As the old adage says, “the devil’s in the details” but suffice it to say that we are likely in for an interesting first week or two in the month of April.

In the short term, it looks as though tomorrow (Thurs. March 30th) will provide a fair chance at tornadoes associated with the cold-core in primarily southeastern Nebraska. Those weather enthusiasts located in the Lincoln area may find themselves relatively close to the action.

Ladies and Gentleman, start your engines!

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The image below is of a tornadic storm just southwest of Hill City Kansas on the 22nd. The parent supercell was very impressive with the tornado being but a mere afterthought compared to the overall structure of the storm. Finally we were able to enjoy a relaxing slow moving storm:

On the May 23rd, we found ourselves back in the Texas Panhandle with numerous supercell storms erupting northwest of Canadian. The early stages of one such storm was seen with a nice “cowcatcher” type wall cloud looking west from hwy70 and the Canadian river bridge in western Roberts county:

Additional storms formed on the flank of the original and resulted in the previous storms being seeded. Most of the storms later in the day were nasty “HP”s with very sinister green hues found in the rear-flank precipitation cores:

One storm in particular was most likely quite tornadic with radar showing a series of cyclic occlusions northwest of the town of Stinnett in Hutchinson county. Unfortunately there were no passable roads east of Stinnett in which to chase this storm and by the time it was approaching hwy70 and the Canadian river overlook in western Roberts county, the storm had become a giant “HP”. Tornadoes were seen close to and just after dark with this storm along FM281 in northern Roberts county:

To cap off an interesting day, an incredible lightning display (second night in a row) splayed across the sky as tornado warnings blared for areas just northwest of Canadian Texas. This image was shot along a lonely stretch of hwy 60 not too far from the (now ghost) town of Glazier which was ravaged by a tornado nearly two miles wide in April of 1947.

Many of the violent storms occurred  after dark with some , like the barrel shaped tornado below seen in the waning light of evening. This particular tornado occurred within sight of the previous night’s tornado track east of Macksville Kansas along hwy50 where less than 24hrs before a police officer was swept away by the violent winds and killed.

Photography was difficult but I managed to come away with a few nice shots as the tornado crossed the highway and light filtered down through the occluded barrel updraft above. This was one of seven tornadoes I visually marveled at on this particular day.

As I watched this tornado move to the north, a new tornado developed within  200 yards of the road and moved north as a sinuous rope of condensation…. a good reminder to be ever vigilant along the flanking gust front for new circulations that can cause trouble.

Fortunately, none of these tornadoes struck populated areas resulting in loss of life and property unlike the night before when I watched on radar in horror as a large tornadic circulation recurved into Greensburg Kansas. A view of the wedge tornado responsible for literally wiping out the town can be seen below courtesy of my friend Jim Ladue.

Radar showed, in dramatic fashion, a “donut” debris signature as the tornado centrifuged massive amounts of debris from homes and businesses. Most of the historic old homes along with 100 year old tall oaks that lined the brick streets and manicured lawns of this quintessential plains town were blasted away in a matter of a few minutes.

A closer view of a 50dbz reflectivity rendered isosurface from the Dodge City WSR-88D shows the “donut” BWER located right over the town of Greensburg. A very awe inspiring sight indeed.

The Greensburg storm was a true classic cyclical tornadic supercell that behaved in a very common way …no surprises here other than the width of the tornadoes were rather exceptional. Each tornado behaved as expected with the later stages of each exhibiting a northward recurve that is rather common for large long track tornadoes.

DigtalGlobe has made available a Google Earth Overlay of the tremendous destruction that this tornado has wrought which can be found as a link here. Also, meteorologist Jon Davies has made a great post-mortem case study page for the Greensburg tornado that can be found here.

Lastly, my hat goes off to Mike Umscheid and the crew at the DDC NWS office for not being asleep at the wheel for this event and doing their job as it should have been done … responsibly and efficiently. This undoubtedly resulted in many lives being saved.

 The funnel fully condensed to earth and began it’s journey of marching through the north side of the Canadian river valley to our southwest while growing ever larger.

Spectacular multiple vortices sprouted upwards like ethereal geyesers as the tornado neared the highway.

After crossing SH354 just southeast of Channing the tornado continued to grow in size to become a rather large truncated cone with an approximate width of 1/4 mile wide.

As this tornado began to rope out after being on the ground for around 30 minutes, a new tornado rapidly developed west of Dumas Texas with both tornadoes on the ground at once.

This new tornado went on to become a large, nearly wedge looking, tornado that could have been close to 1/2 mile wide.  The tornado then struck the town of Cactus doing extensive damage and causing around a dozen injuries (two critical).

The Panhandle can certainly be a grand theater for violent weather during the spring months. The above images certainly support that. All we can hope for is that people stay aware of the changing weather as things can be replaced …..lives cannot. 

April 2nd has long been remembered as a red letter day in North Texas. Today dawned somewhat foggy but rapidly cleared to bright sunshine over Dallas …..quite a difference from 50 years ago today as a slowly moving warm front approached from the south. This day would end in havoc as a deadly tornado rampaged from south to north across the western sections of Dallas. In fact, though cameras had been in existence for over 100 years, not a single case existed where the complete life cycle of a tornado had been photographically documented …. that is, until this day, April 2nd, 1957.

After the event had ended, the Weather Bureau’s records were bursting forth with more than 450 black-and-white photos, 250 color transparencies, and nearly 2000 feet of movie film all shot by some 125 photographers at various angles. Additionally, the tornado occurred in a relatively dense data network where radar, upper air and surface observations existed. The tornado even roped out just a mile west of the Weather Bureau station at Love Field. One does not have to use too much imagination to realize that this tornado was documented in greater detail than any other tornado in history up to this point.

The photo shown below is one of the more famous ones of the Dallas tornado and was the second in a series four photos taken by Bill Burkett, a photographer working for Commercial Photographers Inc. in Dallas. The tornado was intensifying dramatically at this point as it approached the Trinity River. The debris seen is from houses and an apartment building which was just struck:

Below is a view of the damage track at the location of where the tornado was when Bill Burkett took his famous photo (shown above). The view is looking west with Canada street angled southeast to northwest in the upper left-hand corner of the image:

Some famous papers were written after the Dallas tornado event such as Robert Beebe’s “Life Cycle of the Dallas Tornado” and Walter Hoecker’s “Dimentional and Rotational Characteristics of the Tornadoes and their Cloud System”. Hoecker’s study was an early, if not the earliest, study using crude photogrammetric techniques on a tornado and it’s associated cloud structures. It was simply a milestone… a study well before it’s time.

Below is the surface chart for North Texas at 15:30 CST. The stationary front indicated was actually a slow moving warm front:

You can also peruse the 500mb chart for 15:00 CST showing a negative tilt short wave ejecting northeast from west Texas:

Please keep in mind the 10 lives lost this day. A day Dallas will surely never forget and a day science was advanced a bit in the study of tornadoes. For an excellent web site containing many photos and accounts of the Dallas tornado of 1957 please visit this site:

http://www.1957dallastornado.net/

Additional archived weather data of the event can be found here:

Tornado tracks from April 2nd, 1957 outbreak

Surface Map from 21:30 UTC on April 2nd, 1957

500mb chart from 15:00 UTC April 2nd, 1957

500mb chart from 21:00 UTC April 2nd, 1957

250mb chart from 21:00 UTC April 2nd, 1957

DFW sounding from 21:00 UTC April 2nd, 1957

Paris Tornado - April 2nd, 1982

It was 3:20 in the afternoon when Bohnam police officer Michael Bennett reported a rotating wall cloud south of Ravenna Texas. Just a minute later as word was relayed to the NWS in Ft. Worth, a tornado rapidly developed and began it’s 32 mile long path of destruction. Just north of Bonham the storm took it’s first life, a 74 year old woman. Below is a view of this tornado:

As the Bonham tornado roped out a 4:00pm CST just west of Paris, a new wall cloud developed rapidly over the west side of Paris. This quickly developed a tornado over the northwest side of the city … thankfully, even though the city had no siren system (ironically Paris city council had just turned down a proposed system just weeks before), Paris had sent their police and fire equipment out to sound the alarm in addition to noaa weather radio and local media broadcasts. This resulted in a warning lead time of 20 to 30 minutes which undoubtedly saved many lives.

