Chase: April 22^nd 2004 Montague County TX

I left Norman, OK near noon and headed south down IH35 towards Ardmore.  I forget the exact set up of this day, but I remember I was mixed on where I wanted to go. I eventually stopped at the top of the road side park at the Arbuckles in OK (western side) and just sat up there and watched clouds awhile.  It’s nice up there and there is some interesting geology. The views are incredible and I could see the sky in all directions.  The cu was growing but at the time not ready to break the cap. I’ve sat up here before in these same situations.  I continued to analyze satellite, radar, and surface obs, and I began to like the area just southeast of Wichita Falls, TX. I could already see some cloud development in that area so I hurried to make it. I believe I took hwy 82 near Gainesville west.  I then to the south road through Myra to Hardy, to Forestburg toward the new severe warned cell.  I stopped in Forestburg at a “po dunk” generic gas station as the great anvil stretched overhead.  I started to leave and my electronics all shut down.  To say the least this was upsetting cause I had the dash cam setup, the nws radio, notebook, gps, etc all running. I was ready to intercept a likely soon to be tornadic storm, but everything was dead. I quickly opened up the fuses (I carry extras), and looked in the book trying to determine what controls the accessories and cig lighter.  I pulled it out and it was ok.  Darn! I kept playing with it plugging and unplugging, pulled everything out and then shut it all of including the vehicle and back on. I wasn’t so sure the supercell wasn’t about to run me over cause it was getting close. From bright sunshine it was now getting dark.  The contacts for the adapter plug in were very hot. Anyway I don’t know what I did but for some reason it started working again. I was off!

I headed down the road toward the town of Montague via FM 455. I got probably within 3 to 5 miles southeast of town and watched the rainfree base and wallcloud. I sat there videotaping and didn’t see any other chasers or spotters for at least 30 minutes after I had been here. Then the tornado warning hit.  It said the tornadic portion was headed for Montague, and I had a birds eye view. The terrain was a bit hilly and somewhat wooded too. At one point I was parked next to a local resident’s home and he came out wondering where he should go. The storm started dropping golf ball sized hail on us – a few here and there.  I told him it was supposed to be heading for Montague so he was probably ok, but if it started moving this way he should probably drive southeast toward Forestburg to get out of the path. I backed up to get out of the hail, and got a new position.  They issued a new warning that said it was now headed for Forestburg.

The storm was really pretty and I took a lot of pictures of it.  I observed the wallcloud and at one point nearing Montague and probably just a mile or two southwest of town a funnel was reaching for the ground in the dark precipitation.  It was very close at times, and could have been in contact at one point or two. There also seemed to be a larger area of rotation west of this one centered in the likely meso area, and the RFD came in and rain curtains obscured most of this view. In photos I can make out a large funnel in the center of the curtain extending about ½ way down to ground. 

This continued for awhile and the storm weakened and lost some of its structure. I moved further toward Forestburg and at this point there were numbers of other chasers and fire dept spotter type vehicles parked on the side of the road with their cameras and tripods out.  It had been nice to have the storm to myself for so long.  The storm had lost its strong look in this area so I thought about getting in front of the development just east of Montague as it moved east. I headed back through Forestburg and on up to Hardy.  I think I was headed for Muenster. However I realized the storm was stronger due west of me so I turned around and I believe I ended up stopping off of FM 1630 just west of it’s intersection with FM 373 by about 3 miles.  From this location I shot video and still (on my website) of a saucer shaped based with multiple lowerings and funnels extending to the area west. Radar showed that this storm had developed a number of inflow areas, which were reading meso and tvs on radar.  I was getting wind noise in my VX2000 so I grabbed a dirty sock and put over it – LOL! This helped immensely. At one point here very near and just to my west-northwest a strong area of rotation lowered and appeared to be on the ground it then very quickly got wrapped in rain. This was certainly a probable tornado as the pictures and video clearly indicates. I think it likely there may also have been a tornado in the rural area southwest of Montague county also, but I didn’t clearly see anything on the ground with debris.

This was a rewarding chase with some spectacular scenery.

Tornado Extreme Storm Chase