John Massura
EF1
Chased today with Jared Guyer. Left Norman around 3pm, headed southward, with an initial rough target near/north of Ardmore. Got to near Wynnewood and decided to just stay put. Watched several storms go up well south of the cold front, about 10-15 miles to our west. There were about 2-3 of them that had just a bit of distance between them, we were hoping they would eventually merge and maybe then get going.
Jared commented they seemed they may have not been rooted, as they were moving ENE-ward, instead of more E-ly that we were expecting. But, they were the best game in town, so we stuck with them. We stayed south of them to near Stratford, then drove through Byers and watched some broad, weak rotating scud with the initial storm. We were also monitoring a second storm to the west (this storm would eventually drop the apparent Byers tornado). We ended up west of Byers, southeast of Rosedale, watching the second storm. The base was close, maybe less than a few miles to the west, and we stopped to watch.
It soon became apparent, or so we thought, it was becoming undercut by the cold front, as we saw tremendous outflow all racing north to south. This was seemingly confirmed by storm-relative velocities. We noticed that the inflow winds became calm. However, we noticed continuous rapidly rising scud, and then back toward the north-northeast, some increasing rotation. We were about maybe a half to one mile from this rotation area, and were commenting how very interesting it looked. A few minutes later, the TOR warning came out for the storm. By this time, we were already heading south to try and get ahead of the storm (and passed the KOCO trucks headed northward).
In hindsight, the "undercutting" cold front was actually a rapidly developing RFD, and the initial meso to the west, may have dissipated and reformed very near/just southwest of Byers, about a half to one mile to our north, then northeast.
We reached Stratford ahead of the storm, and tried to get north into a good position, though it was getting dark and we didn't think we would see much. By this time, we saw the inflow area, and wall of black with the heavy rain/hail to the west/southwest of the inflow area. We had some data issues, and knew the storm was tracking ESE-ward, though we thought we could make the east-west road at the Byers latitude. We weren't sure how bad the hail core north of the storm was, and ended up turning around back southward toward Stratford. We experienced strong inflow winds, then strong RFD outflow winds coming back southward, along with blinding rain. Based on the radar presentation at the time, we think we were still east of the tornadic part of the circulation due to a very pronounced inflow notch. The quickly changing wind directions was a bit concerning for a short time though.
So, no tornadoes, though we ended up "sampling" the RFD as it initially pushed out west of the developing meso, then east of the same meso. Pretty good day, much more than we were expecting. We are really curious where/when the actual tornado(es) touched down, along with timelines. From what I just heard on the news, some fairly significant damage, but at this time, luckily no reports of injuries.
Jared commented they seemed they may have not been rooted, as they were moving ENE-ward, instead of more E-ly that we were expecting. But, they were the best game in town, so we stuck with them. We stayed south of them to near Stratford, then drove through Byers and watched some broad, weak rotating scud with the initial storm. We were also monitoring a second storm to the west (this storm would eventually drop the apparent Byers tornado). We ended up west of Byers, southeast of Rosedale, watching the second storm. The base was close, maybe less than a few miles to the west, and we stopped to watch.
It soon became apparent, or so we thought, it was becoming undercut by the cold front, as we saw tremendous outflow all racing north to south. This was seemingly confirmed by storm-relative velocities. We noticed that the inflow winds became calm. However, we noticed continuous rapidly rising scud, and then back toward the north-northeast, some increasing rotation. We were about maybe a half to one mile from this rotation area, and were commenting how very interesting it looked. A few minutes later, the TOR warning came out for the storm. By this time, we were already heading south to try and get ahead of the storm (and passed the KOCO trucks headed northward).
In hindsight, the "undercutting" cold front was actually a rapidly developing RFD, and the initial meso to the west, may have dissipated and reformed very near/just southwest of Byers, about a half to one mile to our north, then northeast.
We reached Stratford ahead of the storm, and tried to get north into a good position, though it was getting dark and we didn't think we would see much. By this time, we saw the inflow area, and wall of black with the heavy rain/hail to the west/southwest of the inflow area. We had some data issues, and knew the storm was tracking ESE-ward, though we thought we could make the east-west road at the Byers latitude. We weren't sure how bad the hail core north of the storm was, and ended up turning around back southward toward Stratford. We experienced strong inflow winds, then strong RFD outflow winds coming back southward, along with blinding rain. Based on the radar presentation at the time, we think we were still east of the tornadic part of the circulation due to a very pronounced inflow notch. The quickly changing wind directions was a bit concerning for a short time though.
So, no tornadoes, though we ended up "sampling" the RFD as it initially pushed out west of the developing meso, then east of the same meso. Pretty good day, much more than we were expecting. We are really curious where/when the actual tornado(es) touched down, along with timelines. From what I just heard on the news, some fairly significant damage, but at this time, luckily no reports of injuries.
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