Justin's First Tornado
24 April 2004

I went out all day chasing Saturday, and got lucky by sighting one of only two tornadoes in Texas that day. Both of the tornadoes came out of the same supercell thunderstorm. Shortly after this photo was taken, the tornado died out and the storm turned outflow dominant, meaning that it’s outflow (rain, hail, and wind) overpowered it’s inflow (warm, moist air that feeds the storm). After this, the storm joined into a squall line with a few other storms, and they dropped some pretty good hail on parts of North Texas. The funny thing is that I though this was a tornado at the time, but I had just moved to get further from the storm because I was too close, and rushed to snap the couple of pictures that I got. The thing was probably only on the ground for about 30 seconds. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool to drive 450 miles and get lucky!

Tornado west of Throckmorton, TX

  1. You're full of shit. That's not a tornado. That's some dirt on your lens.
    — Farris    2946 days ago    #
  2. You're right, it very well could be. The print of the shot is a lot more convincing. But, since there was a tornado on the ground at this time, I'm going to give the shot the benefit of the doubt. Plus, what I thought was a tornado at the time was confirmed by other spotters that were nuts and were closer than I was.
    — justinm    2946 days ago    #