Well it was in there somewhere: TORNADO!

Ok, let me take you back to Day 1 of this tour, Sunday 11th May. The Big Day (pretty much the only day!), 10% tornado risk issued by the Storm Prediction Centre and everything firing as hoped apart from one thing: this set up produced HP supercells with any tornadoes rain wrapped in rain and out of view unless you have a tank or are bordering on the reckless.

In 2010 a tornado (no. 5) only became apparent later that evening when it was spotted on a photograph, a pale white affair that went unnoticed at the time. With all the excitement at the time there was no need for an inquest as to how we'd missed it, heck we'd already seen some amazing tornadoes that day, so what?

On this occasion there was much disappointment; if we'd been chasing a classic supercell it's highly likely we'd have seen 3 or 4 tornadoes up to EF3 and apparently a mile and a half across. At the time there was much "can you see anything?", "what's that?", "I thought I saw something" and so on. The frustrating thing was that you knew exactly where the tornado should be, there was a classic hook on radar and the "bolder" chasers had already called it in travelling north east by east. We looked and could't make out anything with any certainty.  We all agreed to scan through our many photos at some point to see if anything showed up, more in hope than expectation.

Eventually, I scan through all my photos. One by one, blow them up to 100%, add an exaggerated "S" curve to boost contrast and then onto the next.

The shot of the radar shows a very impressive hook. We're the circle to the south east of the hook, so we were all looking to the north west where we knew a tornado would be. The second photo is taken two and a half minutes later looking north west.

When looking into the murk we clearly weren't  thinking big enough. The number of times I've read chase accounts where the tornado was so big it just looked like a big storm or cloud. In this case the same must have been true, as dead centre, as clear as day is a dirty great WEDGE TORNADO!!! Also apparent is a large horizontal suction vortice on the eastern edge. In our feeble defence the image was fleeting as by the next frame the tornado had once again been absorbed into the curtains of rain.

Rather annoyingly this is is the only photo in the series which is not in sharp focus which is a pain, so no large prints can be made. Still there it is, tornado no. 6 on my all time list. Can't complain.