And finally gave in and decided to create one. Who knows what I might throw in here, but it will be primarily chase accounts and other weather related activities. For my first post I wanted to do one of the most significant weather events of my life thus far. So enjoy...
I've only been impacted by a tornado once that I am aware of, and it happened to be a tornado that took me by complete surprise. For those that know me well you might find it hard to believe that anything weather related could sneak up on me. Well, on March 30th 2007 sometime between 8 and 9pm a tornado did. It really didn't do much of anything here in Murphy Texas, except blow down a portion of fence, and it was not recognized as being a tornado until it impacted Wylie where more substantial damage to homes was observed and a funnel cloud reported.
From what I remember no warning of any kind was issued for the storm before it struck.
At the time of the event I simply thought it had been a particularly intense downburst wind gust. It wasn't until Sunday morning from talking to people at church that I heard of the damage in Wylie and the report of a tornado.
Mom and Dad were out on their "Date Night" during the event while the rest of the family was either in bed or playing Nintendo downstairs while I was attempting to do lightning photography upstairs out my bed room window. We were all in very vulnerable spots and had the tornado been as strong as it was when it hit Wylie just a few minutes later we could've been injured... especially those of us involved in lightning photography at the time. There was also my three or four year old sister asleep downstairs in her room, with a large west facing window that could've been shattered, that I can't forget about.
During the fallowing days I believe I was extremely humbled and really awed by God who took care of us that night. And I was reminded who is actually sovereign over the sky and all that the weather does. In fact, this is the greatest lesson learned and I hope that I never forget it. For despite the fact that I was alert, watching the sky outside and the radar very carefully, he did something that I was not prepared for and put me into a situation where I had no power or control as if to remind me of who is really in charge and worthy of being worshiped.
Afterwards I did study the event and find some pretty interesting info on these kind of tornado events, even the name for the kind of storm system the tornado formed from. But, I hope and pray that I do not forget and lose the wonder and awe I had in the days fallowing the event for all that God does in weather (my most favorite subject).
I just did a brief google search for "March 30th 2007 Wylie Texas Tornado" and found a list of tornadoes that ocured that day from Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge). Ten of the twelve tornadoes occurred in Texas and only three of those ten were rated at EF1 with the Wylie tornado being an EF1.
| EF1 | Wylie area | Collin | 33°01′N 96°33′W / 33.02°N 96.55°W | 0220 | 0.8 miles (1.3 km) | Brief touchdown, 25 to 30 homes suffered severe damage to roofs and garage doors. Several other homes suffered minor damage such as broken fences and windows. The tornado had winds estimated at 95 mph. Caused $500,000 in damages. |
This is really about the only information I could find on this tornado other than a mention in the Texas Thunderbolt (news letter put out by the WFO in FT. Worth) article page two for the summer of 2007 where a list of Tornadoes for that spring was given (see here). After searching Google for awhile I did see occasional other mentions of the event in news articles, but that was about it. No maps, no real accounts, not much of anything. I think that since small tornadoes are not all that uncommon in the Metroplex every spring that this just didn't make many headlines.
Another interesting thing that surprised me:
If you look at the storm reports for the day (see the below image) there is not even a report of wind damage in that part of the Metroplex.
The only real reason for this I can think of is that not all storm reports make it onto this SPC (Storm Prediction Center) graphic due to unknown reasons. Possibly because the storm reports did not make it to SPC until long after the fact... but that is simply a guess...Here are some images of the damage found at our house the next morning after the tornado:
Wind funneled between our house and the neighbor's caused this section of fence perpindicular to the wind to blow down.
Some of the fence posts were actually snapped off at the base like this one.
This portion of fence flew from the back ground (area between the houses where other fence is lying) to the foreground being airborne the entire time. I believe this portion of fence probably bounced off the mail box which saved the vehicle that had been parked there.
There was plenty of other damage like these in our local area of houses, such as a down fences, trampolines in the wrong yards, and other lawn furniture tossed around. The damage seemed to be confined to just our few blocks.
The fallowing is a radar loop of the event.
You can see a very intense storm (a Supercell actually) blast throw Ft.Worth and then bow out into a "bow echo". The bow curls back on itself and a cell gets left behind spinning. That cell is what produced the tornado.
I believe storm chasers and meteorologists call the phenomena seen in this clip a "comma head".
Actually, I am not sure how it differs from a Mesoscale Convective Vortex (MCV). Given the fact that it was behind the leading edge of the squall line I would've thought that the atmosphere would be much too stable in the low levels to support tornado formation.
Apparently I was very wrong.
