Behind the Scenes: Dallas Tornado Coverage

NOTE: For additional updates, stay tuned to our news story, my Facebook List, and my Facebook Page.

NOTE: Some of these pictures also appeared in this news story.

The tornadoes that affected the Dallas-Fort Worth area yesterday were a scary sight to watch on live television. I heard a commotion out in the Operations area here at AccuWeather HQ and glanced up at CNN. They were showing this video (it's kind of dark but at 1:03 things get crazy):

The room became quiet and our meteorologists winced while watching CNN on the wall, not knowing (at the time) that the trucks were empty. We feared we would see worse.

Clearly this was a breaking weather situation, so I took my computer out to the Operations area, where I could help the news team get the information out on Social Media. I monitored WFAA's live feed, NWS Chat, and the raw observations from DFW airport on Pro, where I expected to see a report of a funnel cloud or tornado.

They never reported one, but they did report 27 minutes of hail (up to 1.75", which ended up damaging over 100 aircraft) during a heavy thunderstorm with lightning "in all quadrants" and heavy rain. Meanwhile Henry and I were monitoring nearly a dozen supercell thunderstorms in the Dallas area, two of which had to be covered in a "double" Tornado Warning (something I had never seen before).

I posted on Facebook and Twitter (as did the news writers) as news broke. Spotters were confirming funnel clouds and tornadoes right and left, including one near Carroltown as shown above in the radar from MapSpace. The outbreak lasted for a couple hours. As far as the locations of the tornadoes, take your pick from the Local Storm Reports, or this Rotation Tracks image from the SPC (they also have stats which we wrote an article about, regarding the rarity of tornadoes in the DFW area this time of year):

Or the storm surveys, which continue to come in from the Fort Worth NWS office (the largest twister confirmed as of this writing is an EF-3):