We headed down to Gainesville, TX for my first night chase. We left in plenty of time and grabbed a bite to eat in Lone Grove, OK (where a massive tornado tore through on February 10, 2009). As we were eating we noticed a cell near the red river staring to get a little hook. We decided to head down towards that cell and no more than two minutes later a tornado warning was issued for the storm! We immediately headed down to Gainesville and then headed west on Hwy-82 and positioned ourselves to intercept the storm. The storm had a well defined hook echo and had a low level wind shear of 80 Kts. We were sitting on Lindsay, just off Hwy-82, when we saw a power flash! The power flash was still a good ways a way and we decided to head closer to it. The storm was moving in a ENE direction and we positioned ourselves about 1 mile to the south of the storm in Muenster, TX. From here we had a perfect view of the massive rotating wall cloud thanks to the frequent lightning providing back light. This storm was only moving at 25-30 Kts so it was easy to keep up with. We would sit in an area for 5-10 minutes and watch, then we would drive closer to it again and watch.
As we were doing this another storm was popping to the SW of this one that had a well defined hook echo. This storm also acquired a tornado warning and we decided to back track and go and follow this storm since the first one was moving farther and farther away and was beginning to weaken. We got to the SW side of the storm and just watched the massive wall cloud as the lightning lit it up. This storm was moving just as slow as the first one so once again it was easy to follow. We followed it for about an hour and then it began to weaken, so we decided to try and catch back up with the first storm since it was still tor-warned and was beginning to look better and better. However, we had a dilemma. Since this storm was just in front of the other one we needed to get in front of it to be able to see the wall cloud. The only way to do this was to core punch this storm. At the time the hail core was only 0.75″ and we figured that we would go ahead and give it a shot. We were just getting to the outer edge of the core when we got an update saying that the hail had gone up to 3.75″! Luckily the hail core was just to the north of Hwy-82 so we went for the outer edge core punch. As we entered the edge of the core the hail was ~1.25 in and the rain was coming down harder than I have ever seen. I was only driving about 25 mph and I could barely see the road. As we were driving there were several lightning strikes that seemed as if they were only 50 yards from the car! It eventually got so bad to where I could not even see the hood of my car so I was forced to pull over and let the storm pass.
We decided to head back after we were able to see past the hood of my car. Both storms had tornado warnings on them the entirety of the chase but there was only one tornado report. This report was in Muenster, TX and a tornado had supposedly touched down for 30 seconds. The power flash that we saw was from this tornado, but it was a little too far away to see. All in all it was probably the most fun I have had on a chase so far. The wall clouds that we saw were very impressive, but the conditions were apparently not good enough for them to drop more than one tornado for 30 seconds.
What we saw:
Severe Storms – 2
Tor-warned Storms – 2
Tornadoes – 0
