College of DuPage Storm Chases

1994

The story is coming up, but for now here are the pics of the tornado that we captured in Northfield, TX during the second trip (late May). It was a weak cap day, and as the torndao occured, numerous other showers and thunderstorms were occuring around the supercell. It made for tough photos and chasing, but the storm was pretty impressive.
Picture 1
Picture 2
In May of 1994, we were on a monster storm (and we rarely use that term) near Littlefield, TX. It was an HP storm that, if you simply look at the synoptic observations around the storm, one would never know what really happened. Obs around the area only showed winds at around 5 to 10 knots. The storm deepened significantly on the mesoscale, and created winds up to 45 knots on our anemometer. There were some tornado warnings with the storm, and it certainly had some mesocyclone-type cloud features, but there was no way to get very close to the updraft area of this storm. Large hail and flooding rains were also reported.
The state police saw us chasing the storm and pulled us over. We figured we had done something wrong. It turned out that they were spotting, and when they saw us going in the opposite direction away and ahead of the storm, they figured they had better follow us. They asked us where we were headed, and then gave us a POLICE ESCORT, with one trooper ahead of us and one trooper behind us.

Picture of the beaver's tail

The updraft region and wall cloud that continually got undercut by cold outflow. This wall cloud is for the most part on the leading edge. You can see some of the inflow bands leading into the storm.

The storm as it becomes/develops into a squall line
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