Adam Atkins, Jana Lesak and myself left OUN around 12:00pm. I decided the night before to target Crowell, TX. It was a fairly easy forecast. The best instability was there and it was on the southern edge of the speed max. The directional shear was amazing. We thought for sure that there would be at least a few tornadoes. We stopped in Vernon, TX for a data check. Tornado Watch was issued now and there was some convection WSW of Paducah. Figuring that is was surface based, we decided to intercept them. We did so just south of Paducah on US 83. Here are some pics.




From there, the storm gusted out and became outflow dominate. We let is pass to our south and then punched it. Only had about 3 hailstones hit the car, probably only penny sized. We emerged south of the storm and could see that the storm was horribly disorganized. We continued south to Gutherie, then proceded east on US 82 to flank it's southern side and wait to see if it could organize. It finally started to organized and had a wet RFD punch followed by a dry punch. The storm had another decent wall cloud at this point.





^^^ Video Grab

Since the storm was getting organized at this point, we decided to attack it. We continued east on 82 and in Benjamin turned north on SR 6. About 12-15 minutes had passed since we took the last pictures. The storm was beginning to become outflow dominate again. We proceded north for 6 miles then stopped. The storm was kicking up quite a decent gust front in the red clay soil. So we decided just to film the gust front overtake us. Then we noticed a small spinup just to our nw on the gust front. We then glanced straight to our north and there was a weak tornado/gustnado on the ground. It had formed right on the road and was very hard to see until it moved into some of that red clay and started becoming a red vortex. Here are some video grabs of it and the gust front.


^^^ Video Grab

^^^ Video Grab


Now we turned around on 6 and headed back south and headed to Benjamin. Once there, we went east on 82 towards Seymour. We flanked the storms southern side and could see no signs of any real rotation. The storms had all conjealed into a big mess. Thus, the squall line begins. We called it a chase there and headed home.

All in all, a very good chase. We were on the right storm at the right time. We made the right decisions on this day. I cannot complain!