While the bar wasn’t set very high to begin with, this was easily my best March storm chase ever and probably the largest tornado I have seen that far west.
Left Wichita around 730am and made a rather casual drive through Liberal/Stratford/Amarillo. Was aiming for fuel up before I got in on the storms that had fired off to my west, but as I got to the south side of Amarillo, I heard the initial report of the tornado southwest of Happy, so figuring I had more than enough fuel to manage, I opted to skip the stop and busted down I-27 toward Happy.
I took FM-1075 into Happy, headed west, and watched as the wedge got organized to my west. I got about 2 or so miles west of Happy, then turned north on what I think was Western or Bell (will have to look at my GPS) as the wedge became its most pronounced. I had a really good view for several minutes as I drove north, just south of due east of the tornado.
I was well positioned, knowing the tornado was north of my due west, so I had some room if it suddenly turned hard right. The road I turned on was mud and fairly slick, but very manageable in my AWD Subaru.
As the tornado approached my road north of me, the RFD swung around, and when combined with the slick roads, actually slid me off the side of the road. I coasted to a stop and decided to wait out the RFD, no sense in tempting fate. I watched as the tornado continued off to the northeast, eventually vanishing in the precip wrapping around in the RFD.
Once the RFD subsided, I was easily able to continue north to FM-1705, and I watched a little satellite tornado spin down south of the main circulation which was largely hidden from view for me by this point. I’m embarrassed to report that in the process of getting the vid on the satellite, I managed to hit the record button TWICE on my main camera, meaning I got no close video. Fortunately, my always-running dash camera was wide enough to capture the moment, albeit much less quality as it was so wide.
I hit a couple areas of damage that slowed my arrival to I-27, and once i got to the interstate, documented some damage in the area where the tornado and RFD came through. Multiple poles snapped and down, several vehicles flipped, and a cell phone tower toppled over. I saw in the distance what looked to be several damaged buildings, but I was unable to get to those from where I was on I-27.
When I finally continued north on I-27 back to Amarillo, I decided to hop east on I-40. In my head, more than satisfied with my trip, I decided I’d split the pair of supercells between Groom and Alanreed, getting into wind-driven hail and several bottlenecks where traffic was stopped beneath overpasses.
I eventually did get in front of the storms, and finally made my fuel stop of fumes in McLean. I was hearing reports of the tornadoes south of I-40 near Clarendon, but opted to continue east with the intention to get home by 11a as I was due in to weatherman starting at 3am and I was already losing an hour due to DST kicking in.
Honestly, I am thrilled with this chase… it was a lot of miles (877 miles) and hours driving (15.5 hours round trip) for only about 12 minutes of tornado time, but my oh my was it worth the trip. Amazingly, I hardly ran into a single chaser, and given the few images I have seen during the Happy wedge phase, I think I made the early move west at the right time. From that point on, I was behind the main line, so I never got into any kinda chaser traffic. Made for a rather nice Moderate Risk Saturday.
Then as I was typing this, had a couple earthquakes here in Wichita, so Quakenado 2? LOL
