From last week:













Gust Front Blowing Through:









And I'm still waiting on the ones from this week. Will post when they become available.

Awesome pictures. You went storm chasing?

Thanks!
Sorry I should have specified. Our school is part of the Vortex2 project going on right now, and my girlfriend along with a few other friends are out there.

Great pix, Mike. The second one down almost looks like a microburst. If I were there I'd have gotten the hell out of the way of the storm in the 3rd pix. I'd imagine that not only had tornado potential but also strong straight line winds/micoburst and some deadly lightning strikes. In flat country like that there are no hiding places.

Here are some that just became available from this week:

The TIV (Tornado Intercept Vehicle):





Lowering Cloud Base (from Tuesday's storm):







Wall Cloud from Tuesday:

Mike great photos.

WOW!

??? its thurs! Not whipem out wed.

Damn, all these pictures make me want to go chasing out there! Great Pics Mike!

Thanks! Will hopefully have more to post soon!

Not me, unless I had clear definition that I was in a safe area. You see that second and third pix in the first set Mike posted. I'd be driving 70 mph away from those clouds.

Agree. I also think that "armored weather tank" may give some a false sense of security. It and its occupants wouldn't stand a chance if caught in the wrong spot.

Very successful day for Vortex2 today. They successful intercepted 3 tornadoes! Will hopefully have some pictures to put up soon in the future!

I think a lot of folks misunderstand the dangers these folks really face. Many tornadic storms in the midwest are fairly dry or have minimal rain areas. Heck i've seen some F3's that came out of clouds that didn't even look trhreatening with sunshine almost near the core of the storm. Those are more predictable in path. But when the moisture is loaded on the ground and you have a lot more rain you enter the dangerous situation of rain wrapped tornados. Also heavy rain in these storms can also cause microbursts. Maybe the most important thing of all though is that rainy tornadic storms can cause a lot of re-orientation on where a tornado jumps to. What may seem like a safe location can easily change as the initial tornado vanishes and another one at a different edge of the storm reforms and pulls the storm in a different direction. If you are not at a safe distance or if you assumed the storm would not change direction you could instantly be in trouble. There was a scenec in Twister like that where the competitor chaser got wiped out. Also I think the infamous Oklahoma city tornado had heavy rain that reoriented the tornado to a different part of the storm and then that re-orientation caused the storm to hit the town instead of miss it wide as was originally thought.

Yes very true. They try to stay pretty far away from the high precipitation supercells that cause rain-wrapped tornadoes. This was one of the reasons they weren't able to fully intercept the one that Bettes and The Weather Channel had coverage on for hours that night. They could never get in a safe position to fully observe the tornado.

And according to the team, most of the chase days have involved high precipitation supercells, with not many opportunities to chase the dryer tornadic storms, hence the lack of good intercepts again this year. Another thing to try to avoid is the hail core. Well, they failed one day in the second week of operation, and they lost a wind shield.

Here are some from the other day, hopefully some of the other ones of the other tornado become available soon:

Funnel Cloud:


Tornado:


Thunderstorm:

All great photos Mike from the initial one all the way through. Did you happen to get any cloud height data of these storms, particularly the more ferocious ones. Some of these tornados come from only 25-30K foot storms and I always contrast that to a 63K foot storm that passed right over me in Marlboro NJ around 1990. There were three homes in the area, including one on my block that got struck that night and the next day several of us, led by me, signed contracts to put up lightning rods. That period in Monmouth had ferocious CTG lightning storms for many years running every summer. That storm did not have wind or hail but had unbelievable non-stop CTG lightning for over an hour. It was a late night storm and all the energy shifted into lightning and torrential rain. The only time I saw a lightning storm that was worse was when I was in Naples Florida - also late at night.

Thanks! I didn't happen to but I'm positive that the chasers definitely got it. I can ask them about it. It definitely appears that this storm that they were able to capture the tornado was not as fierce as the previous storms that they failed to intercept.

Here is one more picture from the other day of a real close funnel:

Yesterday was a very successful day for the Vortex2 team. They were able to get 2 tornadoes as well as observe a few other funnels. Here are some pictures:

6" Hail in diameter reported!! Vortex2 team stayed out of this one, but other spotters were reporting nothing short of a disaster zone that were near it.

SPC also reporting it:

2032 600 6 S SUNRAY MOORE TX 3594 10181 (AMA)