Day 9, May 23, 2002

Route: From Superior in southern Nebraska to Pampa in the Texas panhandle

Highlights: Strongly rotating super cell with a tornado warning in the Texas panhandle

Text: Coen Verrijn Stuart

The day starts promising but elevated thunderstorms diminish the tornado threat during the day over the target area in Northern Oklahoma. We head for outflow boundaries of these early storms and end up near a fiercely rotating super cell west of Pampa.

After a good night's sleep we had our daily morning weather briefing around 8 A.M.. We had to go south to reach the region south of the cold front. We are sure the front passed us as a cold northerly wind of 25 miles an hour blew in our faces. We head south but much warmer air and sunshine kept us waiting. South of the front elevated thunderstorms developed which prevented strong daytime heating. This was definitely not good for tornadic storms.

Even though the Storm Prediction Center is skeptic, we decided to turn west at Oklahoma City and head for the clear skies west of the storms in the Texas panhandle. We spotted an outflow boundary which might be the focus point for any storms that form. While heading west we spotted the first towering cumulus, which looked very promising.

The first supercell forms in the extreme northeast of the Texas panhandle and a tornado was spotted briefly. As the storm was too far northwest of our track, we decided to go for another developing storm near Amarillo. We reached the storm around 6.45 P.M. and it had already evolved into a supercell. At first the storm was a bit hesitant but after about 45 minutes we saw rapidly developing rotation in the lowest levels of the storm. At that moment a tornado warning was issued for "our" storm!

We and fellow chasers were exactly in the right spot, but a tornado didn't show up. After about 10 minutes the wall cloud became rain wrapped which meant that a possible tornado was out of sight behind heavy rainfall, which limits visibility. We tried to reach a better position but there were only a few roads in the region which was not of great help. Just after sunset we saw another glimpse of the wall cloud as lightning lit up the clouds. We had to call it a day but after a dinner in Pampa we looked at the distant lightning for some time. The storm was still powering with an inflow of 40 miles an hour but darkness is not a chaser's friend!

Regards,
WeatherBug StormChase Team 2002