Approaching the business end of a severe warned cell on FM 455 between Montague and Forestburg, Tx.  Look at the wonderful backspread anvil. Note: this anvil later rains in front of the storm and I believe this is part of what contains some of the tornadic threat by ingesting rain cooled air.

In the distance to the northwest you can see the lowered wall cloud.

Notice the laminar look showing the rotation of a supercell.

Close up of the wallcloud.

Wallcloud, stacked laminar clouds, and anvil above.

Zoom on wall.

Here I panned up toward the back of the tower of the supercell and briefly allowed the camera to catch the movement of the tower which was visually rotating cyclonically.

At this point there is a tornado warning out for this cell and the warning indicates that the town of Montague is in it’s path. I am only 3 miles or so southwest of Montague now. I briefly get some hail that is approximately quarter size. So far there is no sign of any other chasers.

Zoom in on the funnel which gets very near the ground

Zoomed even more.

Shot of the now rain wrapped wallcloud (westernmost). You can see another funnel in suspended from the center of the circular wall behind the veil or rain.

Easternmost shot of rain wrapped wall cloud.

The four shots above show just how close the town of Montague came to a tornado. This funnel is probably only a mile or two southwest of town.

The top left picture shows part of the funnel very near ground level. At times it did appear that this funnel cloud could be in contact with the ground behind the rain. Someone should check for a damage path to verify.

I believe you can sort of see the bigger funnel in the center of this photo.

Wow! Look at the laminar shape!  This is after I left FM 455, and headed northeast of Forestburg.  This was probably taken near the intersection of FM 677 and FM 1630.

And the laminar disk begets another funnel.

There are many areas of rotation on this storm which appears on radar to be an elongated E/W line of supercells mostly connected together.  Here a farmer gets a surprise!

Here beneath the rain free base you can see about three lowerings. See the one in the back?

This is the one in the back zoomed in.

Woa! This was rotating and heading for the ground.  It appears to be on or very near the ground. It may briefly be a fairly large tornado; however the rain quickly wraps around and I lose my view as the daylight is also failing.

Here it is again possibly closer to the ground.  It is hard to tell with that darn fence in the way.  It was rotating so the real question is whether it was fully on the ground or not. Click to zoom.

The light is waning and once again you can see the lowered base with a precipitation shaft to the right.  However there does appear to be structure in the cloud above just left of the precip and between the telephone pole.  For awhile it appears to create a hollow tube partially in or near the rain.

Here you can probably see the tube better. Is it a tornado? Possibly a weak one, but not sure. There did seem to be some turbulence and perhaps slight rotation but with the lighting and rain it was hard to tell - another maybe.

Note: I was looking at radar later after dark and the total precip algorithm for this area was indicating 13.80” inches!!! These people needed boats.

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