We had finished watching a “landspout” fest from a line of thunderstorms that was becoming outflow dominant, and drove east a few miles through light to moderate rain to catch back up to the gust front, when my passenger yelled about a tornado to our south. Sure enough, as I pulled to a stop, a faint column of rotating spray and dust was visible out his window, under the tip of a condensation funnel, less than a mile away. The vortex only lasted a minute or two at most, and was weakening by the time I got out for some shots. None of this is particularly unusual. Most tornadoes I see are small and weak; some die even before I can pull over. The crazy part was that the little cyclonic tornado spun up well behind the gust front, under a rotating and notch-shaped cloud base of the “whale’s mouth“, right next to another core! After 40 years of storm observing, I still witness new scenes and processes every year, and this certainly qualified as one.
1 WNW Shallowater TX (30 Apr 25) Looking SSW
33.6937, -102.0073