2013-05-30 REPORTS: OK/KS/TX/MO

[Brandon Jenkins]

Got on the cell that fired SW of the OKC metro shortly before 18z and stayed with it until it died. Plenty of ground scraping wall clouds but a clear lack of low level shear to get the job done on this day. As evening approached the storm did its best in terms of organization but just couldn't get it done.

We later attempted to drop south towards southern cells but had our chase cut short by a large piece of metal that decided to pierce my tire and leave us too far behind to worry about it. All in all a great chase with some great structure.

 

[JamesCaruso]

We were in Kingfisher when storms started to fire. The cells to our southwest initially looked the best, while the one going up right over us looked linear. We were about to head south but took one last look at the closer/northern storm and decided we would stick with it; it was looking better, and was closer to the outflow boundary, which we felt might help its tornado chances.

It became severe warned, then soon was tornado warned as the updraft tightened nicely; lowerings and a clear slot made a tornado appear imminent.

We needed to use some dirt roads to try to get closer to the storm, and they were muddy from the previous day's rains. At one point we were driving north on a paved road, but the storm was to our northeast, and if we waited until we got to the next paved east road we might have ended up behind the hail shaft that was now wrapping around. So, we took the next eastbound dirt road. At the next intersection, this road turned too muddy, so we had to head north. Stupid decision, now we're going north anyway, on a muddy dirt road instead of a paved one.

Long story short, we ended up with our passenger side wheels in a bar ditch. Chase over. Last chance to redeem an unsuccessful chase trip over.

This took place on the grid pattern southeast of the intersection of routes 33 and 74, WSW of Guthrie. We got stuck at about 2PM. Three tornado reports were associated with our storm near Ripley, starting at about 3PM.

We got pulled out and were back on the road by about 4:45. We saw that the storms to the southwest had not tornado'd, so we assumed the environment was not particularly favorable there. We could have theoretically caught up with our storm near Tulsa (it did produce another tornado there), but the terrain east of Tulsa is not great, we had to get to Wichita for our flights home the next morning, and quite frankly were so disgusted with our luck for the whole trip at this point that we just decided to bag it and enjoy a relaxing dinner and evening in Old Town Wichita.

Never will we tempt fate on wet dirt roads again. Lesson learned.

 

[John Farley]

I was on the Chickasha-Purcell supercell. Never seen a storm rotate that much without producing a tornado. You can see my full report and photos at:

http://www.johnefarley.com/chase53013.htm

I am dedicating this chase and report to Tim, Paul, and Carl.

 

[Nathan Edwards]

Started on the Chickasha-Purcell storm. Also amazed it didn't produce. Dropped south to the next storm as it reached Purcell and got some awesome structure from it. Some pics and timelapse below.

Timelapse Video

 

[Josh Durkee]

lowres but...

05.30.13: Near Asher, OK

05.30.13: Just east of the previous image as the LP was winding down

05.30.13: Headed to Pauls Valley, OK

 

[J Allen]

Have finally got around to processing some of these shots. Spent 8 hours chasing, and by the end of it ended up with a large number of photos. Felt like I kept good position throughout the chase (dropped cells as they died with the secondary mesocyclone collapse), but was disappointed that none of the storms managed to drop a tornado (well at least not the classic variety - some very strange occurrences on the Chickasha storm, the storm to its south). Still the structure more than made up for it.

Second cell doing its best effort:

Approaching the third supercell of the day from the south

Supercell near Wynewood undergoes its penultimate cycle.

 

[Zack Cooper]

Just now getting around to a report. Spent our entire chase on the Chickasha-Purcell storm.... Watched it evaporate right in front of our eyes. Debated dropping South to the next storms, but they just didn't look too impressive, so we called off the chase.

 

[Dave C]

I'm pretty sure this was the Purcell storm dying out somewhere near Wanette / Asher. I've cluttered up my photos from that day as I was late dropping south from Kansas and I'm still trying to sort everything out. Kind of a junk shot I happened to snap on my way to the next storm.

Here is one from about 9PM that night on another storm that hailed its way SE down I-35. This is just west of Davis, Oklahoma, looking eastward on state highway 7.

 

[Danny Neal]

Summary:

I was expecting today to be my last chase day out on the plains and that alone put me in a pretty rotten mood. This coupled with the fact that I just spent a night in a really sub-par hotel with terrible service had me in rare form. We got a late start from Dodge City and eventually meandered our way into Northern Oklahoma. Tornadic supercells were already ongoing by the time we reached the target area. Knowing they were moving into unfavorable terrain, we decided to hang back and catch development should it develop off the stagnant dry line. Caught some briefly severe convection along the I-35 corridor before sunset. I had secured tomorrow off so we stayed the night in Norman with some friends.

