Well, the 2008 storm chasing season is well underway. Been a strange one, but I have managed to catch at least one tornado on each of my first three tours thus far. A beautiful supercell with a nice tapered cone tornado graced the landscape on April 23rd near Patricia, Texas. The structure of the supercell was as classic as it gets. The storm also produced baseball sized hail that shattered my windshield. No big loss there as the windshield was in need of replacement. Later that tour we encountered significant supercells and large hail on 4 of the next 5 days.
During Tour 2, the May 2nd Arkansas tornado outbreak occured. We were very fortunate to catch 4 tornadoes from the system, including two long lived and strong tornadoes, one in Arkansas near the town of Gilmore, and the other in Mississippi, near the town of New Albany. Unfortunately, significant damage and a few fatalites occured with these tornadoes that day. Which just reemphazises the need to follow tornado safety rules and to listen to the warning instructions from the National Weather Service. Also on this tour we would capture a magnificant rotating supercell producing softball sized hail near Roswell, New Mexico. This storm looked like a "mothership", pardon the pun.
Now we are into the Great Plains Lecture tour, a tour where I teach folks how to forecast and chase on their own. On day 2, May 10th we caught a tornado in the mountains of southeast Oklahoma. Very tought chase and very, very close tornado!
You can see all the 2008 chase accounts, videos, and photos by going to my website at www.stormchase.net.
I will be in southwest Nebraska Monday, and back into Oklahoma on Tuesday, then Texas on Wednesday for several days of severe storms!
Roger Hill
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