10/14/07 REPORTS: TX/OK/KS

[Andrew Ryan]

An awesome day for my first chase. Witnessed a line of supercells west of Altus, OK. Soon after a tornado briefly developed near Roosevelt, OK. I need time to decompress after this chase before I can get into details, but here's one of the pictures that I took near Altus.

-Andrew

 

[Jeff Snyder]

A disappointing day for me, given that I wasn't expecting such a relatively solid line of convection to be the mode that far south. I waited with my 'usual' chase group down in Snyder, before we shifted northward to ~2mi west of Roosevelt, where we parked and watched the convection approach from the west. There looked to be a few times during which the convection attempted to break up, but quasi-linear mode dominated. We saw the apparent tornado down there, but I'm not comfortable enough to call that a tornado YET... There was a lot of rising dust along the gust front W and SW of Roosevelt, and we noted rapid cloud-base rotation occurring along/above this gust front. I suppose a vortex may have wrapped up along the gust front and become defined enough to be called a tornado, though. I'll have to review my video... One of the local OKC TV stations has a closer view of this than did we. Our first reaction was to call it a gustnado, but, I suppose, I may concede it was a tornado after further review given that it was beneath some pretty good cloud-base rotation. At any rate, after we felt extremely cold outflow at our position just west of Roosevelt, I pretty much knew it was game over. Given the analyzed boundary layer RH, I certainly wasn't expecting to face such cold outflow. I can only think that some drier air moved in just above the surface, leading to enhanced evaporational cooling. That cold outflow had to originate from somewhere...

On a more positive note, the scenes were pretty spectacular down there... Nice color with a setting sun, and very nice terrain. If nothing else, I hope I have some nice photographs.

Edit to BrianBaker below -- yeah, we were several northeast of that dust, so I certainly concede that we didn't have the best view. A gustnado was just our observation at the time, and it appears that it'll fall into the gray area of tornado vs. gustnado (LOL, then again, 'gustnado' itself is a gray area). Definitions, definitions, definitions...

 

[Kevin Scharfenberg]

The day went about as expected...lots of attempts at convection out ahead of the main line that wouldn't take hold, but Kevin Manross and I were in position for the brief supercell that developed west of Altus and moved into the Blair area before the line took over. We had a nice view from north of Friendship and we saw a nice low wall cloud with lazy rotation, some upward motion and plenty of dust kicking up underneath. Given the outflowish look of the dust I wouldn't call any of the dust a tornado.

Later as the main cell raced northeast some cold outflow raced southeast toward Roosevelt with lots of turbulent motion under a high arcing outflowish cloud base. At times big puffs of dust would come up from the freshly-plowed fields and one of them appeared to organize into a gustnado for awhile, but given the overall structure it did not appear to be associated with any significant updraft, so nothing to get excited about there either.

We just about made it up to Gotebo for the embedded supercell up there but the bow echo developing south of the circulation munched us south of town.

I'm sorry I didn't stay home and miss the breathless, screaming TV coverage of the puffs of dust moving across farm fields!

 

[BrianBaker]

Hi guys. I am new to posting, but have been reading for quite some time. I was on the same storm but I believe I was a little farther west than Jeff. Jeff I first thought it was a gustnado until I noticed the circulation above the swirl at the surface. Circulation at ground level was pretty good and at one point, the dust appeared to be extending upward toward the cloud base.

 

[Dick McGowan]

Darin Brunin, Kurt Hulst and I were chasing up in NC KS, where we kept thinking we would get enough sunshine, to perhaps see a tornado. It became apparent after awhile, that nowhere would.

Smallest little supercell wanna-be I have ever seen! The structure on this rain shower resembled a supercell, unfortunately, it was working with about 100 j/kg, and cloud cover overhead, but the forcing and shear were there.

Hopefully we can get some moisture return before the mid part of the week. Yay for shooting 800 ISO before noticing it.

2 m. N of Belleville, KS

 

[Shane Adams]

I observed a weak tornado west of Blair, OK this evening. Yep, I'm calling it a tornado.