Introduction:

A disappointing chase before due to messy storm modes and long drive. We spent the night at an America’s Best Value Inn in Dodge City. Earlier in the trip we stayed at one in Ponca City, Oklahoma and it wasn’t so bad although everything inside of it was curiously named “Ashley Inn.†Since it was a pretty good experience I decided to give the franchise another shot. The hotel itself was a small two story L shaped hotel with parking lot adjacent to the main entrance. It was your basic two star motel, but management was very cold and accusatory. I booked the hotel on our trip there so we could secure the room by the time we arrived. When we arrived to the hotel an Indian man was behind the desk. I assumed he was a manager, but seemed very annoyed that I booked the room online. He asked me if it was just me staying in the room. I replied no I had a couple of others. I was then lectured about having a party and making too much noise and asked repeatedly if I had anyone else that planned on coming to the room. After ten minutes of awkwardness, I got my room key and was watched like a hawk until I got back into the car. There was a bar and grill across the street so instead of going into the room we decided to grab a bite to eat and watch the Blackhawks finish off the Redwings. About an hour later we walked across the street back to the hotel and I noticed some shady characters on the second floor and decided to grab every last possession I had and bring it into the room with me. When we walked into the room it was your typical musty hotel stink with two beds, a television from the 80′s, and a small bathroom with “stains in the toilet.†Nevertheless we settled in the room. There are just some places where you don’t pull back the quilt and reveal what is underneath and this was one of those places. Fatigue was at an all time high, so regardless of the undesirable conditions, I passed out.

After a decent nights sleep, I woke up and showered in rather luke warm water. Check out time was eleven o’clock and we were running a few minutes behind. At eleven on the dot, an old man came down to the room and knocked on the door. We all were in the process of getting packed up and set up for the chase. He asked why we were still there in his broken accent. Adam told him we were in the process of leaving and it would be a couple of minutes. He stormed down to the end of the row of rooms near the office and stood there with his arms folded and watched us. By 11:15 we were all packed up and could overhear him yelling into the office. “CHARGE THEM, THEY STILL AREN’T GONE!†I had enough, so instead of going into the office and returning the keys I simply tossed them into the room and closed and locked the door. We left in haste, but not before showing the rude establishment what I thought about it with a certain hand gesture.

A couple of reviews of the place tells the story:

“Brooke Eckard 3 months ago
This is the most disgusting hotel. We had two employees stay there for a business trip, and they woke up with BED BUGS crawling on them. When they went to get their money refunded the service was absolutely horrible. The manager didn’t care at all!! He wouldn’t refund one of the nights and this was his reasoning…I could refund you your money but because I own this place I can do what I want. THIS IS THE LAST HOTEL I WOULD EVER RECOMMEND TO ANYBODY. Unless you enjoy waking up with bed bugs on you and your things, and you like being treated like crap then move along in your hotel search and take your money elsewhere.â€

“Bryan Smith 11 months ago
DONT GO HERE!! Something is very wrong with this place. Indian owned and operated. NOT family friendly and very rude and dirty. Dirty with bedbugs!â€

What a start to my day….. I can say for sure… I will NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT ever go to another America’s Best Value Inn. It was hard to focus on the actual weather after the morning I had, but thinking it was my last day out there, we had to give it a shot. By twelve noon we noticed giant towers already blossoming on the horizon way off to the south and east. Overnight convection was strengthening to our east near Wichita which explained why those towers kept growing. To the southeast and south, an outflow boundary stretched away from the arc of convection currently ongoing and would be the focal point for severe weather.

Forecast:

Today held a pretty decent potential for rotating supercells along and east of the I 35 corridor. The Storm Prediction Center had a moderate risk for Oklahoma east of I 35. A low pressure area was located near Dodge City with a warm front stretching into Missouri and Illinois while a dry line extended from the L down through West-Central Oklahoma. Thermo-dynamically speaking the set up was rather impressive. By noon, CAPE values in excess of 2,500 to 3,000 J/KG were situated over an outflow boundary sagging south into Northern Oklahoma. 0-1 to 0-3 KM EHI values were already in excess of 6 by noon and further increased as storms started to initiate. Low to mid level lapse rates were good, but not amazing. I wasn’t so concerned about capping or instability issues as I was about kinematic fields. A decent jet streak at 500mb was moving overhead with an even stronger punch of energy rounding the base of the 300mb trough. What cursed the day before were classic veer back veer profiles and at quick glance we noticed that would an issue today. While low level wind profiles weren’t screaming tornado outbreak, the enhanced shear and vorticity from the out flow boundary kept us cautiously optimistic. Through late afternoon, 30-35 kt of low level shear promoted some stronger mesocyclones should they form. 0-1 and 0-3 KM SRH was nearing 300 m2/s2 near the Tulsa area. Overall the best area to be in would be early afternoon along a line from Ponca City to Tulsa. The problem was we were still in Pratt, Kansas.

