Background:

Chase:

So I hopped in the truck and was gone on a 3 state crossing to get to Childress. 

I took Highway 40 to the Ok Border and took the turnpike to cross into Oklahoma City. As speed limits were 75 MPH, it took no time to get past the city and continue along Highway 40 to the TX/OK border.

About 5 pm, storms started firing up and I decided to film them but continue to head east. I got some nice mammatus shots from the cell to the south but the cell to the north had a nice lowering just north of interstate 40 and 238. It looked like it may have some rotation to it but the cells to the south were really peaking my gut so I left and headed south along highway 20 just past Erick OK.

As I was north of McKnight, reports of golf ball to softball size hail were coming out of the Childress storm as it was hardly moving. I decided to head to Hollis and go west on 62. I caught some nice lightning to the west of Hollis underneath the huge anvil that had formed 

About 2 miles north of Abington on 83/62, a tornado warning was issued for an area just southwest of Childress at Tell, TX at 6:56pm CDT. I captured a few shots of the funnel that was suppose to be touching down (got confirmation from a chaser later on). 

The wall cloud began to dissipate and I thought that I was a little too late. This happened to me last year at almost the exact place but I figured I caught my 1st funnel cloud and supercell thunderstorm on my second day so why complain and take some structure shots (This was a good choice).

As I was going south and the storm was heading northeast, I was a little apprehensive about taking this path but reports were coming over the scanner that it was moving only 10-15 mph and I had a good observation of the cell without rain bothering me. So I continued to head south. If this storm was going to change track, I would have been in a little bit of trouble but the speed of the storm convinced me that I had the time to evade it if I had to.

This storm really started to crank up as I arrived about 5 miles to the north of Childress. Within 3 minutes of parking, the inflow began to pick up and the tail cloud rotated over me as the second wall cloud formed and began to lower towards the ground. 

At this time, I was too close to the action (the shots above are not zoomed) and decided to head back north a few miles to view it. The brief funnel dissipated within 5 minutes and became rain-wrapped as this was a very HP cell (over 11 inches of rain fell in 3 hours).

About this time, another chaser pulled over and I went to meet David Drummond, his wife Gayla (from Lubbock, TX) and Chris who happened to be from BC on his first storm chasing vacation. About 2 minutes later, I ran into another chaser, Luke Boedeker from the Texas Panhandle. We seemed to hit it off instantly and sat and watched a beautiful sunset through the thunderstorm.

As we chatted, we noticed that another wall cloud was trying to form and my third funnel cloud formed. By now, it was very close to dark so we relied on lightning and our video cameras to help us to view the system. The funnel dissipated and was replaced by a very well formed rotating wall cloud. 

We decided that this wall cloud was not chase-able due to the road network and we headed east as the storm was moving to the NNW. We noticed that some other cells were forming to our south and they decided to take some lightning shots. We ran into Neal Rasmussen who stopped by to say hi and discuss our chase before he disappeared into the lightning filled sky. Making a bad road choice that took us south we encountered something I don't want to ever happen again. As the three of us were driving, the lightning flashed and I saw a cone shape to my southwest and very close.

I got on the CB to David (who was leading the chase group) and informed them to "LOOK" that way and start to slow down.. The second flash had us worried as it was very close. He was on the CB going I don't know what it was when it hit us. All of a sudden his van was twisting on the road and my truck front end was moving left and right. Dave's anemometer recorded a wind speed of 78 mph and it lasted for about 4 seconds (felt like an eternity). We immediately stopped and I said lets turn around and head north and get out fo this so we took off and head north for a mile through blinding rain before we hit a break and pulled over. We sat for about 5 mins and discussed it. We really had no clue what hit us.

(Looking back on the event and what we felt, I have come up with 2 possible scenarios. The first was a gustanado had formed along the leading edge of the outflow from a microburst and hit us. But thinking back to it, Luke who was behind us did not feel that bad of winds and he was only about 100 meters back. I honestly think that we were on the outer edges of a weak tornado. This is due to the fact that Dave's van moved in a twisting motion and not in a linear motion across the road. Mine move in a semi twisting motion but not nearly as bad.)

As I really needed gas badly, we decided to head to Vernon I think but I was unsure where we were at that time. So much had happened in the last 6 hours. We all got gas and pulled into the parking lot to talk and exchange numbers when the local police pulled in and chatted with us and checked out the chase vehicles. At this time, Luke said he was going to head back home and bid us good night. I talked with Dave and Gayla and Chris and we decided to head back to Childress for the night as it looked like another promising day tomorrow.

All Photos and information unless otherwise noted are copyrighted 2001 by Dave Patrick.  Any use other than authorized by me is against the law.  If you wish to contact me regarding use of these photos, please e-mail me. Images unaltered digitally (except where stated)