Tornadoes in the Snow!?!
On Tuesday, February 21, Roger Hill from Tornado & Storm Chasing Tours - Silver Lining Tours sent an email to his on-call storm chaser list. He had his eye on a potential storm kicking out of the southwest into western Kansas and western Oklahoma on Sunday, February 26.
With a deep snowpack over portions of Western Kansas, it could be a once in a lifetime opportunity to capture a supercell, possibly producing a tornado over a snow field. A snow field!!!
I was interested! I let Roger know and waited for an update.
On Thursday, February 23, Roger let us know that it looked very promising. He was 85 percent sure that it was a go. But before committing to a 1,300-mile round trip from Denver to possibly Texas and back, he wanted to see Friday’s forecast.
On Friday, February 24 he emailed us that it was a go. Seven chasers, along with Roger and our driver Connor McCarty, said “Yes!”
I quickly booked a one-way ticket using frequent flyer miles to Denver Saturday afternoon, February 25. By then the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center had upgraded the chance of severe thunderstorms from Moderate to Enhanced.
On Sunday morning, we left the hotel at 6 am and made a quick stop at Dunkin’ for coffee and donuts to go (the hotel breakfast wasn’t open yet). Here I am with Connor, our driver and soon-to-be-graduating meteorologist at Dunkin’.
We jumped on the Interstate and started our 8-hour, 500-mile trip to Wheeler, Texas. Roger is already checking the weather radars from the passenger seat.
I was ecstatic! I scored a seat in the second row and not the back row over the rear axle. We settled in for the long ride, punctuated by only two bathroom breaks and a brief stop at a Subway for lunch.
We drove past Amarillo, Texas on I-40 (the old historic Route 66) to a rest stop. We waited there for about an hour and a half as Roger constantly checked the weather radars and looked at the sky.
The storms were forming to our south and west and heading northeast at 75 mph. There was no way that we could follow a promising storm moving that fast. We had to set up in a few fixed locations that appeared favorable and hope that something happened as the storms raced past.
If the spot was too early in the storm’s maturation, it wouldn’t be organized enough to drop a tornado. And since there were multiple storms forming, we had to pick a location where we could move a short distance north and south to observe several storms safely.
In late February, sunset is still relatively early at 6:33 pm. You don’t want to be chasing in the dark. We didn’t have much time.
Our first location was near Shamrock, Texas at 5:50 pm. The small blue circle is our location, and the red outlines are two tornado-warned areas. It was a location with great potential.
However the first storm cell “shredded” itself and became disorganized, failing to rotate and drop a tornado. The second cell should have lowered its base and potentially dropped a tornado due to encountering colder, moister air at our location, but it apparently failed to read the weather textbook. There was rotation near Lefors, but any tornado would have been wrapped in rain and invisible.
We had one more chance before the sun set and it was too dark to take pictures. Roger relocated us to Wheeler at 6:15 pm where it looked promising.
Unfortunately, the cloud base didn’t drop and produce a tornado. We hurriedly drove to the east about 6:40 pm to avoid a line of storms producing 1-inch hail and 75 mph winds. The “paved” road turned into dirt after a few miles and we had to turn around into the teeth of the storm. Fortunately, we “threaded the needle” between the storms and didn’t get hammered by hailstones.
The Shot
The only pictures I took were of the approaching Wheeler storm near sunset. We weren’t there long before the rotating base got too close for comfort and we had to bug out. I turned them into a short timelapse.
We decided to return to Amarillo and spend Sunday night instead of trying to drive back to Denver. Luckily, I was able to catch a flight from Amarillo to Chicago Monday afternoon instead of driving to Denver and then flying to Chicago.
So, would I go again? In a heartbeat! It was an exciting chase with a chance to learn from Roger, one of the best chasers in the business. And if the atmospheric conditions were more favorable and in a different location, a photograph of a tornado in a snow-covered field would have been worthy of National Geographic!
Thanks for looking,
Chuck Derus