Left Ardmore at noon, arrived in Altus at 3pm, and spent the next two hours literally all over town, as I took turns sitting on all four sides of the community waiting for initiation. I even went back into town a few times to try and find the mysterious Amos Magliocco, whose familiar voice rang out in my car all afternoon as though he were sitting next to me, but I could never seem to grab a visual anywhere I went LOL. Finally I went to the west edge of town again and could see towers to my west, so I just drove up to them. An isolated cell developed just southwest of the line segment as I drove north from OK62 to Victory, east to Martha, and finally north to Blair. By the time I got to Blair, the wall cloud was persistent and beginning to develop some light rotation. I stopped and shot video to document the rotation when the first whirl kicked up underneath, totally surprising me, as I wasn't expecting anything on the ground. Shortly afterwards the outflow push flew out to the southeast, but the rotation remained. A second whirl spun up a few minutes later in the same spot, and, like the first one, moved slowly north (opposite the outflow push). About a minute after that one, a third whirl spun up, the most vigorous of the trio. This one sat in one spot and spun away for about 30 seconds before vanishing. All the while, the rotation (though weak) persisted overhead. I've got close-up video of two of these, including the last one, which I will be sending a copy of to OUN next weekend.

A great October chase day. Solid forecast, stuck to my guns (though boredom tempted me several times to take off to the south and try NW Texas), and was rewarded with a surprise, weak, hybrid tornado...but in my book a tornado nonetheless.

 

[cedwards]

Chased with Rocky and Chris Novy today. Hopes were not high, but we did manage to be at the right place at the right time. One cell formed ahead of the squall line near Hobart. It moved north towards us and merged with the line. As it did this, it produced a funnel cloud that lasted about a minute and a half. It reached about half way down at the most. It had a nice double helix shape at one point. There was also quite a bit of CGs with the line and some very small hail. After the tornado, the line bowed out on top of us as we tried to go east to get ahead of it. by the time we got out of the rain, it was dark.

 

[Brandon Goforth]

I was also in the Altus area during storm initiation to the west. A nice wall cloud developed west of Altus on the southern storm with weak to moderate rotation, and as it approached the southwest side of Blair a lot of dust was kicked up beneath it. It appeared to be outflow, but I was on the north-northeast side of it and observed several rapid, but very brief spin ups on the ground from roughly 200-300 yards SW of me. I would say that I saw as many as 5 or 6 from where I was at. At times there was some rapid rotation in the cloud base with a few very small, brief funnels, and this was the case off and on from Blair to Roosevelt. Mainly gustnadoes it appeared, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some very weak tornadoes imbedded in there too. Storm motion was a bit of a pain, but all in all a fun chase for mid-October.

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

Today turned out a bit better than expected. I wasn't enthused over the cloud cover early on which I expected was going to limit the insolation, Once we got to Clinton by around 1500cdt, conditions changed markedly as skies somewhat cleared, yielding to scattered areas of congestus and some eastward leaning turkey towers. I could tell that the shear was surely there as surface winds were averaging 150 deg. @15-20kts and mid level clouds moving from aprox. 210deg.

Charles Edwards, Chris Novy and myself set up equipment just west of Hobart around 1600 where we sat for almost an hour and a half watching several attempts of various cumulonimbi become surface based. LCL's were a little high but as the cold front drew closer, they lowered appreciably. Finally after around 1715cdt, a mostly broken line of convection developed to our west with frequent cg's. Off to our southwest by about 12mi. or so, a distinct lowering was observed, but rotation was minimal if any. That could have been the start of whatever that was observed near Roosevelt. Charles and Chris took plenty of photo's and some video amidst the frequent cg's that zapped around us... yours truly here was not in the mood this day to risk being reduced to a burnt blob of protoplasm from one of those bolts.. so I stayed within the confines of the van.

The height of the chase occured at aprox. 1815cdt when we observed a well developed pencil shaped funnel cloud that was part of a meso we were watching for several minutes just to the SW of Hobart. The funnel it self was about 4mi. WNW of Hobart. It came about half way to the ground and did exhibit some stout, albeit brief rotation. No ground contact was observed with this funnel. From then on, we crawled along on hwy 9 toward Anadarko as we were in some torrential rain, strong shifting winds that peaked about 45kts and nickel sized hail. We eventually linked up with JR Henley along with Michael and Stephanie Ratliff who tagged along for part of the chase at Pizza Hut in Chickasha where the squall line caught up with us, again, marginally severe there at around 2100cdt with dime sized hail and winds to around 40kts, if that. Saw some great anvil crawlers on the way home which was a nice end to a decent day for an October chase.

Got some great video but would you know, a senior moment took hold as I dashed out of my house with my new D-200... without my charged batteries. It was great chasing with Chris Novy today.. a heck of a nice guy to hang out with and a plethora of information on storm spotting.

