TORNADO NUMBER 122 - South Plains, Texas

Date: May 12, 2005

Location: 1 mile W to 1 mile E of South Plains, Texas

Time: 1715 CST to 1719 CST

Length: 2 miles

Width: 1000 yards

Rated: F2

Killed: 0

Injured: 0

STORMDATA:

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Several power poles were snapped in half or blown over. The telephone poles surveyed were blown over in a variety of patterns, south to north direction, southwest to northeast direction, and west to east direction. In addition, several center pivots were either blown over or twisted and two vehicles were flipped over in a field from a south to north direction. The tornado produced the most damage shortly before and after crossing State Highway 207.

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Left Garden City, KS with not a lot of hope on the day. A cold front had moved south through the Texas panhandle and into northwest Oklahoma. Model data suggested that the front would move back northward through the Texas panhandle... but morning and early afternoon storms looked to be keeping the front from moving much. As I drove south through the panhandles, it was cool and cloudy with periods of elevated thunderstorms that were producing some hail and impressive lightning.

Early in the afternoon... a supercell storm formed near Plainview and tracked slowly east northeast. I wasn’t in a lot of hurry toward this storm as it was a long way from me... but I steadily moved in that direction. After spending a couple of hours in the central Texas panhandle... I made a run at new storms that were forming to the west of the original Plainview supercell. The path I chose took me on a corepunch course with a storm about 15 miles southeast of Tulia.

It was one of my more intense core punches... not only having a large amount of hail up to baseball size and high winds... but a lot of flash flooding to go with it. For those with hi-speed internet this 7MB video clip shows a bit of the experience.

Shortly after I came out of the core near South Plains, TX... strong rotation was evident to my northwest. I believe it had already produced one tornado and quickly produced a second as it approached the town of South Plains. The contrast of my video was poor... but I decided to stay out of the hail and get poor video. Most chasers that chose to stay near South Plains and get better video ended up replacing a lot of glass the next day. Here is the tornado as it first came into view. Another look. It looks larger here and there is excellent rotation in the wall cloud. Tornado approaching the north side of South Plains. Another look. The tornado looked largest just as it passed the town. Here was one of my last views. I believe the tornado weakened shortly thereafter.

At this point... it was clear this was becoming a HP beast and with bad road options I just decided to get out of the way. Here is one final look at the meso as it was moving just southwest of Quitaque.