One of my most intense and incredible chasing experiences would take place today south of Seymour, TX. Not before a short drive from Wichita Falls to Ranger, TX where we met with Amos Magliocco and Eric Nguyen at a small cafe in town. After a fuel fill-up and some data, we elected to fly north from Ranger to catch what was being dubbed in online forums as a “sucker storm”; boy did we get horribly suckered getting after this! ;o)

Chasers in discussion of this storm as it was ongoing were impressed with radar signature, but were highly doubtful of its potential and tornadic views due to road networks, etc. We blasted north on US Hwy 183 and arrived several miles south of Seymour just as the meso neared the highway. We got positioned right in the hook of the storm and had the experience of a lifetime!

The circulation began to rapidly intensify as we trekked north. Our hope was to get into Seymour and blast east ahead of the storm, but that wasn’t to be. As we slowed, we were one of three vehicles on this road; Amos and Eric in Amos’s truck, and a woman in a blue car with Florida plates. Tom called the shots perfectly as the circulation began to kick up spray on the road a couple hundred yards in front of us. I got on the radio and warned Amos to slow up as the tornado was forming directly in front of us. Within moments, we were watching a beautiful wedge tornado immediately off to our east. Within a few minutes, we were blasted by the RFD and fought our way into Seymour where we endured hail and water covered roads before jumping east on FM-422. Anti-cyclonic circulation and a newly developing meso to our immediate southwest had us concerned we’d be trapped between tornadoes. Fortunately the storm fizzled and left us with a clear road east where we jumped south to the interstate, headed east, and called the chase as Ft. Worth took the brunt of a tornadic supercell less than 30 miles to our northeast.

We met with Jeff Snyder and others at a Mexican restaurant in north Ft. Worth where we celebrated our day. As far as we know, other than a brief tornado in Ft. Worth, we got the only tornado of the day on a setup which was suppose to be bonkers with SPC later issuing a HIGH RISK. Storms lined out as the front slammed in quickly and left storm mode linear for the rest of the day. A lot of high hopes gave way to disappointment for many chasers as we pulled the needle from a haystack today!

Tornadic circulation on the highway as tennis-ball sized hail was being spit at us. We turned our vehicles into the wind to avoid losing side windows to the wind blown hail. The tornado can barely be seen touching down on the highway ahead of us.

We stop to enjoy the view of the large wedge less than half a mile to our east/northeast. I get out of the van and shoot about a minute of video and stills.

We continued to pursue the now developing line of storms as it worked its way toward the DFW Metroplex.  The event was clearly becoming a squall line with the tornado threat quickly shrinking.

We wrapped up the day near DFW as the line continued east.  A couple tornadoes were reported near Dallas/Ft. Worth area from spin-ups on the line.  The next day, we made the usual stop at the Big Texas.

Kudos to Eric and Amos for their navigation to get us in position in time to view this tornado! And mega-kudos to Tom who was calling this storm beautifully the entire time! And also big congrats to Jenn who witnessed her very first tornado in a state she had sworn to hate…we may never get her to leave it now! LOL