Gene Moore and I were exiting Haskell, Tx to the north about the time of the report of the tornado 3NNE of Rule (in Haskell county). This was likely about 5 or so miles from us. I verified this with our GPS log at 1:45. As we were leaving town Gene was joking to me saying "look there's a tornado" LOL. There was lifted, blowing dust in the field. To me it looked like a gustnado, or perhaps one of those very weak rear flank whirlies everyone always sees. Originally I was thinking this was no tornado. However the location aligns very well with the path of the circulation that later led to the now know wedge. So perhaps it is somewhat likely this was a legitimate tornado. Perhaps some other chaser will come up with an image? At the time we ignored this area. We were instead focused to it's northeast on the wrapped up embedded meso that was exibiting rotation as it neared Munday. For awhile we videotaped and photographed this area as we were just within the wrapping rain. Threatnet was showing 138mph. It lowered close to the ground and then occluded. We continued following it through Goree and down hwy 277 always in or near the hook which was almost always rain obscured to varying degrees. We were in 1" hail at times near Bomarton and beyond toward Seymore with much of the road covered with near golfball sized hail, and also a lot extending in the fields while we viewed the meso to our south. We arrived at Seymore to see larger hail nearing baseball. Gene saw one stone while I was on the phone that was 4" or so with spikes as I recall near a home that had lost a lot of siding from the hail. It's a shame we didn't stop to take detail pictures of this, but I was on the phone and another core was approaching, plus we were trying to get into position for a tube. It was very cold in this part of the storm, often with hail fog. I videotaped some of this. At 3:04 at the intersection of FM1790 & FM2180 we observed some strong turbulent motion and various lowerings, but while associated with the meso, they also appeared a bit undercut and cold, outflow dominant. We didn't like the looks of these and the fact that it was going into lower dewpoints colder temps and decided to bail south along the dryline and observe possible tornadic there.

At 4:37 southwest of Graford we observed a large cone shape funnel like lowering for awhile to our wnw associated with the area of rotation that was also becoming part of a bowing shape a cycle or so later on radar. Took some shots of this. Here we also drove in occasional nickel hail and fairly heavy precip. Took shortcut around Mineral Wells as bow was inbound with tornado warning, but it was starting to look like more outflow crap so we continued south and sampled other storms along the way. None of them looked like much including those that Threatnet was showing had about 161mph shear. Later in Lampassas after a brief stop at 7:45 we were treated to billiant CG bolts very nearby in the clear ahead of the precip approaching from the west. At one point the lightning stuck a very large, long wire and illuminated it for awhile. Very cool. Tried to get some video of this, but without much success.

In summary, early on at Haskell we pretty well had picked a perfect spot with great timing as the cell was strenghtening and becoming potentially tornadic. We enjoyed this chase, but overall felt let down and a bit dissipointed as we thought the day had much more tornadic chase potential. It felt good to be out though.

Account of Haskell to Seymore Supercell Chase

Tornado Extreme Storm Chase