Initiation:

We continued east on US 54 as towers were breaking the cap well off to our south. Within the next hour, a tornado watch was hoisted for the area with mention of strong tornadoes. Thunderstorms sprouted along the northeast to southwest orientated out flow boundary with towers developing along the dry line. We were still well over two hours away from the target area and storms were rapidly forming and maturing in a highly unstable environment. At this point we almost through in the towel and headed for home instead of dipping several more hours south and essentially playing catch up. Since tornadic supercells were already in progress and moving off the OFB and dry line, we decided to dip into Northern Oklahoma and wait. The thought process was that if these storms left the area by two or three o’ clock then there could be enough time for the dry line to re-destabilize and more supercells could fire. With an impressive low level jet peaking into the area near sunset, we thought that if re development were to occur then we would be well in position to intercept them. So we continued south into the Enid area as more supercells formed near the Oklahoma City area. Again we had the idea of flying down there, but that would make a longer drive home. Towers were rapidly building along the dry line at this time and eventually a storm formed right in front of us.

Chase Log:

We tracked the storm from the Hennessey area east to the I 35/Hwy 51 JCT. It struggled mightily due to the area still being stabilized from convection off to the east. Those storms produced a few tornadoes, but we didn’t want to think about that as our little storm decided to die. We plotted a course to intercept the northeast moving supercells forty miles to our southeast along SR 51. We even made a play at them, but quickly turned around realizing that it was a lost hope. Attention turned to tomorrow’s chase potential. I said if things looked good I would try to secure work off again, but I didn’t want to make anymore deals with coworkers. A quick look at things showed a volatile situation unfolding and better low level directional shear. Coincidentally there was a barbeque place nearby so we decided to forfeit the rest of the chase and look at data for tomorrow. I called my job and my awesome coworker graciously traded days with me and I secured Friday off. The barbeque place we ate at was very good. Big meal at reasonable prices and a friendly staff. As I was calling my co-worker outside, a large thunderstorm formed ten miles to our southwest. It rapidly strengthened and became severe as it moved east-northeast. Since we didn’t eat yet, we thought we would just let it run us over and maybe drop some good sized hail. Adam brought his laptop into the restaurant and live coverage on the storms ongoing from the television gave us good perspective of what was still ongoing. Our food arrived as thunder rumbled in the distance.

The storm went severe warned for golf ball hail and began to turn slightly to the right. Our eye brows raised and we wrapped up our lunch and gave it a shot. By the time we paid, loaded up, fueled up, and made our way toward the storm. There were two options on how to intercept the storm. We could go east on 51 toward Stillwater and then drop south in front of the storm, or we could hit I 35 south and fly east on 33. We chose the latter option since we figured the storm would continue to turn right and would be closer to Cushing then to Stillwater by the time we got there. Driving south on 35 we encountered a couple of cars pulled over on the side of the road and even a semi blown over. Golf ball sized hail was lying in the median and along the side of the road. Our storm was strengthening! It was ten miles to our east by the time we reached our east option and realized the road curved more to the north than east so we aborted and chose a road out of Guthrie via HWY 105. It put us another five to ten miles behind the storm, but our option went straight east and was paved so we figured we could make up for lost time. Our storm showed broad rotation on radar, but visually was unimpressive. We beat it to US 177, but the storm looked like mush by this point. We found a pull off area just south of Perkins and watched for ten or fifteen minutes as the base lifted and the updraft base began getting riddled with holes. There was no thunder to be heard anymore and we finally decided to call the chase. A very frustrating day.

Reflection:

We turned around and headed south on 177 through the town of Carney and witnessed the destruction that a devastating EF-4 tornado did to the southern side of town. The smell of fresh lumbar and mud still filled the air. Pretty sobering to see people still going through rubble as long as twelve days afterwards. We went south to Shawnee where we encountered more EF-4 damage before heading west to Oklahoma City. The supercells ongoing south of the metro made for some nice eye candy as we arrived at Ben’s place. He was out chasing down along the Red River and allowed us to chill at his place until he got back. It was then that Mr. Steve Miller himself texted me and invited us over to his place for some brews and to hang out. When Steve invites you over, you don’t say no! After an hour of relaxation, we went to his place. On our drive there, we noticed some pretty frequent lightning off to the northeast on the horizon. There was still a pretty strong cell twenty miles to our southeast too that gave us a nice light show. When we arrived at Steve’s house we was telling us how his buddy captured amazing video of the Tulsa tornado. We assumed it was from much earlier in the afternoon, but it had happened within that last hour. We scrambled to pull up radar and when we did the three of us had the biggest face palm moment of 2013. It appears that the cell we left to die near Perkins actually slowly organized and became one beast of a tornado supercell that impacted Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. It dropped a pretty significant twilight tornado on the east side of town that was documented by several chasers. The brews started to fly afterwards before we ended the night at a Waffle House in Norman.

Pictures:

Our high based storm near Perkins, Oklahoma long before it dropped a significant tornado near Tulsa
​