March 23, 2007 SE New Mexico Tornadoes
March 23, 2007 SE New Mexico Tornadoes


I started the day with no plans of chasing, so I actually got a full nights sleep before this one. After seeing the models that mourning I was convinced enough to move south from Borger to Amarillo and make a decision from there. I was able to talk my friend Andrew into going after his plans for the evening got cancelled. We went SW and ended up in Muleshoe, got internet and notice the storms SW of us in NM. We vetured futher SW till we got the north side of Lovington, NM where we met up with the first storm to cross our paths. The storm intensified rapidily dropping a few small funnels followed by a large lowering just west of Lovington. As the storm moved north of the city, the structure got better every minute. It then dropped the first tornado near Tatum, NM, the largest tornado of the afternoon that we saw. After going through Tatum we took a road NE out of town (state highway 125) figuring the storm had made a right turn more to the east at this point, but it didn't. It cycled up and down over the next 30 minutes dropping a decent needle and then a small rope to our west. Our road took us a good ways east of the storm till we got into the TX panhandle again. We found a northbound road and got back in range just before dark. Structure of this storm was still amazing, but it only dropped one more funnel that we saw NW of the Bledsoe, TX area. We stayed with this storm up to Rogers, NM and lost good visibility and broke of the chase due to a lacking of road options.

As we began to venture home, about a mile into TX we came across another chaser who got stuck on the worst muddy road I have ever seen. While trying to flag down other vehicles to get enough rope to try and pull out the SUV out, one guy who stopped told us he didnt have any rope but said he was trying to get back to his house, because it had been hit by a tornado. This was the first I had heard of any damage of the day, but would not be the last. After failing to get enough rope, we went to Muleshoe for gas and then turned back into the storms to go to Clovis to drop off our new passenger at a hotel so he could get someone to tow him out in the mourning. I received a call about this time that Clovis had been hit by a tornado, but we didnt know to what extent. We had no clue Clovis had no power. Clovis was a mess, to say the least. He was able to get a hotel even though they had no power. Me and Andrew then ventured futher into Clovis, to find out that everyone in town driving around trying to find damage. Every street had an inch to over a foot of water flowing down it and it was still raining. After seeing a destroyed house (flipped mobile home) and trees brances everywhere, we called it quits for the day and returned to Amarillo. The next morning I came across 3 snapped powerlines north of Panhandle, TX. I figured they were the result of straight line winds that night as the line rolled through.

2 for 3 this year on chases, with 5 tornadoes. Starting to make up for the 0 for 20+ for the past 2 years.

Here are a couple photos:

           

Here is the video: