Click here to watch Part 1
Click here to watch Part 2
I took my Dad storm chasing on Friday…it was his first tornado chase (his only other storm chase was to Hurricane Ike’s outer rain bands and near the storm surge). It was a good chase. We drove right to a supercell with a wall cloud and funnel clouds east of Moulton, rode Alabama Highway 36 through Hartselle and across Morgan County (thinking we were chasing the same storm…actually a new one formed and caught up with us). In eastern Morgan County, we saw what looked like a wall cloud to the left of our car, then realized the road had turned north and it was coming at us! We went into the storm shelter of the Freeman family in Cotaco, AL, near Lacey’s Springs. They were very nice to let us strangers in!
On the way home we drove through another supercell (accidentally), and got into some quarter- or half dollar-sized hail. Dad got the car up under trees, no damage, but nice video. I also put in weather radar pictures showing our car’s location (the Buick logo) at timesm, relative to the storm. We had the ideal position on the Lawrence County storm…to the south with good view, but made two mistakes. One, don’t forget which way is north, and two, when you quit chasing, don’t quit watching the radar.
