April 3, 2000 Olney, Texas Tornadoes

The weekend of April 29/30, 2000 proved to be exciting. I was a part of the National Severe Storms Laboratory/Texas Tech University project call MOCISE. Check out this URL for more on this project :

http://www.stormeyes.org/pietrycha/mocise/mocise.html

We started our missions on Saturday near the Post area and encountered a nice LP supercell. This storm was rooted above the boundary layer and never could quite get its act together. It did produce decent sized hail and exhibited fair structure.

Sunday was a very promising day and quickly became a chaser's delight. We intercepted a tornadic supercell near Crowell. My probe team observed a large "v" shaped partially obscured tornado south of town that was churning up the countryside with numerous power flashes visible. Next we moved to a gorgeous wet classic supercell near the Olney area that produced three confirmed tornadoes observed by the NSSL team. This storm evolved into a huge HP monster and had gorgeous structure.

Pictures of all events are shown below.

In order below: 1) the Post, Texas storm, 2) Crowell, Texas storm and tornado, and 3) Olney supercell and tornado:

Splitting storms with the anvil of the LP near Post spreading overhead.	LP supercell near Post, TX.
Post LP splits and updraft becomes linear in appearance.	A little nostalgia as the sunsets behind a cb with my probe's instruments in front.
Developing supercell near Dickens.	Updraft pulls scud into it as it rapidly intensifies towards Crowell.
Golf ball size hail falls near the vault area.	Soon baseball sized hail is found.
Rapid cascading action appears near the hook region.	Rapid rotation occurs in the same region.
Huge HP rolls in with a rain wrapped tornado and baseball size hail.	Developing tornado!!!
The Olney, Texas mesocyclone.	Front edge of the precip core with the forward flank visible.
Funnel forms under the forward flank.	Another picture of the funnel near Olney.
Tornado touches down west of Olney.	The mesocyclone is really visible. Gorgeous structure.
One last shot of this gorgeous mesocyclone.	Downed power lines and broken telephone poles where the tornado crossed the road.