On April 23 of 2021, myself and a few friends traveled down to Vernon, Texas to see some storms. We expected to see a few tornadoes, but as storms began to form, it started to seem unlikely that we would see any. All of the storms were high based and were dropping large hailstones, so it was difficult to really get into any of the storms to see anything. Then it happened. We were driving North and all of a sudden we began to see the velocity couplet on radar begin to tighten up. We immediately turned back South in order to find a road to take us East so that we could follow it. We were in the middle of no where in Texas, so our only options were dirt roads. We found one that looked decent and turned East. It was at this moment that we realized we were in the right spot. Tons of other storm chasers were driving down this road. We still couldn’t see anything from the storm, but we pushed on. Then out of nowhere we got to the top of a hill and saw it: a beautiful, white, elephant trunk tornado. We stopped to take a few pictures and then kept going East knowing that the road we were on would turn slightly to the North and we might be able to cross paths with it. Then the unimaginable happened. The tornado grew into a beautiful cone tornado and a rainbow began to form! We found a nice spot to pull over, along with the rest of the chaser convoy we had accidentally joined, and took several pictures. It eventually began to die out and we decided to keep driving to see if any damage had been done – I have first aid training, so I wanted to see if there was anybody that needed help. There was some structural damage, but luckily everyone we talked to seemed to be okay. We kept driving in hopes we might be able to keep up with the storm in case it dropped another tornado, but the windy dirt road we were on prevented us from keeping up. We eventually got back to a paved road just in time to see some beautiful Mammatus clouds that formed behind the storm. Overall it was a great storm chase and we had so much fun seeing some beautiful clouds.
One Comment
Preston, this is well told! I wonder if you could END with that final image, using it to capture the feeling you tell your reader about in the last sentence… (Is “elephant trunk” a technical term in storm chaser diction? it’s very vivid–coming up with equally visually powerful language for the two images you provide would be worth doing.) Are Mammatus clouds typical in that time and place? Do storm chasers have a feeling, an emotion attached to them?
(This story also resonates with the other story you told recently, in that email you sent me–as if to say, “sometimes you chase the storm, but sometimes….”)