I started the chase late - leaving Austin around 12 noon. My original target was between Abilene and Childress. I was very interested in the storm in Haskell county or the one further north in Benjamin. However my lateness precluded arrival in time for the Haskell country storm. Instead I intercepted the same cell just to the east in Throckmorton county NW of Woodson. (Above) Northwest of Woodson - the precipitation core of this tornado warned cell expands eastward.

(Above) Trailing behind the core I found this wallcloud. However I didn’t see very much rotation. After this cell moved east and lost it’s structure I once again considered going further north (closer to my original forecast target area) of Knox county.  There was an apparent supercell there which was showing rotation on radar, however I was concerned with the storms such as the one I was on being SE of the Knox storm and cutting off it’s warm inflow. I figured this would potentially be death to the cell so instead elected to travel further south toward other tornado warned cells developing  and see if I could pick up something better.

I ended up racing the hail core from the storm near De Leon in an attempt to get in front of the core, and into position on the SE side to see what this large cell had to offer.  I pulled that off and found the road to Dublin, Tx (Erath county) - hwy 6. The shot above is Hwy 6 headed NW toward the large HP Supercell that minutes earlier had prompted reports of > baseball hail and 70mph wind near the town of De Leon in Comanche county.

Further along the road and approaching the town of Dublin I see what appears to be a lowering and potential wall cloud; however I didn’t get close quick enough to see what was really going on underneath, or to determine it’s motion.

Another shot closer to Dublin - showing the darkening core.

This shot facing north just shows how dark this storm got. This is one of the darkest rain cores I remember seeing in quite a while.

Entering the south end of Dublin I notice this road going behind the school and hypothesize that perhaps the view is better behind the school if the road goes there.

A shot of the Dublin school. I believe it was the High School.

Yep. The road goes behind the school and does offer a view.  Strangely, minutes after pulling up here to observe the storm other chasers have the same idea and begin pulling up behind me.  They are chasers Brian Stertz, and Jeff Piotrowski in Jeff’s Avalanche, and in the other vehicle David Gold. We get out and talk about the storm.  Jeff is very excited and animated about describing the rotating bowl west of town.  Perhaps that is the same wall I photographed from a distance.  Also - I run into David Gold again.  I believe I have encountered him out in the field practically more than any other chaser.  Today I guess we all had the same idea.

This is a shot later in the day of the backside of the second severe supercell to form southwest of Stephenville and move towards it like the storm earlier in the day. It was getting dark so rather than chase it east I headed home. Later there are reports as the two supercells moved east a county or so merging into a bow configuration and producing very high straight line winds in Johnson county southwest of Ft Worth. Numerous mobile homes were damaged and blown away.

© All images on this site Copyright  Bill Tabor unless otherwise noted