The tornado moved due east though the north side of the city at 50mph with a width varying from 200 to 300 yards resulting in a final death toll of eleven. Below is a view of the tornado as it churned through the north side:

The Paris storm was part of an outbreak of at least 17 tornadoes (some violent) over northeast Texas and southwest Arkansas. Here is a surface map at 13:00 CST on April 2nd, 1982. Note the intense dryline approaching the Paris area (Star):

Additional weather data regarding the tornado outbreak of April 2nd, 1982 can be found here:

Tornado tracks from April 2nd, 1982 outbreak

Tornado tracks with coop obs  overlayed

Surface map from 18:00 UTC on April 2nd, 1982

Surface map from 20:00 UTC on April 2nd, 1982

Surface map from 22:00 UTC on April 2nd, 1982

500mb chart from 12:00 UTC April 2nd, 1982

500mb chart from 00:00 UTC April 2nd, 1982

The day ended yesterday with  ….well, a tornado warning for Norman. Nothing ever came from this and perhaps this warning, issued for a book-end type OLCS vortex, was just a precaution given the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the EF2 tornado that struck NW OKC the day before. Where was I at this time? Well, south of Norman coming back from a brief jaunt to the Gainesville Texas vicinity. I did shoot some very nice sunset mammatus near Paoli. We sure do get some dramatic skies around here as the whole sky was illuminated a fiery orange with a glowing neon blue found between the bulbous mammatus:

Now for the pièce de résistance. An incredible display of natures awesome power over the Texas Panhandle this past Wednesday found in the form of a tornado southwest of Brice Texas:

This tornado was one of the most enjoyable I have been so fortunate to witness in over a year with the vortex being illuminated from time to time by the waning sun, sometimes making a “zebra-like” pattern of light and dark stripes on the sides of the funnel as I looked down upon the sunlit debris cloud making it’s way through the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red river. The tornado lasted for over half an hour as it ground through the river and up the north wall of the valley…what a sight!

The familiar distant waterfall sound of the tornado could be heard as the undulating vortices past to my west sillouetted by brilliant crepuscular rays from the sun immediately behind this incredible atmospheric maelstrom.  Oh how I love the Texas Panhandle!

I of course, packed up the truck and headed out under light to moderate snow around noon for points to the north …right into the jaws of the blizzard. I wanted to do some photography and experience the incredible change the area had undergone as it was 75F degrees just two days before.

Conditions were fine starting out….an average snowstorm as I made my way through Edmond towards Guthrie on I-35. As I approached Perry Oklahoma though, the character of the storm changed …. to the point of almost being “spooky” as the winds increased and visibility dropped to 1/8 mile or less in heavy horizontal wind-blown snow.

It was 19F degrees now as I took highway 64 east of Enid ….things seemed to get worse as I drove east ….to the point where it was almost a whiteout. I decided not to press too far and decided instead to head a bit west of I-35  to near Billings. The  east-west highway had been blown dry as the snow swirled across and into drifts as high as three feet on the sides of the road. I hung around this area all afternoon taking pictures and finally decided it would be prudent to leave as darkness approached.

The drive back to Norman in the dark was a bit of a “white-knuckle”. Blinding wind-whipped snow in the headlights made for some real entertainment but I was able to maintain a fairly good 45mph as there were hardly any other vehicles on the road at this time. Back home in Norman, we ended up with around 7 inches of accumulation ….but not quite the true bizzard conditions that areas north and northeast of OKC experienced.

I have heard of an unofficial report of 20 inches of snow in northeast Oklahoma with official totals of up to 15 inches. Measuring the snow was very problematic due to the wind.

 The 7 inches at my house makes it the strongest winter storm to hit in 5 years as I had a 9 inch storm total in 2001. Still, this pales in comparison to the storm in March of 1989 when Norman had over one foot.

I have a feeling that this winter will be a “good one” for winter weather in these parts. I never know what quite to expect in El Nino years as each episode is quite unique. Maybe I should confer with the furry catepillars.

In fact, it was one of the very first images I took as the camera arrived that very same afternoon. It was back on Friday, September 22nd. I didn’t chase this day as I was packing to go on a trip up to Michigan the very next morning. The image was shot from my home in Norman looking south- southeast towards the Red River Valley of Texas and Oklahoma. I placed the storm somewhere in the vicinity of Denison or Durant. In any event, the sight was truly one to behold… the deep haze-reddened lower column of rock-hard convection bursting forth at it’s summit with a dazzling golden white crown of back-sheared glory! ….for this is the reason I live here.