72 CO-TX/OK Panhandles 18 May 2010

Date: 18 May 2010

Location: Colorado, OK and TX Panhandles

Chase Partner: Mark Farnik

Summary: Mark and I headed out initially targeting Lamar, CO. A MD went up and indicated action on the Palmer Divide and we opted to head back toward the Kiowa, CO area. Nothing seemed to be able to get going where we were and a storm blew up near Pueblo, so we headed south to make an intercept. We intercepted the storm near Ordway and it was very high based. There was quite a bit of CG coming from this storm, but it never really seemed to be able to get its act together.....until we gave up on it and got passed La Junta. It went TOR warned and we didn't really think anything about it because it was so linear in nature. Mark happened to notice that it did get ground based and there appeared to be a nice wall cloud with it now. We headed back west a little bit and then north. While enroute it appeared that there was a tornado on the ground, however the contrast was so bad that you could not see enough detail whether there was a tornado or scud hanging from the wall cloud (see pictures). After this storm started to look mediocre again, we headed back east and then south to intercept the 2nd storm near Dalhart, TX (Storm number 1 formed hours before and produced tornadoes near Dumas, TX). We got to Boise City, OK and headed a couple miles south. The structure on this storm was incredible. We shot some time lapse video and some lightning shots for the next couple hours at various stops between Boise City and Stratford, TX. When it got to Stratford in went TOR warned. We topped off the gas tank and headed south and then east. Lightning lit up a very low hanging and broad based wall cloud. We called 911 and reported this as it was tracking toward Gruver, TX. We then proceed to near Gruver and stopped just short of the town itself and set up shop near the airport. While there we witnessed 2 tornadoes. One was a short lived stove pipe tornado and the other was a giant rain wrapped wedge tornado. Again I reported this to Spotter Network and 911. After these tornadoes appeared to dissipate we shot north of Gruver to get a better vantage point. The storm still looked good on radar, but visually was very difficult to pick out features. We headed south after some time and gave up the chase around 0100-0130. All in all, what started out as a very frustrating chase turned into a very good one at twilight.

TOR Warned storm near Cheraw, CO

Dalhart, TX storm #2 from Springfield, CO.

Dalhart, TX Storm from Boise City, OK.

Lightning from north of Stratford, TX.

1st tornado WNW of Gruver, TX.