Rocky&family

 

[Jonathan Merage]

A quick report...
Also caught the thin Altus tornado & dust whirls with Sean Mullins that touched down around 6:00. Pulled over on 183 south of Blair due east of the storm & watched the incredible meso as it developed some hefty structure. Shane described the general appearance & evolution of the tornado & associated dust whirls pretty accurately, so here's a few quick screenshots:

First ground circulation observed at 6pm:

Multiple dust circulations & awesome structure:

The meso/wall in its first outflowing stage-- one big dirt bomb!

Will post many more hi-res photos (lightning & HDR shots) and video (some time-lapse of the first Altus meso & tornado during the first cycle!) Will provide a link to the page once I get some work done...Congrats to all who stuck on the southern storm & scored!!

Jon Merage

 

[Chris C Sanner]

Pretty similar story as a lot of other folks. First stop was in Altus where I was a part of the chaser convergence there with Mickey, JR, Amos, etc. Left there to catch up with convection SSW of Mangum or so. I watched the storms begin to mature sitting 7 E of Mangum or so but also saw a storm begin to form ahead of the main line. After the first couple of CGs out of the new tower I made the quick decision to head east and try to get ahead of the rapidly maturing storm ahead of the main line. I went through the core and got some nice quarters for my effort and emerged just to the W of Hobart and saw the same features cedwards mentioned earlier.

One thing he didn't mention that I observed was that I actually got some strong inflow winds into that area on my way through Hobart, they were easily stronger than the winds we had through the day. I would have put them somewhere in the range of ~30-40mph. That area then quickly dissipated as precip wrapped around it. There looked to be a wall cloud still embedded for a few minutes after the line just ate the storm. But after all that excitement it was pretty much highway 9 all the way back to Norman.

Pics...first 3 from Digi Still Camera last 3 are Video Stills......

Same old story...cell forming near Altus..

One of my favorite shots...9 E of Mangum

New Cell that developed and moved over Hobart..

One of the funnels that I observed..

After she squalled out...

 

[Jordan Hartley]

I went after the storm that caused all the wind reports in sc KS down in Harper Co as it crossed the OK/KS border and travelled ne. Caught up with the storm south of Norwich, KS and at that time witnessed excellent LP storm structure. Inflow into the storm about 4 miles away from the base of the updraft was actually quite strong. I would guestimate that winds gusted at over 35 mph at times. Got a few good pics on my camera phone. After that storm raced off to the NE at 45-50mph another cell quickly followed behind that couldnt quite make up its mind whether it wanted to be outflow/inflow dominate. At times it would take on supercell characteristics and about 15 min later it would shelf-out. It did this for over 1 hr 30 min. Got a couple of pics of this storm in both phases and got 1 pic with a decent non-rotating wall cloud with a small meso-looking structure above it. Followed this storm as it raced into Sedgewick Co and affected Wichita. Overall im happy with the day because I love supercells and havent chased enough of them yet to not get excited when I get one in my area. LP's rock!!!

 

[Sam Sagnella]

Pretty awesome day for Tommy Winning and I; we have a similar story to many others, as we were on the Altus/Martha storm from shortly after initiation. We witnessed a very impressive sequence of storm organization from east of Martha, where the storm transitioned rapidly from a rather disorganized cluster with multiple precip cores to a nice supercell with a crazy beaver tail and nice wall cloud. All of these were shot with a wide-angle lens, many from within a half mile, as we're pretty much structure freaks.

5:23PM, East of Martha.

5:45PM, near Martha.

5:46PM; check out that inflow band!

5:53PM. The rotation seemed to tighten up pretty nicely very near to Martha, and for a minute we were concerned that it was going to drop a tornado right in town.

It was about this time that a HUGE amount of dust began to get kicked up as the RFD winds started to really come into play.

5:58-6:04PM. We held our ground east of Martha as the rotation approached, and passed just to our north. We could see visible cloud base rotation, including a couple of brief funnel clouds, before we jetted east as the stronger winds approached.

6:06-6:11PM. We scooted east for about a mile, witnessing a gustnado through the windshield, before pulling to a stop in front of a couple of houses. We watched the meso from about a third/half of a mile to its south, amid gusty (and cool), but not-too-intense RFD winds which never got above 40mph. At one point one of the homeowners came outside to ask us what was going on; it must be kind of freaky to see a couple of storm chasers screech to a halt in front of your house in the middle of a storm and start filming lol.

6:40PM. After letting it pass us by, we jogged E and N to HWY 19, before we caught a glimpse of the meso to our NE. It was nicely supplemented by a rainbow and an orange glow from the setting sun.

