First, I want to send my best wishes to the residents of Tulia, as beautiful and amazing, as it is to witness a storm of that magnitude it is always disheartening when it causes injuries and property damage. It was a long haul for a one-day show but conditions appeared more then favorable for a show that would make the trip more then worth it plus I was more then eager to use my new camcorder. Started the chase by departing Lincoln late Friday Night, after driving for a while we decided to stop in Wichita KS for the night at around 12. After a few hours of sleep, Sean and Katie McMullen and I departed Wichita at around 7 AM. We headed WSW from Wichita arriving in Guymon OK at around noon. After stopping for some lunch, we dropped south into Dumas TX. There we met up with fellow chaser Rich and Ryan Theis and Brian Stertz (who also went on to have an interesting day I am sure Brian will have a report up on his site Vortex-Times) After spending a while in Dumas overlooking data, Sean, Katie and I decided to head South. From Dumas, we dropped south into Canyon TX where we met up with Jeff and Kathryn Piotrowski along with Terry Schenk. At that point, we had storms forming all along the Dryline to our West. The storms immediately to our West began to show signs of finally getting going so Sean, Katie and I decided to intercept those storms, while Jeff, Kathryn and Terry decided to head south to intercept storms coming up from the SW. Just as we were getting to the storm to our West, it became tornado warned. The storm displayed excellent rotation and a couple times tried to produce as it displayed giant RFD’s. The inflow winds to the storm were screaming at least 40mph although they were a little chilly. After watching the storm try a couple times only to fail we opted to scurry back south and intercept a Tornado producing storm. We knew it was going to be a close race, as we had to beat the Storm to Tulia; we just beat the core to Tulia. At this point, the storm did have a nice lowering but nothing at that point appeared extremely threatening. We filmed the rotation from the East side of Tulia for a while but soon we were getting decent sized hail so we opted to head East another mile from Tulia, there we sat up the tripods and watched as the storm gained a big nasty intense RFD. Just as the RFD began to rip around, the storm tried to build a rangy looking wall cloud but before it could even complete that process, it quickly put down a strong tornado. We filmed from just over a mile to the East of town as the tornado ripped through town launching debris far into the air. After the storm ravaged Tulia, we continued to follow it as it continued to cause damage in the rural areas outside of Tulia. The storm was just on massive lowering/wall cloud and while it did not have condensation to the ground the entire time, it appeared as though it was causing damage that appeared to be indicative of a tornado. After trekking it for a while, we decided to let it go as it was now dark the storm was picking up speed, we had debris littered roads and storms quickly approaching from the SW were threatening to make any night chasing difficult. We made our way back to town and met back up with Jeff, Kathy and Terry who also all saw the tornado from different angles, from there we made are way back up to Amarillo where we stayed the night. Check out Kathryns Website for more pictures and some video at Twisterchasers

First Storm in the area SW of Amarillo

This storm went up directly to our west, from Canyon we intercepted it near Heresford

Storm tried to condense a decent looking Wall Cloud, at this point we had at least a 40kt inflow wind

note the nice vault area that had formed

numerous times this storm tried to tornado, as it would get these nice RFD's.

VIDEO CAN BE FOUND HERE WARNING::LARGE FILE

The Tulia Storm

Storm quickly began to condense a raggaed wall cloud just as this BIG NASTY RFD formed

Put down a tornado just as it was moving over Tulia, from our location would could see numerous debris

The condensation funnel had a hard time becoming completely condensed, but there appeared to be multiple vorticies

Even though the condensation funnel had lifted the storm was still causing damage consistent with a tornado

Spinning Like Mad

Unbelievable structure

Shortly before dark, storm went on to produce more tornadoes but due to dark and debris littered roads we returned to Tulia.

VIDEO CAN BE FOUND HERE WARNING::LARGE FILE