Author: David Drummond

Of all weather phenomena, sandstorms is the one I hate. It’s a sure sign spring is just around the corner when the regular sand storms start in west Texas. The majority of fields are bare, being in between harvest and planting season, and we are most often driest this time of year. Late winter/early spring fast moving storm systems often kick up the winds in to the 40+ mph range and today was no exception. So far at my location the highest gust we had was 52 mph, and the highest in the area was 55 mph.

A couple of wildfires have broken out, one between Midland and Lamesa, TX, and a huge wildfire has erupted near Muleshoe, TX in the southwest Texas Panhandle that is ongoing as I write this. In fact, Muleshoe Emergency Management has requested evacuation assistance in the area and a fire warning released.

BULLETIN - EAS ACTIVATION REQUESTED
FIRE WARNING
TEXAS EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY LUBBOCK TEXAS
RELAYED BY NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LUBBOCK TX
402 PM CST MON JAN 28 2008

THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE IS TRANSMITTED AT THE REQUEST OF THE
MULESHOE TEXAS EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY.

THE MULESHOE EMERGENCY MANAGER IS REQUESTING ASSISTANCE IN
EVACUATION OF BUILDINGS NEAR AND NORTH OF A GROWING WILD FIRE
LOCATED SOUTH OF MULESHOE...OVER NORTHEAST BAILEY COUNTY...NEAR
THE INTERSECTION OF HIGHWAYS 214 AND 746. THE FIRE APPEARS TO BE
SPREADING QUICKLY TO THE NORTHEAST AND HAS ALREADY GROWN QUITE
LARGE. CITIZENS IN THIS AREA ARE REQUESTED TO MOVE TO SAFE
LOCATIONS IMMEDIATELY.

Looks like another windy and sandy day tomorrow before a cool down and small shot at some snow. If you don’t like the weather in west Texas, just wait a minute!

WOW! Describes what happened last evening perfectly. The first severe weather event of the year turned out to be a grand one indeed. If this is a sign of things to come, it’s going to be one heck of a year for storm chasing. Some storm chasers banked their first tornado catches of the year last evening, on January 8…. amazing!

Before the night was over we had 7 tornado watches, including one PDS watch (Particularly Dangerous Situation) stretching from Oklahoma to the Great Lakes region in and even that is STILL ongoing as I write this with a tornado watch up from Louisiana to Indiana.

The bulk of the tornadic activity took place in the PDS watch box across southern Missouri, in and around the Springfield area. At one point we had tornado warnings stretching across the entire state! In this area supercell after supercell trained across the Springfield area SW to NE, all being tornadic and dropping numerous tornadoes. Unfortunately, there was quite a bit of damage and a couple of fatalities as well.

By 6 p.m. Central Time, the Storm Prediction Center showed 38 reports of tornadoes, with another 5 reports since that time. It is still unconfirmed the exact number of tornadoes as of this writing. It may be days before all the NWS offices can get their surveys and reports done.

I of course was not chasing this event, as I generally won’t go more than 150 miles from home before April 1st (after big busts in previous years on long, early season trips). A number of chasers did get out yesterday and some of them were able to capture a tornado.

The above two images I captured on GRL3 radar software as one of the supercells was approaching Springfield with a tornado on the ground that had just caused damage in Strafford. One picture I noted below is destined to be a classic!

Here is the preliminary tornado tracks report from the NWS in Springfield, Missouri.

Not to forget the folks up further north in Wisconsin and Illinois where even more tornadoes caused damage and several communities.
I’ve also added some video to the front page of the website from the events.