The first chase day of the 2005 season for me began in Paris, TX. My chase partner was Rob Smith. We caravaned with Jeff Synder and Gabe Garfield. Upperlevel flow was pretty good across southern OK and northern TX. There was good directional shear and great speed shear. So the decision had to be made, chase N of the Red River or S. Being that it is March, and the whole setup can be made or broken by moisture, we decide to play the southern target and headed to Paris, TX.

We headed south on I-35 to Gainsville, TX, then took US 82 east towards Sherman, TX. We stopped in Sherman for a data check. The Q was pretty pathetic there. On radar, some weak convection had formed SSE of Sherman. We decided to go investagate it. We took SR 11 SE out of Sherman and then SE on US 69 towards Greenville. At this point, there was two cells that looked promising. The southern one was severe and the northern wasn't, but the structure of the northern storm looked a lot more impressive. So we decide to split the difference and chase both of them for a bit and proceded east between the cells. The storms were low topped and were struggling with the shear. I did see some awesome pileus clouds. Here is what they looked like.


^ Northern Storm

^ Northern Storm

^ Southern Storm

At this point, the northern storm was beginning to look like it's getting it's act together. So we decided to choose the northern storm. We took SR 24/19 NE out of Greenville and flanked the storm towards Paris. We stopped somewhere near Cooper and took the following pics. It is interesting because the storm is extremely low topped and sheared over, but still it managed to rotate and produce a lowering. The precip shaft is just out of the pic.



We continued NE and the storm was now just to our south. There wasn't really a defined wall cloud/lowering, so we were not expecting to see a tornado when it occured. We were trying to get ahead of the storm and then dive back south to get a better vantage point of the base. Then all of a sudden, a funnel drops from tiny wall cloud and becomes a tornado.


^ First Tornado

^ First Tornado

^ Video grab of first tornado

^ Video grab of second tornado

The tornado was only on the ground for about a minute, but it did manage to hit what I think was a barn. The tornado had a very "Wizard of Oz" appearance to it. The tornado lifted off the ground. The little wall cloud continued to move off to the east and about a minute later, another funnel began descending. This was the second tornado. It was only on the ground for about 20 seconds and didn't appear to hit anything.

An interesting thing with this tornado is that the foward motion of the tornado was faster than the storm motion. I think this is because the tornado south side of the meso and was rotating around it, therefore increasing the foward speed of the tornado. Also the second tornado formed from the same wall cloud in a short time period. So it could be called one tornado, but I prefer to say it was two seperate tornadoes because the condensation funnel completely disappeared between the two tornadoes.