Day 7 Dallas gets hit

So last night seems to have made headlines around the world. We had received reports of hail the size of grapefruit and a tornado supposedly a mile wide whilst in out hotel room. We had just got back from collecting our car and a quick visit to Walmart for food etc and had been caught in an area of outflow, but as we'd expected to only have been a short time we hadn't bothered taking our chasing gear so had no idea just how big the storm had become or where it was heading, sadly the Dallas rush hour and road works put paid to the notion of a quick trip and a valuable lesson was learnt!

There were several storms around, 3 of which had tornado warnings on around the Dallas area last night, by this morning there were 5 confirmed tornadoes and 2 suspected, with (at the most recent count) hundreds injured and 6 people killed, a figure which is expected to rise today as rescue teams continue there work. The area hit seems to be residential and the weather deteriorated during the rush hour and was at its peak during the hours of darkness, which will have no doubt contributed to the numbers injured.

A radar sweep from last night, the red boxes indicate tornado warned storms and our location (hotel) the blue circle. This period was not the most intense but gives you an idea of where the storms were in the city and the number of cells out there.

As much as I am here to storm chase, and by all accounts last night was a big'un, chasing through a city as big as Dallas during rush hour would have been far from ideal. Whilst we all get gleeful at the thought of large hail, strong winds and tornadoes none of us enjoy the fact that these things devastate homes, and turn people's lives upside down forever in a matter of seconds. You could say it is quite a macabre fascination. Either way we were lucky, staying on the northern side of the city we missed the larger cells, something that can only be attributed to pure luck. 

Today we are heading north from Dallas to the Kansas area. As I write we are driving through Oklahoma City. The forecast for this afternoon is fairly marginal, and all quite high based. That's said the forecast for yesterday wasn't great, certainly giving no indication as to what was to kick of later in the day, so we will see! Even if there isn't much, we should at least be in a great position for tomorrow!