Andy Berrington
EF2
What a day! Saw my first three tornadoes of my life (and chasing career) today with the old man near Woodward, OK. Started the day in Colby after seeing the Scott City tornadic supercell yesterday from a distance. Drove south through Garden City and Dodge City figuring the dryline/outflow boundary intersection would yield supercells with southeasterly near-surface flow in place (and also closer to the shortwave trough). Proceeded to drive to Buffalo, OK with upper 60s/70s dewpoints in place.
Watched several storms just east of town try to develop and get capped, until one updraft (that many others saw) seemed to break it, along with another cell near Coldwater, KS. I headed east on US-64 towards Alva to watch the southern storm develop a nice base with great inflow (>20-25 mph gusts at times), but it eventually began to become strongly sheared and excessively tilted (as did the storm to the north).
We then met up with Jon Strebler during this time and decided to head south on 34 towards Woodward to catch the rapidly developing supercell to the south (had a very impressive updraft that was far less tilted than the others). Ended up punching through its core (fortunately before it was producing any larger hail) and having a rapidly rotating wall cloud basically right on top of us on the other side. Tracked south to just N/NW of Woodward as the tornado sirens began blaring with inflow in excess of 30 mph. Eventually after a decent period with a rather ragged looking wall cloud, the storm tightened up and produced its first tornado, then proceeded to spawn at least two more. One of them was quite strong with rapid motion evident at its base.
Below are a couple images (taken by the old man since I was taking video) of the first tornado. Unfortunately, the DSLR's battery died (without me knowing it was low of course) so we didn't get many, but I did get video of the whole sequence that hopefully turned out well.
![DSC00237.JPG DSC00237.JPG](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/13/13611-77422b0446b47bf5a0545d480a32fbbe.jpg)
Watched several storms just east of town try to develop and get capped, until one updraft (that many others saw) seemed to break it, along with another cell near Coldwater, KS. I headed east on US-64 towards Alva to watch the southern storm develop a nice base with great inflow (>20-25 mph gusts at times), but it eventually began to become strongly sheared and excessively tilted (as did the storm to the north).
We then met up with Jon Strebler during this time and decided to head south on 34 towards Woodward to catch the rapidly developing supercell to the south (had a very impressive updraft that was far less tilted than the others). Ended up punching through its core (fortunately before it was producing any larger hail) and having a rapidly rotating wall cloud basically right on top of us on the other side. Tracked south to just N/NW of Woodward as the tornado sirens began blaring with inflow in excess of 30 mph. Eventually after a decent period with a rather ragged looking wall cloud, the storm tightened up and produced its first tornado, then proceeded to spawn at least two more. One of them was quite strong with rapid motion evident at its base.
Below are a couple images (taken by the old man since I was taking video) of the first tornado. Unfortunately, the DSLR's battery died (without me knowing it was low of course) so we didn't get many, but I did get video of the whole sequence that hopefully turned out well.
![DSC00243.JPG DSC00243.JPG](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/13/13612-3f39d837a906c11b2778b2d9a055eb52.jpg)
![DSC00237.JPG DSC00237.JPG](https://stormtrack.org/data/attachments/13/13611-77422b0446b47bf5a0545d480a32fbbe.jpg)