It was at this point that we basically called off the chase due to darkness, although we did see something interesting to the W of Roosevelt very close to dusk but cannot confirm anything at this time. The first half of the ride home was a really rough one, with very heavy rain and gusty winds, but we managed to the thread the hailcore needle and make it back to Norman unscathed. All around a fantastic 'second season' chase, and it's nice to see that so many caught a piece of the action!

 

[Paul Stofer]

I have about 10 minutes to do a quick write up, resize photos and post so please forgive me on how brief this is. I will try to give a more detailed chase account later tonight. Amos Magliocco and myself traversed SW Oklahoma. We sat in Altus, OK along with Bob Fritchie, Rachel Sigler and many others watching and waiting for initiation while listening to the Cowboys game. Eventually we began to observe some TCu to our West. We traveled through Blair, Roosevelt and pretty much travelled the same path as many others have already posted. I don't have the GPS log so I can't post exactly where we were at this time. We observed mild to moderate rotation with this cell along with a few gustnadoes. The third gustnado became fairly intense (for a gustnado) and did have motion above the ground circulation. After reviewing ophotos and video, I'm in heavy debate on whether this was indeed a tornado or just a strong gustnado. In the photos you can see the dust swirl on the ground with a dusty transparent tube extending up into the cloud base in an S shape. After this interesting event, we setup for structure photos and got blasted by 69F outflow winds. We traveled back South to head home, took some lightning stills and called it an afternoon. I would definately like opinions and thoughts on these photos, and hopefully they will help us come to some sort of conclusion on exactly what this was that we saw. If you play with the contrast and brightness on these photos it may help you see what I am talking about. Congrats to all who had a fun enjoyable fall chase yesterday. Again, sorry I can't give a detailed report at this time. I don't have any GPS data at the moment, I am very short on time, and unable to upload more images as I have to dart to work in a few minutes.

 

[Amos Magliocco]

I even went back into town a few times to try and find the mysterious Amos Magliocco, whose familiar voice rang out in my car all afternoon as though he were sitting next to me, but I could never seem to grab a visual anywhere I went LOL.he last one, which I will be sending a copy of to OUN next weekend.

Hey, man, sorry I missed you. I'm in a different vehicle now, an ugly gray color that Toyota calls "galactic gray mica," lol. I traded the blue one and got a good deal on this one even though I never liked the color.

My report differs little from others. I chased with Paul Stofer yesteday and we met Bob Fritchie, Racahel Sigler, and their friend Mary, in Altus waiting for the dryline to erupt and listening to the Cowboys game. The first cell fired between Mangum and Hester and we drove north as the cluster alternated between discrete supercellular structure and a multi-cell mess. Saw a few interesting updraft bases and a wall cloud or two, but nothing sustained or impressive.

After a short time it appeared the "middle" cell offered was becoming more isolated on its southern end and we turned back south, stopping just south of Blair. This is where we observed what I *think* is the same phenomena everyone else is talking about (see Paul's pics above). What I observed was some broad rotation at cloud base above what had started as an obvious gustnado (one in a series of dust feet and other gustnadoes), but which sustained itself and increased in strength and concentrated rotation until it looked modestly well-organized. Paul's pics show a translucsent dust "funnel" of sorts snaking upward---there was obviously strong vertical motion associated with this feature. At one point, the rotating base reminded me of the Attica tornado of 5-12-04, but without the bowl lowering above it. It was large, rotating, and slow. Most of the gustnadoes I've observed previously move relatively quickly. This phenomena seemed to dig in as it strengthened and broadened. I guess the feature lasted five to seven minutes before it dissipated over a field.

What was it? I have no idea, but I've never seen anything exactly like it. A gustnado, a gustnado-tornado hybird (whatever that would mean), or a weak tornado? Did it begin as a gustnado with weak rotation which then as some kind of ambient vertical vorticity aided in a form of tornadogenesis? That sounds far-fetched. I remember strong rotation on wx-worx immediately prior to the phenomena; I haven't confirmed this with real velocity images, however. I don't know the answer to these questions. What struck me is that none of us were ready to give it an easy label. We all agreed it was relatively unique. At this point, that's enough for me. I saw something I've never seen before; I'll leave the taxonomy to others.

The southern end of the cluster offered some decent structure as we started home. After dark, the tail-end cell illuminated itself with frequent interior lightning and spit a few anvil crawlers under a starry sky.

It was good to be chasing again and to see old friends.