Chase Log: May 12th, 2004 -- Tornadoes south of Harper
To ensure that we stayed out of the path of this now-monster supercell, we opted to drop south on backroads to get a position south of the storm. We headed back east on a dirt road after dropping south of Highway 160 a few miles, when we saw this (the fourth) large and dusty tornado to our northeast:
As that tornado disappated, and we continued east on the backroads, the storm took on an very ominous appearance. The overall structure of the meso at this point was absolutely incredible. We stopped to film the intense, wrapped-up meso to our north-northeast, and recorded (unbeknownest to us at the time) the fifth tornado of the night, visible courtesy of a good lightning stike on the right side of the image:
After this, we dropped south, thinking that, since it was already dark, it would be a little too dangerous to navigate the backroads with an very intense tornado supercell just to our north. As we headed south and west to get back on a main road, we stopped to take some video and pictures of the incredible lightning show this storm was putting on. Despite the most intense mid-level and anvil lightning I have ever seen, I did not see a SINGLE cloud-to-ground lightning strike. Hmm...
