NOAA Storm Report
June 15th, 2002 Turpin, OK
Landspout Tornado
and Pampa, TX Lightning show
A nice long day of chasing with several good storms and some terrific lightning. We started the day in Lamar, Colorado then headed for Liberal, Kansas. There was a large MCS developing in Central Kansas so our best chance for tornadoes was the southwest edge of the system. We got to the storms late and missed a brief supercell tornado near Santanta, then proceeded south to Liberal in front of the shear line. When the gust front blew through Liberal it generated an enormous gustnado at the edge of town. We then proceeded south into Oklahoma, alternately driving ahead of the gust front and then slowing to let it catch us. As we passed Turpin, Oklahoma, a nice landspout formed on the shear line and was pushed out by the gust front into a nice arced funnel. Later we proceeded into Texas and saw terrific lightning show in Canadian and another outside of Pampa before stopping in Amarillo for the night and dinner at the Big Texan.
NOAA Storm Report
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| Monster gustnado outside of Liberal, Kansas. | Raggedy funnel on the shear line. | Landspout forms to the west of the van near Turpin. My first tornado! | |
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| The funnel is blasted away from the oncoming gust front. | |||
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| Tornado with contrast adjusted to see more detail.. | Nice CG strikes near Canadian, TX. | Awesome cloud to cloud lightning north of Pampa, TX | |
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| Check out this sequence of 4 frames: a cloud to cloud strike fires along side the van. | Here comes the leader bolt. | Main bolt fires and... | BOOM!! |
All pictures (C) Richard Hamel 2017.