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2:00pm – My Chemistry teacher excused me from class, telling myself and Jennifer (a friend in class), “If you guys want, you can play hookie the rest of the day.”  Quick to take her up on that, we left.  When I stepped outside, I saw the beginning of a gorgeous thunderstorm over the mountains to the northwest.  Keeping it in the back of my mind till I reached my car, I turned on my WX radio to hear a Severe T-Storm Warning had been issued for it.  I hurried home.

2:34pm – After glancing at the radar, I noticed what I thought to be a hook on the storm as it was slowly making its way to Denver.  I decided to prepare for a serious chase; mounting my tripod and video camera on the dash and rehooking a majoirty of my scanning equipment.

2:47pm – After leaving the house, I headed north on Kipling to Hwy. 285.  While sitting at the Quincy light, my WX radio fired off its high pitched tone.  I glanced at the screen to see TORNADO WARNING on the screen.  Figuring it to be another nearby storm, I listened attentively to the warning with the previous radar loop in my mind.  Low and behold, it was for my storm.

2:55pm – I pulled off to the side of Hwy. 285 to start shooting my first video.  The sight, an unbelievable shot of the storm as it began to push over the foothills.  A lowering defined the area of concern as rotation became evident in the storm’s wall cloud.

3:00pm – A cluster of clouds began to rotate due north of me.  Lowerings were starting to fizzle off and on, disappating as quickly as they would form.  The turbulance in the clouds was definately becoming clear.

3:03pm – Green hues in the sky indicate the approach of hail.  I elect to try and get myself closer to the rotation and take Hwy. 285 to C-470, then heading north on C-470 to Morrison Road.  Just as I hit the on ramp to C-470, I begin to take on golfball sized hail.  Fortunately for my car, it was the softer kind of ice Denver is use to seeing.

3:12pm – I find myself parked off to the side of the road on Morrison.  I take 15 minutes of film as the storm’s base continues to rotate like a top.  The wall cloud spins a couple of funnels, nothing that amounted to much.  Time laspe of this video shows the incredible rotation this storm held as it pushed through Morrison into western Littleton, passing nearly right over my own house!!!

3:44pm – After shooting the wall cloud; me having to move eastward along Morrison Road to keep out of the hailshaft which was slowly pushing eastward with the storm. The hail within it continued to drop as golfballs. After the wall cloud disappated, I hauled south along Kipling Street, my video camera running just in case. At this point, I was on the phone with the Mix 100.3, a local radio station, explaining to the DJ as to what was going on and what I thought was next. I said to him that most of what was being seen now was scud cloud lowerings and rain shafts; not funnel clouds. I indicated to him that I thought the storm was dying out and all that would be expected is heavy rain and small hail. That was my best prediction all day! The storm began to die out, leaving behind an impressive beaver tail as I turned east onto C-470!

4:17pm – The storm gives its final look before dying away, giving way to later heavy storms that dump heavy rains and nickle-sized hail on the southwest Denver area.

4:41pm – After officially calling off the chase, I called up the local news station (Channel 9 News) and informed them of the video I shot earlier. They directed me to one of their trucks that was literally right down the street from me at Univeristy and County Line Road. I pulled in and was immediately asked about my vehicle. During our joking session, we found ourselves being hit by another storm developing over top of us. Some nickle-sized hail fell on us briefly from that.

4:48pm – When the storm passed, they began to feed in my video to the station for their 5:00pm news show. During this time, they were preparing the anchor to report, but lightning very close to the area kept the anchor hiding inside the nearby Applebee’s. I can’t blame him; the tower on top of this van reached well up above most things in the area. I took shelter in the truck, watching as my video streamed into the station. At 5:00pm, my video was shown to intro the news show. Another part was used again during the main report. It was pretty cool!

The first bolt takes aim at a target about a quarter mile away.  The first frame (top left) shows the initial frame when the bolt was about to strike.  The second frame (top right) shows the blinding light as the main bolt connects with the ground.  The third frame shows the tornado-like bolt flashed out by the brilliant light.  The final frame shows the lightning-wedge-tornado again lighting up the night sky.

Something to notice: The street sign in the first picture is highlighted with a blue hue from the bolt.  Notice is the three subsequent shots how it is no longer highlighted, even as the sky behind it is set ablaze.

The second bolt hits nearly a minute later.  We had obviously gotten under the main lightning shaft of the storm.  After this bolt had drilled the earth less than 1000 feet from the car, we watched the main strikes behind us as we headed west.  In the first shot, you can see accumulated hail from the storm on the side of the road.  Incredible how a single bolt can turn night into day.

Dumas Welcoming

2:56pm – 4:25pm; May 5, 2002

After nearly six hours on the road, and a couple hours shy of my initial target area of Childress, I found myself being welcomed to the Texas Panhandle by the first of many storms that exploded in the Panhandle that day.  This one began to show itself just before 3pm MDT.  I hadn’t hit Dumas yet, that and I hadn’t been briefed on the current weather, so I was left in the dark, so to speak.  Since I left Denver late, my last update came before I hit the road, so I called James back in Denver to have him scope out a radar for me just in case storms were popping earlier than I was planning.  He informed me of the cell I was driving through, and also a cell near Clovis, NM (more on that later).  I opted to stick with the Dumas storm since I was already there, and I was also beginning to figure that it may be the only thing I see all day, still thinking the worst of the weather would break further east.

As I punched eastward along HWY87 toward Dumas, I began to get hammered by very high winds driving rain hard against my vehicle.  Several times, I fought to keep the car from blowing all over the road.  When I arrived in Dumas, the storm passed to my northeast.  After another call to James, I opted to head up HWY287 before cutting over on FM281 and running east along the south side of the storm.  When I arrived in Sunray, the storm had prompted a tornado warning for Hansford County.  I caught a rotating wall cloud, but it looked as if it was having a hard time getting organized.

Outgoing and Incoming

4:43pm – 4:56pm; May 5, 2002

After tracking the storm along FM281, I came to the intersection of FM281 and TX207 where I ran into a couple chasers from an Amarillo news station.  With live access to radar images and nowcasting, I opted to take their invitation and stick with them.  We hung around the area, driving cautiously through the hail fog left behind by the baseball sized hail that nicely dented their chase vehicle..

We stayed on the first storm, continuing our eastward trek along FM 281.  Are original plan was to head along TX207 northeastward toward the Perryton area.  After pulling off to take some shots of the hail left behind by this storm, we began to question whether the storm would hold.  Signs were showing that the storm was weakening and beginning to rapidly turn due east.  We turned back around and regrouped back at TX207 and FM281.

Mesocyclone Golf Match

5:15pm – 5:30pm; May 5, 2002

After taking some time to observe radar images of the nearby storms, we began to notice another cell developing to our southwest.  We decided to cruise south on TX207 to see if we could get position on this developing storm.  We pulled off to admire a beautiful mesocyclone that was filling the south sky.

Debating on whether to go on, my answer came clear when our Trooper came over the police scanner saying he was in “Big fucking ice!”  Realizing we were potentially in danger if we continued south into the storm which was moving more east than north, putting us in a path of intercepting straight into the storm’s core.  We backed northward, deciding to let it slip south of us so we could attempt to run it along FM281.  As the storm moved closer, it came into the colder air left behind by the first storm and quickly started to disappate.  It did give us a show of golf ball sized hail, but the worst of the storm ran along TX207 northeast from Pringle, where hail as big as baseballs fell.

*** Click Here to View Radar at Time of the Hail Storm ***