2011-04-14 REPORTS: OK/TX/KS

[Adam Simone]

One of the worst chases of my life. I started the day in Salina and went down I35 south of Wichita not sure whether to stick in Kansas or fully commit to Oklahoma. That indecisiveness really put me behind the 8 ball for the rest of the day. I was right there on the dryline for initiation but once every storm went up at the same time, I got wishy-washy on which cell to go after. I decided to try to get as far out east in front as I could to see which would have the better shot at producing but then I ran into that amazing SE KS road network. After going down countless gravel roads that either dead ended or didn't go the direction I thought they would, I knew my chase was toast. I finally got out of the wash and observed a scuddy lowering/possible wall cloud SW of Independence, KS. Then I couldn't get back to Denver because I-70 was closed due to a blizzard. I'm definitely ready to forget this day...

haha yeah I hear ya yesterday was a pretty big dud in SE Kansas. I had to work until 3:00 so I knew I had no chance of getting down to Oklahoma so I was just going to chase what I could in SE Kansas. When I got down to about Garnett there were 2 tornado warned cells to the southwest of me. I decided to try to intercept the farther south of the 2 and headed towards Erie, KS. By the time the storm got to me just north of Erie it was barely even a severe storm. After that it was time to head back so it was basically a waster of 250 miles. Thats not much compared to you coming from Colorado but it felt like a lot for me since I'm still new at this.

 

[jim epperson]

I left Wichita around 1:30 and headed to Ponca City. I headed east on hwy. 60 and was able to get on the storm near Burbank. Definitely would liked to have had more discrete storms , but with more discrete comes more convergence.

 

[Adam Lucio]

Murphy's Law was in full effect for me today. I seem to have one of those every year and hopefully I got it out of the way early this year. Definitely a difficult chase especially considering I was solo in that nasty terrain.

Left Chicago at 3am, wanted to be in S/SE OK. Shortly into my trip everything on my laptop stops functioning. All programs stop receiving GPS. New internet wont work. Luckily I had 1 day left on my old ATT plan so I popped that in to help me troubleshoot and fix things. It only took over an hour which already put me way behind. The southern target was now out. About 8hrs into the drive I realized I was missing my A/V out cord for my stream camera...so there went that.

Onto the chase...was making a play to get into the notch of the Stroud storm but coming from the north meant a core punch on limited road options. Had plenty of time only I got stuck behind a damn school bus that made 6 or 7 stops to let children off [whats a schoolbus doing out in a tornado warned supercell anyways?!?!] so that cost me a crucial 5-7 minutes in getting into the hook. Saw a funnel in the trees, never could pull over to get a shot. Turns out the funnel touched down. Not counting it as a tor catch because Im anal about what I count. This was about the best I saw.

I got into about 4 different hooks, yet couldn't buy a decent view or even an obvious tornado to save my life.

Got this...thing...near the town of Beggs. Again. Reported tornado on the ground at the time, I am always a skeptic when playing in Tarzans backyard so unless proven otherwise I don't jump to conclude this as being a tor either. Video still:

All in all I am ready to put this one behind me. Wish I could have made it to the southern part of the state. Damn you Murphy

 

[James Clarke]

Here are the Tushka/Atoka tornado damage photos.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61799597@N04/

 

[Charles Kuster]

We (Stephen Jones, Brian Squitieri, and I) chased in east central Oklahoma and witnessed two tornadoes and some good structure.

The original target was Bristow, OK and storms fired to the west and southwest of us during the early afternoon hours. We observed the Stroud, OK supercell from a position just southwest of Depew, OK but never did see the tornado that this storm produced. As the storm basically paralleled I-44, we quickly decided to drop south towards another supercell to the southwest. The storm slowly approached our position 11 miles west of Okmulgee, OK and displayed some impressive structure.

Picture taken at 6:03pm CDT from 11 miles west of Okmulgee, OK and is looking WSW.

We then repositioned about a mile to the west and observed a weak tornado that was on the ground from about 6:08pm CDT to 6:13pm CDT. The storm quickly cycled and we continued to move east with the storm into very poor terrain to the west of Okmulgee, OK. The rope out stage of the second tornado was briefly visible through breaks in the trees at 6:25pm CDT from our location ~3 miles west of Okmulgee, OK.

Quite impressive structure of the forward flank region of the supercell at the time of the first tornado. Picture taken at 6:11pm CDT from 10 miles W of Okmulgee, OK and is looking WNW.

We continued to move east with the storm as it began to weaken and become more outflow dominant. We broke off the chase at Muskogee due to the fact that the sun had set and the terrain was rapidly deteriorating. Congrats to all those who saw storms yesterday and my thoughts and prayers are with the people of Tushka and Atoka.

http://i56.tinypic.com/2qiy1yd.jpg
Storm structure and wall cloud of the Okmulgee, OK supercell. Picture taken at 5:56pm CDT from 11 miles W of Okmulgee and is looking WSW.

http://i53.tinypic.com/2lixah5.jpg
First tornado. Picture taken at 6:12pm CDT from 10 miles W of Okmulgee and is looking WSW.

 

[Chris McBee]

We got within view of the Okmulgee tornado just as the show was about over. Only tornado of the day. Like many others, opted for NE Oklahoma to avoid the SE jungle.

Short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtNCxfpXseQ

 

[jeremy wilson]

Holy Tornado caught multiple tornadoes across SE oklahoma from the Lake of the Arbuckles down to Tushka. Ended up way to close to the Tushka nader due to a new tornado forming on the SW corner of this large mesocyclone.

