes Springs Tornado which crossed our road about 300 yds in front of us bending trees over and sending horizontal rain across the road, we fled south and got hit by the RFD, The tornado continued east and hit Hughes Springs and Dangerfield. We then blasted up the west side of the cell with the Tornado to our east and upon entering Pittsburg we got attacked by another New Cell which started raining down Cg's on us, getting stuck at Traffic lights was not a good option Lol. We then moved east to stay at Texarkana for the night with some very happy people.

- Classic Supercell

- Mesocyclone

- Tightening Up

- Lovely

- Rotating Supercell

We will also post some of the Video footage of the rotating Supercell which Jo Filmed later on.

Paul S

[multi cellular thunderstorm]

Here's a couple of pics from me, great start to the tour...

Hopefully more of that tomorrow.

[ANYWEATHER]

Hi Folks ,glad you had a great first day. Great Pics too. Looks as though you will be chasing in the same area today, perhaps to the NorthEast of Dallas seems to be the greatest Tornado threat of 5%...Best Wishes for later.

[D-J-V]

Morning Guys,

Looks like you had a great first day, looking forward to seeing the vid!! I am not jealous at all...........

Will be watching the stream later on so look forward to seeing more of the same!!

Just had a quick look at GRL3 and a cell is about to go straight through DFW baseball size hail reported!!!!

Edited May 1, 2011 by Dave Vicary

[chionomaniac]

What a fantastic start to tour 1. Well done Paul - let's hope tour 2 get's off to a flyer too!

[SteveB]

Great start guy's, you must be a happy bunch.

[John Hanrahan]

Tornado chase day 1. Mr Sherman you are really spoiling us. Well done all.

[Nick F]

Sounds like an action-packed first chase day! Look forward to the video footage.

Another SLIGHT risk later today with 5% risk of tornadoes in a similar areas of NE Texas up through Arkansas.

[Ben Passmore]

Hey guys, glad to hear you've had a great start to tour 1. Keep these awesome pics coming please!!

[Guest]

Great pictures!

[Cookie]

nice start to tour 1

[Stuart]

Great pictures and great start of the Tour 1

[pottyprof]

What a fantastic start to the NW chase season.

Looking forward to the video peeps..

[Arron]

Lovely Jubbly!

[Kris T]

Excellent pictures guys! You couldn't have asked for a better start to Tour 1!!

[Paul]

Something new we're doing this year is recording the stream on our server, so we can go back and pick out some highlights from it.

I haven't had the chance to edit this video, or to go through the rest of the stream from last night but thought it would be a decent taster as this 4 minute clip has some good lightning strikes within it. As the tour goes on we'll start picking out highlights and trying to put a 'highlights reel' from the stream online most days.

[AudMun]

You forget how good this is. Yesterday reminded me. It's nice to be back!

SAM

[Paul]

Jo's highlights from yesterday

[Arron]

Awesome stuff! Loving the rotation :o

[Ben Passmore]

Great camera work there Jo.

[Paul]

Video Highlights page now online with some additional video from yesterday (apologies for the quality btw, have asked the team to upload higher quality files from here on in)

http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=storm-chase-highlights;sess=

[Supacell]

What a great start to the tour. I'd love to be there myself but until i can afford it then reading and watching on here is a good substitute. Good luck for the remainder of the tour.

[ZONE 51]

great stuff!!

[John Hanrahan]

Wish I was there!

[Paul]

Some more video from the first chase day: