Looking northwest in poor contrast at elongated base {area #1}.  Time was 4:40pm along SR-59, 3 W St. Jo (left).
Panning west at this rain free base, which was also of interest {area #2}.  Same time and loc. as at upper-far right (right).

Area #1, looking northwest at the developing meso from the same location nine minutes later.

Area #1, a couple minutes later, the meso becoming better organized.

This composite image shows both updrafts, area #1 is at right, which is the main meso, and area #2 is at left portion of the image, looking essentially due west.  The new meso exhibited moderate rotation at cloud base and developed a slight clear slot.  Note the strong inflow band to the right of the main updraft.

   
At 4:55pm, the meso was looking more impressive, with a well developed clear slot.  We had to continue east due to SVR hail falling at our location (3 W St. Jo, highway 59) (left).
Isolated 1" hailstones fell at our location at 4:54pm... with the east edge of the mesocyclone in the background (right).

      
About 6:25pm, an interesting E-W band of updrafts were visible with crazy lowerings.  Many of these lowerings were rotating on the northwest flank of the main storm.  This is looking north towards Gainesville from I-35 (left).  Driving closer to this new region of interest (9 S Gainesville) (center).
This was actually the best rotation we witnessed all day, in this updraft lowering looking NNE from 9 S Gainesville shortly after 6:30pm (right).

Looking SSW towards the supercell that spawned the Fort Worth tornado.  Time ~6:40pm.

mscheid@grapevine.net
last updated:  March 28, 2000

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