Insane video of Tushka wedge and multi-vortex beast at www.holytornado.com

 

[Scott MacArthur]

Russ, Eric, and I started out driving up I35 and drifted over to Ada to setup and wait for initiation. As storms starting firing to the North we decided to wait for the Southern initiation which began shortly after. Got some great still shots and video of about 4 different cells in the afternoon with nice structure, hail, etc...but nothing would produce. We finally abandoned the large cell that tracked for a while through Davis and Sulpher and raced to the Southern most cell late in the day that was around Ardmore. After many dirt roads, large hail core punch, and some luck, we came out just to the South of the huge meso that was entering Tushka, Ok and caught these 2 videos...

Watch video >


Watch video >

 

[Nick Biermann]

Glad to see at least a couple others were out in the Okemah area. I left Norman after work around 5pm and headed east toward Okemah after noticing that a separation of approx 30-40 miles was opening up between the southern end of the line of storms in NE OK and the northern end of the cluster of fantastic-looking supercells in SE OK. I decided to go after the tail end storm on the northern segment, a storm that was developing east of Norman near Pink and moving into an environment temporarily cleared out by the left split from the first Murray-to-Pontotoc County supercell. The updraft looked rock-solid from behind as the storm moved north of Shawnee, and the storm had a nice anvil and overshooting top at times.

As I caught up to the storm near Okemah, it looked a bit sickly in the low levels with a long, stretched out cloud base trailing backward along what I think was a meager flanking line. But as I approached the Cromwell exit on I-40, it looked like rotation was trying to focus under the base and I could see rising scud getting sucked into the updraft. The storm tried a couple times to develop a loosely organized wall cloud, and then when I reached the Okemah exit around 634-635pm, a ragged funnel (?) appeared and morphed into a small bowl-shaped lowering that persisted for a few minutes. I was looking NNW from Okemah at the time, with the feature probably located a couple of miles ESE of Castle, OK.

That was about as good as it got until I arrived at home and saw video on the news from an independent chaser (whose name I did not catch, unfortunately) who filmed a dust circulation on the ground beneath a funnel south of Castle, OK. I do not know what time the video was filmed, but the structure and background lighting look strikingly familiar to what I saw from a greater distance.

Unfortunately, storms went up a little too early for me to get to my original target of Ada, OK. With the messy storm coverage, splitting cells, and endless storm interactions, I figured I was liable to get myself cored or worse if I tried to come in from behind on those beasts. I think I did the best I could with the hand I was dealt, so I'll accept my "consolation prize" near Castle/Okemah.

 

[Bret Hendrickson]

My brother Marc and I jumped early on the storm that eventually produced the Hominy tornado. Had a great vantage point from a hill to the southeast of Cleveland and watched as the first meso occluded. We repositioned north of Cleveland and moved towards the city of Hominy. Just north of Hominy we saw a large wall cloud to our west.

As the RFD began to wrap around the wall cloud, a large tornado emerged from the rain curtains. We watched it as it took on a wedge shape and moved towards us.

We bailed south and out of its' path as power lines were beginning to sway dramatically next to us. After the tornado passed the road we made our way back to check the damage path and noticed that a farm house and work building had been impacted.

Everyone was OK at the house except for a horse that had a pretty shredded hind leg. Looks like the core of the tornado missed the house but directly impacted the work building. Luckily, no one was there.

This was the first time I have been the first one on the scene after a tornado caused damage to a residence. An experience I won't ever forget.

 

[weskranz]

Here are a few late pics from the 14th. It was great to finally get out this season. I was on three heavily rotating storms that didn't quite produce while I was on them, but put on a great show at any rate. Pics are from South of Tishomingo, sunset NE of Ardmore & Mill Creek.

 

[brice.coffer]

A little late, but this was my view of the Tushka tornado before it came into town. I was lucky enough to find a massive pile of concrete highway dividers on the west side of highway 69, so I was able to get up 20-30 feet in the air and see over the trees. My camera is not the best so I edited the contrast a bit in order to see the tornado better.



I think the tornado was at it's strongest west of Tushka and highway 69. It was causing no damage at that time, therefore there was no evidence to rate it an EF4. Of course, this is based solely on my own personal visual observations of the storm.

 

[Tim Segraves]

I finally got a blog post up along with a short time lapse video of the funnel in Cowley County, KS. blog.twistertracker.com/2011/04/20/se-kansas-chase-4142011/

 

[Albert Rodriguez]

I left Dallas around 1:30 p.m. arrived at the rest stop near Winstar awaiting storm initiation. Once initiation started I followed the storm till Davis. I observed rising scud and jagged wall cloud. Soon after crossing I-35 the storm went tor warned. I never saw any ground circulation. Sirens were going off where I was (US 77 and Knappe Rd). I got some video right at that moment as the RFD was coming thru. I tried to follow but traffic and the roads were making it difficult. After looking at radar I decided I would head back south and intercept the Ardmore storm. I took the wrong turn and went completely around. By the time I got parallel to the storm it wasn't close enough to warrant chasing (hour of daylight left and had to work later that night). What a long drive back to Dallas after seeing reports of the Tishomingo storm :'(.

 

[jeremy wilson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Nh1t6LFGM

Heres video from earlier before we caught the Tushka beast. This was near Sulpher,
OK on a different supercell.