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Last Updated on Monday, 04 January 2010 18:23 Written by Roger Hill

2008

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The set up on May 14th looked great. I had been looking forward to this day for many days, and it did not disappoint. Overnight convection produced an outflow boundary that intersected the dryline near Midland, Texas. An upper level low was moving out of the southern Rockies and was forecast to produce good lift  and cooling over the dryline/outflow intersection by later afternoon. We arrived northwest of Big Springs as a nice storm formed, showing rotation from it beginning. It produced a landspout tornado as it formed with strong shear along the boundary. As it matured, it produced nearly goflball sized hail. Another storm formed directly in front of it and as it encountered the outflow from the newly formed storm, it's base came down very low and it produced the tornado shown above, followed by another smaller tornado, along with numerous funnels before dissipating as the eastern most storm became the dominant storm. The eastern storm approached Abilene and produced a couple of brief tornadoes, along with baseball sized hail. Click on the image below for a larger image. Some of these images are digital and others are video stills.

Storm develops and becomes better organized.	Nice updraft with rfd wrapping around the south side.
Intense blowing dirt as the rfd wrapped this around the updraft base, looking east.	Lowering with blowing dirt. This was called in mistakenly as a tornado.
First funnel of the day forms directly over the road!	As we blasted east on I-20 from Big Springs, this funnel formed, which would be our tornado. (Video still)
Wide shot (video still) of the storm and funnel.	Another shot of the funnel (video still)
Taken by one of our customers, Bill Rudiak.	Another shot from Bill's camera as we were driving to get closer.
Stopped along I-20 looking north near Iatan, Texas.	Cool stretched out elephant trunk tornado.
Video still from my video of the tornado driving down the road.	Another wide video still, complete with tornado, core and clear slot.