Now here’s a chase that I actually wanted to end before it got started. Going into it, I was suffering some extreme abdominal pain but I had no symptoms or effects to determine a cause. It was just straight sharpshooting pain and nothing more. This pain was creeping in on me the day before but it was not that bad. From around the time I woke up, the pain was so excruciating that I could hardly move an inch without feeling like I was about to break. It has since subsided but that day was brutal in every sense of the word. Anyway, fortunately, I was smart enough to make it to Wichita, Kansas the night before, which I needed to do anyway due to the flat tire I had achieved from that day. This is by no means a bragging fest but it benefited me to be here because it was a near 4.5 hour drive from Wichita to Wheeler, Texas, which meant I did not have to really push myself to the target zone too quickly. I am so grateful I do business with Firestone because, despite my morning rush, they took care of me, as always and with near no delay. This was my first time to chase this far into the Texas Panhandle since October of 2012. I still remember like it was yesterday when I was chasing in the same general area. With me were some friends from the college I was at at the time but there’s one particular memory that stands out. As we were on the move, the almost scariest thing happened to us, as if living through a smaller scene out of Final Destination. We ended up finding ourselves behind an 18 wheeler, maintaining a safe distance back of at least 200 feet. Despite this distance, the trucker managed to fling a rock right into the middle of the windshield and left a quarter size crack. History tends to repeat itself so this time, the truck was coming towards me and it was more near the center of my forehead. Fortunately, in both situations, the windshield never busted. I guess the panhandle missed me quite a bit! Once I arrived in Wheeler, I started to wonder if I should not push onto Shamrock or McLean. I mean, both were within a decent distance but the pain I mentioned earlier was not helping my thought process. Though there was not much initially happening in the forecast or in the sky, I decided to move onto Shamrock. As I am sitting there, Clarendon would see I believe the first tornado of the day. Due to my distance, there was no way I could ever catch up to it. It was an hour away, at the least. While I was attempting to document the mammatus of that storm’s anvil, I began to see some new and intriguing developments taking place west, northwest of Canadian, which made me shift my location to just north of Canadian. This area is no stranger to tornadoes as one of the most iconic tornadoes from here took place in 2015, where many other chasers documented an isolated beauty that was quite large in size. I don’t remember where I was that day but I was definitely not chasing it. Almost to my new destination, this slow moving storm was beginning to look impressive on radar. To be completely honest, I was not a fan of what I was seeing, both in storm structure and the surrounding cloud activity. Though, I could see a wall cloud so surely that would have to count for something and this storm did have a tornado reported with it, at one point. Even though I was in a good position, I could never see the tornado that I saw in the tornado warning text. Finally, the belly of this beast is just north of me and beginning to cross the highway and that’s when things changed. Hardly noticeable at first, I began to look really close at the base of this wall cloud and there she was! A funnel cloud! In the episode, I had to do a big digital zoom to show this as I only had one camera running at the time of its revelation and was decently zoomed out to show the big picture! Once it was so obvious what was happening, I grabbed my other camera to get a closer shot while also trying to level it out. Hence the reason for the shakiness you see in the episode itself. I should have relied on the saying “fix it in post.” Getting this funnel, I felt great! If this beauty had materialized, I would have had another Low Precipitation supercell tornado for the year! I mean, I had seen 3 already but only documented the one great one as seen in Episode 7. There were the other two in Episode 5 but one was a measly iPhone photo and the other I did not get to document due to my timing. Still, I was so excited to see what I was seeing! That near 1 minute definitely drew out like crazy and it definitely ended too soon! Once this storm had sufficiently passed, I began to take a lot more notice of the storm south of Perryton. This is the same one that was becoming very interesting as it was going over Spearman. However, the terrain was rather wavey with hills, which would mean I had to find a perfect spot to stop and that was proving to be a challenge. Persistence would finally come to pay off, but the struggle was very real along the way. What I came to witness next was truly one for the record books, in some ways. This structure was remarkable! I mean, a cute little wall cloud at the bottom right of the mesocyclone and almost no rain to show for it! I felt like I hit a jackpot for one of my dream time lapses. The dream time lapse is to one day have, all in one frame, a full mesocyclone, wall cloud, funnel cloud, and tornado. What I just described is the conception, birth, and growth of a tornado and having all of this in one shot is still my number one time lapse goal of all time. Once this storm had finally passed, I was ready to get back to Houston. My pain and I were not on the most agreeable terms so I longed for my bed more than ever. The first night was the most painful, though, the full recovery took almost a week. I remember trying to lay out as though I was in a coffin but that was not helping the pain. For the first two days, all I could do was lay in the near fetal position. Finally through the worst of it, I thought the greatest days of my chase season were over. I still wanted at least one more chase day out of the year and I would get so lucky to have it but more about that in Episode 9. Quick Note Before I leave you today, I do want to say this much, as it pertains to past episodes. When I was editing this episode, I discovered that I might have been giving you the wrong final filtered storm report totals, from before the last episode all the way back to the beginning of the show. I just wanted to apologize to you for accidentally giving you the wrong information as I failed to do my due diligence.