Chasing and capturing tornadoes in the land of the most powerful storms

The sedate morning skies of the Texas Panhandle showed little promise of what was to come to forecasters but many storm chasers still made the journey out from Dallas, neighbouring state Oklahoma or, like myself, from the other side of the globe. A few hours later I was standing in front of a bellowing 1.5-kilometre-wide wedge tornado.

A wedge tornado grinds across the prairie land of the Texas Panhandle. Narrowly passing the town of Morton, the kilometre-wide twister did little damage except to drought-affected cotton fields.Credit: Nick Moir

If there is a lesson to be learned and remembered when chasing in Tornado Alley it’s “expect the unexpected”. The legendary panhandle is the ancient battleground where the most powerful storms on the planet compete for dominance.

The flat, treeless farming country about 1000 metres above sea level has been the scene of many droughts and violent storms.

Many weather models had hinted at some severe storms in the area on May 23 but tornadoes require a unique set of ingredients that only sometimes work out, even in Tornado Alley.

The first sign this storm had distinguished itself was its eagerness to move away from the other weaker storms and into the strong warm surface winds – its fuel.

Moving south-east it started to make a signature shape on radar, the dreaded “hook echo”. This shape, that resembles its name, signals that the storm is rotating and could eventually drop a tornado.

I picked a spot where I thought the storm would move to and the huge supercell storm bore down. Like a huge vacuum cleaner it sucked huge amounts of dust from the drought ravaged fields and up into the storm base.

Hidden from all but a few by the curtain of dust, the storm base lowered an angry churning bowl of bruised cloud close to the ground, only a kilometre away.

At first a few tendrils of dust showed evidence that winds were rotating below and then stabbing down the first solid vorticity held contact with the ground. Screaming inflow winds tore at my clothes and knock you over.

The twister continued to grow to about 1.5 kilometres wide among cotton fields and moved eastwards, crossing between the towns of Morton and Enochs harmlessly – aside from collapsing an abandoned farmhouse and knocking over trees.

Nick Moir is the Sydney Morning Herald’s chief photographer.