Low-Topped Supercells/Hollister Tornado - April 6, 2004

This turned out to be a very interesting and fun day for me. There was an area of northwest Texas and Oklahoma (just north of the Red River) that I had identified the night before as having a chance at low-topped supercells with some tornado potential. This was a pattern that I had rarely chased before... and since I had the day off, thought I would give it a shot.

I left Okarche before noon and headed down I-44 toward Wichita Falls. I made a data stop at the Walters exit... which really didn’t provide me with much information for this situation. It’s kind of hard to pick out an area when there is a broad region that has CAPE around 250 j/kg. Scattered “storms” (little in the way of lightning) were developing in west Texas with the mid level cold pool. A couple of weak echos had formed on radar near the Red River in Tillman and Jackson counties. I decided to play these since the area from Wichita Falls north into Oklahoma had east-southeast winds... while it appeared (despite lack of many surface obs) that most of northwest Texas had winds out of the southwest.

As I drove toward Frederick, echos in Jackson and Greer counties had increased quite a bit with some 55 dbz cores near Olustee and west of Mangum. The higher reflectivity didn’t last long and things were not looking so good about the time I made it to Elmer. One shower was east of Chillicothe, Texas that was moving my way which I waited on and got some brief heavy rain out of. Watching radar was painful as each new image provided no increase in the intensity of the showers. With little in the way of structure to hold my interest, I made the decision to start toward home.

I had just turned around when a cell with 45 dbz increased west of Vernon, Texas and was moving north. Since I was in the area I headed back down highway 283 toward Vernon to see what it had. The look on radar went downhill as I neared Vernon... but much to my surprise I started seeing some nice looking structure. This despite the cell being back down around 30 dbz. The well defined updraft base about 10 miles to my west had a persistent lowering and at times produced what appeared to be funnel clouds. This “funnel looking” needle ended up looking similar to the tornado I would eventually see. I was too far away to tell for sure. I watched this wall cloud feature for about 15 minutes. The cell briefly developed a nice precipitation core which soon went away. Then the storm took on a LP straited look....still with nice looking convection on the backside. All this while producing not much more than a very small 20 dbz return on radar.

There were other showers on radar just to my southeast that had between 20 and 30 dbz... but visually had nice structure. As I headed toward Oklaunion, this shower looked fairly impressive with a nice lowering, somewhat of a backsheared top and a flanking line. Once again, about 25 dbz at this time. Here is an image of the wall cloud near Oklaunion. As this passed into Oklahoma.... a more well defined wall cloud with steady rotation evolved. It looked very capable of producing a tornado about 6 miles east of Davidson. As a clear slot cut into the south side of the storm (I guess I can call it a storm now - it was the first time I heard thunder eventhough I didn’t see lightning) the base became ragged looking. A small funnel developed on the east side of the occludded meso. It only took about a minute for it to extend to the ground - very much to my surprise! A narrow whisp of vapor extended to the ground. It had to be one of the smallest tornadoes I’ve ever seen. I wanted to report it as being as wide as my car. Looking into the sun, I played with the exposure on the video camera trying to catch it but ended up mostly white-washing everything. It was gone in just under two minutes. Funnel/tornado images: one two three. I followed the storm northeastward toward Loveland where it maintained a very impressive supercell structure. Another structure shot from video. Some slow rotation was still evident in the wall cloud on the north side of the updraft over Loveland. The storm was done as it approached Chattanooga.

This day was a new experience for me. Not only did I get to see some really great storm structure... it came from “storms” that I wouldn’t have expected it. I got to see supercells without hail and lightning. The only cloud to ground lightning I saw was with a storm further south after dark. I also never saw one spotter or stormchaser. Given the look on radar, it’s no wonder why nobody was drawn to these. Short, fun and peaceful.