I’ve always been an very amateur storm chaser. Living in Texas for the past 40 years I’ve had more than my share of very close calls with Tornadoes. We’ve had small tornadoes damage our home, larger tornadoes come within 10-20 miles, tennis ball size hail, insane wind, etc.
Back in 2015 I had been dabbing around with photography. I thought it would be cool if I could someday try to take photos of a severe storm. I finally had my chance because there was a major storm outbreak in the DFW area on 04/26/2015. There was a super cell east of us in Stephenville that had a history of producing large funnel clouds and possible tornadoes. The wife reluctantly decided to come along and off we went!
From a distance of probably 10 miles or so, we could see the giant super cell, it looked fricking awesome. It was like a mother ship landing on earth. The closer we got the more structure detail we could see. The entire super cell was rotating! It actually looked like a giant tornado. To this day some people think we did photograph a monster tornado, but it didn’t have that classic funnel shape, maybe it was too low to the ground to see a funnel. Maybe a giant wedge tornado?
I was a little confused where to park so we could setup to take photos. Lucky for us as when we drove over a small hill, we saw a group of cars, storm chasers, etc, with all their gear setup. 🙂 So…we figured they knew what they were doing and we setup right next to them.
The wife and I enjoyed talking to the storm chasers, they were very cool and friendly. Everyone was excited because the storm cell was heading right near us and we were all in a very good location to take some photos.
Seeing this giant super cell in person was breath taking. Easily the biggest super cell I’ve ever seen in my life. The wife and I will never forget seeing this in person. Just incredible!! The trip home was a bit scary due to this system had spawned several tornadoes.
Bonus content! lol.. About a year or so ago (2023), I was at my parent’s house in Haltom City and a huge storm that had a history of producing tornadoes came through. At the time I wasn’t paying attention to the weather alerts, but things were getting very windy and I noticed what looked like plummeting smoke going through the town. That’s when I looked at the weather radar on my phone and it said there was a tornado warning for my location but the sirens weren’t going off! Naturally like a dummy I grab my phone and head outside to record some video. lol.. It looked like a war zone! Weird orange glow to the lights, smoke, debris, super strong winds, it was crazy. lol..
Our local tv Fox 4 channel affiliate played my video on the news and added it to their website. woo hoo! lol… They didn’t even tell me they were going to use it, when I watched the news all of a sudden “Dave Munsie in Haltom City… ” lol.. too funny! 😛
May 24, 2024
