REPORT: May 1, 2009 Gorilla Hail

We chased northwest Texas yesterday with the high hopes of seeing some monster hail and weren't let down. Racing south out of Seymour, TX a supercell had started to develop in Knox County just to our west-southwest. This storm quickly became tornadic dropping a small tornado before we could get to it. We stopped south and west of Munday, TX to observe a well-defined meso. The storm was a prolific lightning producer and I tried to get a few daytime strikes and managed to get one faint return stroke.

This storm continued its strange storm motion to the south (and at time moving to the ssw) and we followed it along ending up near south of Rule, TX. We viewed what was possibly a rain-wrapped tornado near somewhere near Rule but cannot confirm this. Following the storm to Highway 6, we decided to ease north just a bit to see if we could find a swath of larger hail. Most were around quarter to golf ball sized but we ran a across a few baseballs as well.

We continued to search for larger stones when I spotted a monster laying in the grass. Golfball were still being chunked out of this storm but I couldn't resist jumping out there after this one.


We continued to follow this storm to near Stamford where we viewed some intense motion and RFD picking up dust.

A brief tornado may have occurred with this feature but we could not confirm it. We bailed of of this storm and headed to one north of Throckmorton, TX only to find it also dissipating. Ended the chase at Chili's in Wichita Falls with other from OUN and seeing some fellow Colorado chasers.