Gene Moore, David Douglas, and I observe this new tornado with fresh ground rotation near Fieldton

We race to keep us as this storm is moving 45+ mph away from us to the NE.

Condesation funnel gets a bit fatter at top.

Finally getting fairly close to the area of rotation...somewhere along the way here we are hit by strong RFD spinup which briefly causes the rear end of the vehicle to fish tail a bit.

Here we come to downed power poles and electric lines crossing the road. Fortunately all power is cut off as we drive over many of the wires.

Some minor debris across the road here as our tornado in the distance crosses the corner near Olton and Halfway where it damages a few homes lifting the roof off of one brick home, and blowing out windows, etc.

Here as the now large tornado moves off it begins to take on a minor wedge shape.

This tornado is really getting after it here. It almost appears as though there is another tornadic rotation on the ground to the right of the tornado. I’m not sure what this is.

I believe here it is somewhere near Hilburn.

The following sequence of pictures is northeast of Hilburn where the tornado takes on an elephant trunk shape and gracefully meanders across the landscape. It eventually dissiplates somewhere between Hilburn and Tulia.

Probably one of my favorite shots of the day showing the debris cloud well, and pretty blue sky just behind the destructive tornado.

Driving along east on Ranch 145 we are surpised to see this large tornado in progress directly to our north in the direction of Tulia. This appears to be a massive wedge tornado near or just west of Tulia, Tx.

Later based on time, and other pictoral evidence we believe this could be the giant wallcloud of the Tulia tornado. Hard to say for sure. It may be the tornado was just a huge ground hugging meso / wallcloud and it had small ‘finger like’ tornadic tendrils extending to the ground.

Another surprise for this day / night. After having our path blocked by a muddy road, and a train blocking an interstate entrance, and driving in the dark through large hail and a partially flooded roadway under torrential rain near Happy a supercell passes over us and on it’s trailing edge we see this tornado in the darkness. I had to play with this shot in order to get it to be viewable. If you look closely you can see the end of the cone extend a bit further on to the ground to the lower right of the cone. Gene got a much better shot with his camcorder - as this tornado is firmly planted east of Happy. We observe this tornado from about 8:57pm CDT to 9:10pm. What an exciting chase this has been!

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