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My original target for the day was
Guymon, OK but I decided to head further south to Dumas, TX once I'd
looked at the data on the actual day.
As I drove south through Sunray,
not far from Dumas, to intercept the storm, I encountered some hail but
as I wasn't sure how big it was going to get I turned round and took a
different route to Dumas. My GRL3 wasn't showing hail size or warning
boxes which I thought was odd and slightly unnerving, but apparently the
NWS had a problem with a server (I was later informed by a reliable
source!) My alternate route had a surprise in it for me though because
as I looked west there was a tornado! It was quite far away, a smooth
slim cone with debris on the ground, so I scrambled for my camera but
just about managed to snap a shot of it before it rapidly dissipated. A
great start!
I drove a little
further south and got onto Highway 152 which was a good east/west road
that led from Dumas across to Stinnett. A local guy called Brian Martin
(if I remember rightly) stopped behind and we got chatting and watching
the storm, we repositioned and then saw the storm's second tornado come
down on the north side of the road, it didn't last very long but I hope
to get some video of it up on here to go with the blurry photo I took!
There were a lot of chasers out;
everybody and their film crew including The Weather Channel, Vortex 2
and Tim Samaras' team. I was stopped at one point along 152 and saw
some friends, Tim's group were on the other side of the road maybe
deploying some kind of instrument, we commented at the time about it
not necessarily being the best place to be stopped if they were
putting down pods for an intercept! With TWC broadcasting their
position live on TV it meant the wait to pull off the side of the road
and reposition was crazy, there were so many cars about, so I went
further west towards Stinnett.
I was just west of Stinnett and over
a field on the north side of the road a funnel formed, the tornado
sirens started going off and then another funnel appeared right next to
the first. They got about a third of the way down to the ground but I
couldn't see if there was debris because there was a hill in the way. I
was informed later that day by
some locals that I spoke to that there was debris under both funnels
confirming they were tornadoes (although they're not reported on SPC
Reports).
 
With limited road options I drove north through Stinnett, as did all the other chasers. Everyone was parked up along both sides of the
highway and many were blocking the road, the local law enforcement
wasn't happy about this 'Chaser Convergence' so used their loudspeakers
to try and clear the volume of chasers. I was one of the few who left
and moved into the neighbourhood to try and get a good view of the storm, I
managed to park up on a hill that was separated from the main road and
got a look at what I was sure was a large cone tornado in the distance, it
moved behind the rain curtain shortly afterwards but I had it confirmed
by another UK chaser, Stu Robinson that it was in fact a tornado as he was much closer to it. He was also very close to the large hail!
After I'd seen this tornado I went
back to the main road as I'd earlier driven past some friends Tyler
& Jordan, so I stopped to chat, we decided that we were done chasing
for the day and drove to Amarillo, to the Big Texan to have a steak
dinner. I saw Stu Robinson in the Big Texan car park and he joined us.
All the previous tornadoes I've
seen, I have never celebrated on the day with a steak so this was a
great occasion for me, made even sweeter as these tornadoes were the
fruits of my labour!
Below is a picture of the Big Texan
72oz steak that costs about $50, but if you eat it all in less than one
hour, and all the sides that come with it, you get it for free -
needless to say, I didn't give it a try and went for an 8oz instead!
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2010 Chase 
