Simon Brewer documented a
tornado at ~5:55 pm on the southwest side of Fort Worth, TX. Click on
the pic above to view quick video clip...
Target
was Olney, TX: left Norman at 9am sat in Olney for a while, saw storm
develop in Haskell County, but decided to let it go, because I thought
the it would either cross the warm front quickly or get undercut by
the pacific front; wrong, so I opted to intercep any new storm development
near Throckmorton. Then the Haskell Co. Storm gets tornado warned, so
I book it to Seymour; watched insane rotation and possibly got a peak
at the tornado as wet RFD plowed the road in front of me. After storm
got out of the way I stopped and took some pics of 2+inch hail on the
ground in Seymour. Drove ESE to hit developing storms, which formed
a line and pretty much gave up on the day south of Mineral Wells.
Then I
got very, very, very lucky: I decided to attempt to get ahead of the
monster squall-line and took I-20 east instead of just heading north
on state routes, which would have been quicker. So I accidently miss
my exit for I-30 and end up stuck on I-20, but when I was driving onto
the I-820 loop onramp from I-20 and witnessed this:
The arc
cloud from the gust front in my location went from 'slanted' to 'vertical'
with a very convective appearence instead of a 'whale's mouth'. Also,
the scud along the leading edge of the gust front dissapeared and the
gust front developed into a relatively flat base at that location. As
I was driving under the gust front and onto the onramp for I-820 I witnessed
the formation of a gustnado (or so I thought) to my south out my passenger
window. It was very impressive and I almost didn't stop, but I wanted
to get some more pics for the day so I pulled over on the shoulder of
the ramp (nobody was behind me).
I slowly
pulled out the video camera, because the gustnado situation didn't seem
imminent, but as the gustnado moved into view of my front windshield
I could see an obvious 'in-my-face bowl funnel' rapidly rotating above
the debris cloud!!! The camera was still not on, but I had to get out
of the car and see it with my own eyes to confirm it was actually a
tornado and not just a look-alike-gustnado, but surely enough it was
a bowl funnel all by itself with a nice debris cloud!!! I got the camera
on just as I was getting back in the car and rain was now starting to
pound me, because the base/gustfront was moving away from me and I was
then behind it again. I saw large debris being lofted into the air as
the tornado passed over some buildings, and I had my friend Tom on speaker
phone and yelled for him to report it to the NWS in Ft. Worth. That
was the last call I could make from my cell until I left the DFW area
that evening due to cell lines being tied up all over the city.
I'm irritated
I missed the Seymore tornado in my target region, because I had no intention
of chasing near DFW yesterday, but I got some dumb luck and saw a tornado
in Metro Ft. Worth and apparently I'm one of the few if only person(s)
that saw the tornado. I also got some good rainbow shots.
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