Getting up and out of bed on this particular morning was like pulling teeth. I just was not having it. The night before, I had looked at the Storm Prediction Center and saw there was a Slight Risk to the west, northwest of my place. The tornado probabilities were at 2% and I just did not feel like chasing, at first. For some reason, I just felt so exhausted from the chasing adventure just two days before. When I first woke up, I saw two things that I almost gave no attention to. The Storm Prediction Center had upgraded their tornado probabilities to 5% and Reed Timmer had shared a simulated radar forecast image from the HRRR. When I saw this stuff, I did not read any of the information from either place. All I did was just tell myself “I should go to Tulia, Texas,” a location which is no stranger to severe weather. Along the route and just north of Hale Center, the first and main storm of the day began building up. It was developing solid structures very quickly, that is for sure. The crazy part is it was moving very slow and it just kept looking less and less impressive on radar. Once I got done getting fuel in Plainview, I made a move towards Kress. Something inside of me was telling me to stay with this storm so I did. When I first stopped in Kress, besides getting to play with the cutest dog, the structure of this storm was some of the best structure I had seen in years. It was compact, hardcore, and beyond indescribable. As the storm slowly moved on, I finally decided that it was time to get closer. Besides getting to see a beautiful rainbow, I had noticed different piles of hail along the road so I stopped to get a few shots of it. Finally back on the road, I was pushing east on FM 145, trying to find a safe south road to get closer to the storm. Katy, my chase partner for a lot of this chase season, was watching out the window and she suddenly had said “that’s interesting.” Not knowing what she was looking at, I took a glance and was like “that’s not just interesting, that’s a funnel!” Sure enough, this funnel was coming down and it was the tornado! This thing was beautiful and so skinny. It literally looked like a sharpie pen as it was coming down and stayed on the ground. I was so excited about this that I would end up making one fatal mistake. The footage I got of the tornado was slightly out of focus. Though I threw the footage of the tornado into the episode, I did time lapse it for two reasons. Not just because it was slightly out of focus but because literally there were near no thunderstorm sounds taking place that was worth capturing. After seeing that beauty, I just knew I had to get in front of this storm because I wanted to get more structure with the next potential tornado. That’s when I finally got in the best position. At first, I was concerned I did not get the tornado that was reported. About a week after this chase and upon extensive further review, it turns out I did get the tornado. In the episode, I held the shot for a bit because I wanted you to have the chance to do a full examination for yourself. Once the storm had passed, the real challenge was road options and the fact that I was needing to find a nearby gas station. I originally wanted to go to Spur to intercept this storm again but the distance and timing was a concern. I decided to make a move for Dickens because my thinking was that by the time I finished getting fuel, I could move out again and intercept. What I did not see happening was that this storm would almost completely stall out like it did. By the time I got done getting fuel, it was too dark to see anything worthwhile and since this storm had almost stopped moving, I decided to get just east of Dickens, hoping to at least get some good lightning photos. Inevitably, while I did get some shots, I did not get anything worthwhile. At least I tried but by this time, I was ready for bed as I knew the chase for the day ahead could be potentially just as amazing. More details about that will be in the next episode so I will see you there.