May 24, 2002 - Lake Kemp HP and Vernon, TX Supercells

I chased with, my wife, Patti today. We left the Dallas area around 2 PM. I spent about an hour reviewing weather data. The situation appeared to be marginal for supercells, with significant tornadoes being unlikely. Winds aloft were relatively weak. Instability was high. Since wind shear was marginal, the goal was not to intercept tornadoes, but instead to shoot storm structure and lightning.

Light rain and mid level storm "debris" (clouds), prevented clear views of storm structure east of the storm updrafts. We did see some nice mammatus, but didn't stop to shoot video because we were rushing south near Lake Kemp ahead of an HP supercell that was reported to be producing baseball hail.

Just north of Lake Kemp on highway 183, we passed a group of about 6 large wild Russian boars. They had just crossed the road and were in the grass a few feet off of the highway. I didn't see them until we were too close to take evasive action, had one of them ran out onto the road. Fortunately, they stayed in the grass.

Click on any image below for a larger version. (Images from video unless otherwise labeled.)

	Looking south from about 10 miles west of Vernon at the north side of the "Lake Kemp" HP supercell.
	Looking west-northwest from Seymour, TX at the southwest end of the "Lake Kemp" HP. A tornado warning was issued about 15 minutes before this image was shot. The mesocyclone wrapped in precipitation as the storm quickly evolved into an HP supercell configuration.
	Looking west at the decaying HP supercell meso from a side road north of highway 82, about 2/3rds of the way between highway 183 and highway 25, south-southwest of Electra.
	Looking northwest at the "Vernon" storm about 5 minutes after it produced a weak mulit-vortex tornado. The lowering near the center of the image is a new wall cloud that developed at the north end of the storm after the tornado, which had developed farther south.
	Looking west-northwest at the remains of the mesocyclone that had earlier produced the multi-vortex tornado. Note the RFD "clear" slot located left of center and above the wall cloud.
	Wide angle shot of the storm.
	Another shot of the RFD slot wrapping around the eastern side of the wall cloud. At this time the mesocyclone was becoming undercut and elongated NE/SW.
	Looking west at the undercut mesocyclone. Rotation was still visible above the arcus cloud / outflow boundary.
	Gustnado along the gust front.
	Another brief concentrated dust whirl.

	Looking west at the approaching arcus cloud a little before sunset.
	Arcus, sunset and lightning.
	Same shot, one or two frames later as the lightning bolt fades.
	After the outflow boundary moved over our filming location, we returned to highway 25, turned north and drove about 3 miles to highway 287, then southeast back to Dallas. We were treated with a spectacular lightning show along the way. However, light rain prevented us from stopping and shooting photos.

Many of my photographs are now available on-line in high quality, high resolution form through WorkBookStock.com

Visit The Storm Shop - your source for excellent SKYWARN training and Storm Chase adventure videos, photographs and books.