Severe Storm Photography from Spring 2008
All photos copyrighted by Dave Chapman
| March 30: Dusk Storm |
| Intercepting my first storm of the season in western Oklahoma. |
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| Approaching storm on a marginal day. Darkness brought more severe weather as I took shelter in the town of Hinton. |
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| April 3: North Texas Storm |
| After several hours of chasing disorganized hail storms, I finally get a good look at a storm southwest of Bowie. |
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| Updraft and adjacent rain foot on the southwest side of the storm. |
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| Good view at sunset. |
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| April 7: North Texas Supercell |
| Another storm south of the Red River, this time west of Wichita Falls near the town of Electra. This wall cloud is rotating under a large rain-free base. |
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| Rear-flank downdraft (RFD) wraps around the wall cloud, helping create a funnel cloud with circulation briefly on the ground. |
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| Outflow from the rainy downdraft is seen feeding into the wall cloud. |
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| The storm has a threatening look as it approaches Wichita Falls. |
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| View from Iowa Park, just northwest of Wichita Falls. |
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| After working my way through Wichita Falls and getting back in front of the storm, I get a good view of the now much smaller cell. All is quiet as I enjoy the storm, with no lightning in the past ten minutes, until small hail begins to fall. Then a single lightning bolt strikes a nearby telephone pole (think flash-boom-sizzle nearly simultaneously). |
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| Another storm approaches the southwest side of Wichita Falls as dusk approaches. |
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| The storm gains strength. |
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| Weak rotation on the southern edge of the storm, along with a small wall cloud that struggles to produce a funnel. |
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| No tornado but a beautiful Texas storm in early April. |
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| April 9: Central Texas Supercell |
| This is actually from the night before at a campground in west central Texas. |
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| Powerful upper-trough and a warm front combine to produce this lone storm just west of Abilene. |
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| Strong outflow as the storm blasts through Breckenridge. This long-lived supercell included baseball-size hail and EF-1 tornadoes (86-110 mph winds on the Enhanced Fujita Scale). |
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| April 17: North Central Texas Storm |
| Squall line develops as I cross the Red River east of Henrietta. |
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| I intercept the southernmost storm a little northeast of Jacksboro, but new a storm develops further southwest, impossible to reach before nightfall. |
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| View across a pasture as the storm bears down on Chico, a little northwest of Decatur. But the storm weakens as the new southernmost storm develops into a powerful supercell. |
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| View on the road to Decatur. |
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| A weakened storm rolls through Decatur as baseball-size hail pounds Mineral Wells to the south. |
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2008 Storm Pages:
Dave Chapman's Storm Chasing and Outdoor Photo Galleries