TORNADO ALLEY 2002 PAGE 2

Trip To Tornado Alley 2002:

May 27, 2002

After some much need rest, we got our things together, loaded up the car and headed out in search of supercells and tornados. We left Lubbock and headed south a bit but after looking at the data from the SPC, we decided that in or near Lubbock was the place to be. We came across several rotating wall clouds, large hail and heavy rains. As the day wore on we ended up near Crosbyton, Tx. where several people in or group saw softball sized hail. We missed it but managed to see baseball sized hail and a huge wall cloud that would be the last storm of the week.

Hail Video Clip

Below is a short clip of the large baseball sized hail we encountered in Crosbyton, Tx. Our rental car had several smaller hail dents in the roof and hood, however, as you will hear in the video clip, there are 2 large hail stones that hit the roof and hood of the car. Both leaving a baseball sized dent. The clip is in the WMV format and is about 8.82 mbs.

As you could see we quickly turned around and got out of the way of the larger hail. But it was not long before we noticed a developing supercell that would become the largest storm all day.

Supercell Timelaps Clip

As you can see from the video and photos, that large wall cloud never produced a tornado, at least from what we could see. Several other chasers were down the road on the other side of this beast and may have captured a brief funnel that did not appear to make it to the ground. The storm began to rain itself out and pick up forward speed. Everyone had to pile into their vehicles and get down the road out of any possible danger. No big tornado this time around, but I look forward to the next trip out into the Alley!!

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