March 21, 2005 - Paris, TX 

   Risk Level: Moderate

   Tornadoes: 1

   Hail: 1/4" 

   Mileage: 228 

   Chase Account by: Mike Mezeul II 

Today marked the official season opener for the 2005 chase season! We had our previous chase on February 22, but today's chase was our first away from home. What an incredible day it turned out to be. Our chase team intercepted a nice "Wizard of Oz" looking tornado just south of Paris, TX. Today also marked the first tornadoes for Stormphoto.net's newest chase team members, Mike Bak and Kevin Sims, two great friends and fun chasers. We consider ourselves very fortunate that we were able to intercept this storm today as our departure from DFW was delayed by a few hours. The battery in my truck decided to completely end its life bright and early this morning and thus had me scrambling for a jump and on a mission to buy and install a battery quickly. Within a few hours, I was able to buy a new battery (in the hole $89), install it, and reconnect everything that was hooked up to the battery. 

Our target for today was dead on, Paris, TX. Our setup was pretty easy but brought a few concerns to the table.  We had a dryline bulging out to our west, just along the I-35 corridor, a warm from lifting to the north from around the College Station area, and a triple point setup just around the northern Oklahoma area. We knew any chasing that happened today would require a hill and a perhaps a chainsaw in order to see what was going on because we would be in eastern TX or eastern OK, both infested with trees. Our chase team decided that our best bet would be Paris, TX. A few reasons supporting our choice for Paris as our target area. It was close to home (with gas @ 2.08/galloon it was nice not to drive hundreds of miles), we would be chasing on a pretty nice dryline bulge, and we would have some of the southernmost storms and best inflow. Also, any further east of Paris, trees get to be about 100' tall and the road network is pretty pathetic. 

By 1:00p.m. we were on our way north on HWY 75. We headed northbound on HWY 75 to HWY 380 in McKinney, then headed eastbound until we reached the small town of Farmersville, were we observed a few towering Cu's and watched one involve into a pretty descent storm, until it gusted out about 20 minutes later. From Farmersville we continued eastbound on 380 eventually running into the city of Greenville. At that point, we had one storm to our due north, and two to our due south. We checked up radar at the local Radio Shack and saw a max 45 DBZ out of all three storms...not very impressive at all. We decided to hang out with the storm south to us for a bit, as it started to look somewhat "organized". We positioned ourselves directly due south of it by just a 1/2 mile or so and enjoyed the view (pic to the left is how many chases seem to begin...waiting...I prefer the bed in Ken's van, makes for quite a comfortable napping...I mean forecasting area!). The storm began to give us something to think about when it started to get a very nice inflow band into it, and quickly developed a nice rotating frisbee shaped meso. The sheer that we witnessed was extremely jaw dropping. Surface winds were blasting out of the southeast at 35mph, go about 500 ft up and the winds shifted southwest, and in the upper levels, winds were shooting northeast. Looking straight up from the ground to the anvil, you could literally see the whole storm twisting upon the atmosphere, it was quite a sight. After about 30 minutes of waiting for things to happen, we decided that the storm back to our north was in much better shape and seemed to be transforming from a multicellular storm to a supercell. So with our minds finally made up and an organized storm in sight, we headed northeast on HWY 224 from Greenville on towards Paris. 

We journeyed through a somewhat scenic route as we slowly caught up with our storm, and once we got approximately 20 miles from our storm, we were shown a great corkscrew updraft. With the base of the storm still out of sight, we already knew that things were probably pretty well organized underneath it with just the view of the updraft being as it was. About 10 miles southwest of the storm we were given our first look at the base...and our drive out there suddenly seemed worthwhile! What a sight! A great rainfree base that had two inflow tails into it that stretched for at a few miles to the southeast and west! Also, we were treated to a great mesocyclone with a nice RFD punch coming into it. Although it was a great view, the RFD made us concerned about the possibility of seeing something tornadic. Luckily for us, Mother Nature decided she wanted to show us something, within a matter of minutes, our old mesocyclone completely occluded, but a better, more well developed meso formed just north of us and had very intense rotation with it. 

                            

With our new meso crossing Hwy 24, we jumped back on the highway and pursued it north until we caught up with it about 8 miles southwest of Paris. Bak and I were in my vehicle, while Scott and Kevin were in Scott's van. We decided to obtain 2 different views on this storm, so Bak and I decided to hang back a bit, while Scott and Kevin continued about a mile down the road. With very intense rotation above us and about to cross the highway, we continued no more and just watched as a moderately sized wall cloud formed right in front of us. During this time, Bak and myself ran into fellow chasers Darin Brunin and Travis Livengood, two University of Kansas meteorology students. Now these guys are hard core! lol They drove all the way from Lawrence, KS to track the storm in Paris, and it paid off! Props to them! Anyways, we met up with Darin and Travis and finally decided that our position was moving further away from the wall cloud and we decided to meet back up with Kevin and Scott, who had now moved even further down the road, about 3 miles from where we were. 

As we headed towards our new viewing point, Scott came on the radio yelling "TORNADO!". We quickly started looking around and spotted a very thin, rapidly rotating funnel descending from the wall cloud. By the time we pulled off the road and got out of the truck, we had our first touch down of a beautiful tornado. 

                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tornado was on the ground for about 2 minutes before it lifted back up, but in that time it managed to strike a barn and put a pretty good amount of debris into the air. No more than a minute later, the tornado was back down on the ground and produced a nice cone shape for about 4 minutes before it lifted back up again. We did not see any visual confirmation of significant debris this time. 

 

 

 

 

      

 

By the time the tornado had dissipated, our meso had gotten a few miles east of us, so we quickly shot northward on HWY 24 until we came across our next path east which was Farm Road 1497. When we got about 3 miles down the road we pulled over as the meso was moving, believe it or not, northwest. A Paris Police officer came up to me and asked my opinion on the possibility of another tornado dropping down close to the highway, with no hesitation I answered "yes!". He quickly than jumped in his car and pulled out in the middle of the highway, shutting it down. This created quite a traffic jam and I'm sure people were pretty unhappy when nothing did touch down, but the rotation that was evident made for quite a possibility. 

 

After the meso crossed the highway, things began to settle down. Our meso quickly occluded and our storm went linear pretty quickly. We followed the remnants of the storm into Paris and than called off the chase, for all that was left was just rain. On a weird note though, about 20 minutes after the storm had gone completely linear, the city of Paris still had sirens going off and fire trucks driving no more than 20mph down residential roads sounding sirens. It was quite odd, but hey, at least they were providing great warning before and after the storm!

With the storm completely linear and darkness among us, we fueled up at a local gas station, swapped information with Darin and Travis, and showed off the video of the tornadoe to a handful of locals, and than headed off back west on HWY 82. Although, our fun was not over just quite yet. On the way back towards Bonham, we encountered a severe storm just to our north. With no roads to get us closer to the storm, I setup and took some lightning pictures of the storm. The setting  was pretty amazing. A nice cumulonimbus cloud about 10 miles away, a cirrus deck above to the west, and the stars shining brightly just above the storm. I personally have always wanted to do some lightning photographs with this type of setting, and now I have!