South-moving afternoon supercell from O’Brien to Rule to Stamford, TX
This is part 1/2 of this chase account… as I observed supercells at two different times during this chase. This account focuses on the O’Brien/Rule/Stamford, TX supercell that developed mid-afternoon west of Knox City around 20z (3pm CDT). I left Dodge City shortly after 8:30am for a target from Vernon to Seymour, TX. The main problem for this chase day was the cold front. Plain and simple. It was moving south at a fairly good clip, and the challenge was to get on a storm far enough south of the cold front such that it would not become severely undercut by the front. It was because of this that I decided to hedge south (Seymour).
I arrived in El Dorado, OK around 1pm with a growing cumulus field just along and ahead of the front. This was a good sign that storms would probably develop over the next couple of hours given the extent of the agitated cumulus field. I was monitoring obs closely and was interested in the near-90 degree air from Paducah to Aspermont. I figured a storm would develop at the nose of this hottest air since the cap would be broken easiest here, so I was closely watching hi-res visible satellite imagery for towering cumulus growth in this area. I arrived in Quanah, TX and was tempted to just head straight south to Benjamin. Given the lack of substantial cumulus growth at that time in the area of Benjamin, I decided to just head southeast instead to Vernon. From Vernon, I headed south on Hwy 183 to Seymour. Along the way, cumulus was continuing to grow across all of this small region from Vernon south to Seymour…and even west toward Benjamin. I arrived in Seymour around 2:40pm, and it was at this point that towering cumulus was most impressive southwest of Benjamin, which was some 45 miles to my west-southwest {1946}. I immediately decided I wanted to target this new growth, so after a quick pit-stop in Seymour, I was on my way southwest on Hwy 277 toward Munday {2007}. Once I reached Munday, I decided to continue west-southwest to Knox City as this development was very slow moving…and whatever movement there was, was almost straight south… so I had to keep heading west.
I reached Knox City with tornado sirens blaring in town, which I found quite interesting given the fact I didn’t see any warning on the storm at that time. I headed south on Hwy 6 to O’Brien which was just a few miles south. When I got to O’Brien I could observe a high-based well-defined nub funnel cloud looking almost due west. I had to keep heading west, and fortunately, Ranch 2229 road was there to go west on from O’Brien, so I took this road out of town and found a stopping point a couple miles west of town. This funnel persisted and continued to stretch to nearly halfway to the surface from cloud base. I had to stop here and get the shots before it dissipated. I managed to get some decent images of this well-defined funnel cloud. For the first minute or so of observation, I just thought it was a funnel, but I eventually noticed a small debris cloud beneath the funnel. The images I took were between 3:39 and 3:41pm {2031}. I feel fortunate to have observed this event before many of the other storm chasers arrived on scene. About a half hour after this time, the “chaser hordes” arrived. Many, many storm chasers arrived on the storm finally — many of which were either staging in Wichita Falls, Vernon, or Seymour — arriving from the northeast {2045}.
The tornado finally dissipated and it was time to continue south. I did so following county and ranch roads south…to the west of Hwy 6 by about 2 or 3 miles. I stopped intermittently to shoot structure shots. The structure evolved into a classic soda-can supercell updraft with a small lowered wall cloud in the center. The whole storm was rather high-based, so if it was going to produce another tornado (a more classic supercell tornado) I was thinking it would have to do it fairly quick because of the high-based nature and potential forward flank downdraft undercutting problems in its not-too-distant future. I finally reached the town of Rule and regained internet access after about a 45-minute downtime from west of Rochester to Rule {2127}. It was at this point that I began to leap-frog a lot of storm chasers on Hwy 6, once I finally reached this highway. I stopped for a little bit along Hwy 6 south of Rule and watched a beautiful rear-flank downdraft occlusion develop. A tornado cyclone circulation was evident with fairly tight rotation in the wall cloud at around 4:40pm looking to the north-northwest from a few miles south of Rule {2131}. My next stopping location was along a farm road about a half mile east of Hwy 6 where I setup my Nikon D200 on a tripod with the lightning trigger. I managed to get one good cloud-to-ground (CG) lightning image within the supercell core looking to the north. By this time, a rear-flank downdraft surge was heading my way and it was time to bail south. Hwy 6 then turned southeast toward Stamford, and I followed this a few miles southeast to a stopping location to observe the next interesting aspect of this storm. A rather rapidly rotating wall cloud developed to the north with some small dusty spin-ups beneath it initially. Some storm chasers claim a brief ~ 30 second tornado here with this feature based on their accounts, but I am uncertain, because immediately after this, a huge surge of dust was kicked up in the next rear-flank downdraft surge…which was actually quite dynamic to photograph. The copper color of the dust contrasted well against the storm structure from my vantage point. This whole sequence occurred between roughly 5:26 and 5:32pm {2227}.
I then drove through a dusty town of Stamford shortly after shooting the previous scene just northwest of town. The storm was on the demise after that point. I continued southeast then east on some county roads to follow the now decaying storm. My last images of this storm were around 5:53pm looking northeast at a small saucer-shaped updraft base with a neat looking wall cloud as the whole thing was beginning to shrivel up and die {2251}. Now what to do. There was another supercell well to the north-northeast of me approaching the Seymour area from the northwest. The chaser hordes went after this, and it was funny watching all the chasers taking the same route to this storm at around 6pm or so {2309}. Me, on the other hand, I’m not a follower. I stayed put. Small updrafts tried to form near and over me between Stamford and Lueders along Hwy 6, but none of these small updrafts made it very far at all and ultimately bit the dust. I looked at visible satellite and noticed that the best looking clumping cumulus was off to my west still. This interested me because it was still just far enough south of the cold front and there were mid to upper 60s dewpoints not too far southeast of this area. This was my new area of interest: Roby to Rotan, TX (Fisher County). Not following the chaser hordes turned out to be a very wise decision: My new target exploded into supercells and the storm the hordes went after ultimately died when they all arrived on scene! See part 2 of this chase account.
