3/21/05 REPORTS: OK/TX

[Ben Prusia]

I'd have to agree with Jeff S. on the excellent chasing terrain of NE Texas. This was my first time visiting Texas ever, and I think the area from the Red River Valley of OK southward is great for chasing.

Unfortunately, I did not see anything yesterday, despite being in NE Texas from Paris, SW-ward. I watched the Paris storm develop near Commerce as it moved northeastward to Paris, but I was not convinced on that storm. I really did not count on the Paris storm producing anything, but I congratulate Darin and Travis (who I communicated with a lot during the chase), who saw the tornado at Paris, and everybody else who had faith in the Paris storm. Better luck next time for me, and April-May-June is not far away! Hopefully I will have the WXWORX ground setup in place for the next chase (on order).

 

[StephenLevine]

East Texas Supercell Intercept

Left work in Plano yesterday at 3:15 pm, and armed only with a weather radio, drove east to the dryline reaching it around the Terrell TX area about 4 pm. Witnessed a beautiful scene of 4 towers in front of me, each separated by about 15-20 miles, from the far north horizon to about 40 miles to my South. Hung out in this position for about an hour and finally chose the southern most cell, which seemed to maintain the most consistant strength. Of note was the intense sheer on the towers that tilted cloudtops at a 10:00 o clock angle from the updraft.
Very slowly this storm organized as I turned south towards Kaufman to meet the impressive updraft, which had a circular and largely rain free base, with thickening anvil prec. I followed this as it slowly progressed towards Canton TX.
Driving on S.R. 243 between Kaufman and Canton, I encountered several episodes of brief rotating lowerings, nickel-sized hail, several rainbows and nice lightning. As the storm moved to between Kaufman and Canton, it developed a strong RFD, with clouds at the rear of the storm plunging earthward in shreds, only to curl back upwards in places, with sunshine filtering through.
Three miles west of Canton, at about 6 pm I witnessed it's transformation into a classic supercell, complete with impressive striations, a "beaver tail", and a spectacular dark inflow band spiralling into it from the SW - rushing directly low over my head, and reminding me of a candy cane. Just west of where the spiral met the storm, two adjacent areas of scud would appear, lower, rotate towards each other, then disappear then start again. This sure had me excited, though nothing touched down.
Towards sunset, two impressive inflow bands met the storm, like legs from the NW and SW.
At dusk a beautiful red hue seized the cauliflowery mountain.

 

[Sheila_Ward]

My original plan was to head to Texas. But as I did one last data check at work, I decided to head to OK. Don't know why, just gut I guess. I left work at noon (in Little Rock) and blasted toward OK. I wasn't sure if I would get there in time but I got lucky. Thank goodness the storms were slow moving and hung around a while. I made it to the storm in Okfuskee county just as it was going over Okemah. Caught a couple funnels and what looked like a stovepipe tornado, but it was really wrapped in rain. I don't have any video of this so I'm not sure.

Here's a video cap of one of the funnels. I am heading north on N3840 road. It parallels Hwy 56. Does anyone know if this ever touched the ground? This also could be the one that got wrapped in rain. I was playing catch-up and repositioning, so I'm not sure if what I saw that was rain wrapped was a new one, or still this one. (sorry, contrast is not good)

[Broken External Image]:http://www.stormimagery.com/photos/20050321_OK_vidcap1.jpg

This storm started to die out so I moved to the storm just south of it. It had a nice lowering, but it didn't look like it was rotating to me. I was pretty far away so I'm not sure.

Had a fun afternoon. Good March chase!

 

[Greg Stumpf]

Here's a video cap of one of the funnels. I am heading north on N3840 road. It parallels Hwy 56. Does anyone know if this ever touched the ground? This also could be the one that got wrapped in rain. I was playing catch-up and repositioning, so I'm not sure if what I saw that was rain wrapped was a new one, or still this one. (sorry, contrast is not good)

We watched this tornado from its inception as a new cyclic low-level meso (new LL meso after Cromwell) just ENE of Okemah. The tornado lasted possibly over 21 minutes before it became completely wrapped in rain just East of N3840 road. From our video capture:

First time we saw condensation tendrils coming off the ground was at 2159:03 UTC while we were on old Hwy 62. Then there was a gap where we had a bowl but we were repositioning on N3840 and didn't have the best view up close. At 2206:55 UTC we stopped 3 miles north of Old Hwy 62 on N3840 and saw multivortex condensation wisps underneath a bowl. The wisps died off and the bowl persisted after 2207:45 UTC. Rain started wrapping around by 2210 UTC but no obvious tornado at the time. The meso narrowed and a tapered funnel formed by 2212:50 UTC in the rain. We then continued north on N3840. From there till it crossed the road about 3/4 mile in front of us at 2217 UTC, it was a tapered trunk funnel and high confidence of tornado. We thought we could hear it at 2218:10 to the northeast of the road we were on (about 1/2 mile away). We still see the funnel at 2220:15 UTC. Afterwards, we lose the tornado due to visibility but the barrel occluded updraft is still evident.

 

[Karen Politte]

Here's a video cap of one of the funnels. I am heading north on N3840 road. It parallels Hwy 56. Does anyone know if this ever touched the ground? This also could be the one that got wrapped in rain. I was playing catch-up and repositioning, so I'm not sure if what I saw that was rain wrapped was a new one, or still this one. (sorry, contrast is not good)

Yes, this was a tornado. Your video capture is almost identical to some stills we have as we drove north towards the meso. After it crossed the highway, we continued north, and proceeded to have occasional shredded leaves fall on us. Debris: Ergo tornado.

KR

 

[Nic Wilson]

As Robin mentioned earlier in the thread, myself and Eric Holthaus, a fellow graduate research assistant at OU working under Howie Bluestein, had some success on Monday out in Okfuskee County. Feel free to check out the "Everything Else" forum to see my introduction to the ST community in the thread aptly titled "Who's that new guy?"

Eric and I caught the last rain-wrapped tornado that Greg, Karen, Sheila and others saw. However, we were a mile or two east on NS3870, about three miles north of I-40. The tree line made it difficult to see how long there was actually circulation at the surface but I managed to get a couple good photos of the condensation funnel. My photos were taken at 2218:30 Z so my estimate is it was on the ground for 2 to 3 minutes.

Check out my chase account at http://weather.ou.edu/~nwilson/chase1.html

 

[Sheila_Ward]

Greg and Karen - thanks for the info and for confirming this for me!

 

[Karen Politte]

Our chase account/writeup from March 21st can be found here:

http://www.stormskies.com/ChaseDiaryMon21stMar05.htm

KR

 

[Nic Wilson]

Here is the link to the Oklahoma Lightning Mapping Array data from the March 21st event. The Oklahoma LMA is run by Dr. Don MacGorman and Dr. Rust of OU/NSSL with the technology and support provided by Paul Krehbiel and others at New Mexico Tech.

http://lightning.nmt.edu/oklma/rt.php?date=050321

A brief introduction to lightning mapping arrays can be found at

http://weather.ou.edu/~nwilson/lma.html

It is a nice site to use in retrospect to pin-point where convective cores were located during thunderstorm events in Oklahoma for those of us without radar re-analysis software. Pseudo-storm tops can be derived by using the heights running across the x and along the y plane of the plan view. VHF sources from electrical breakddwn are most visible in areas of positive charge so a crude idea of the storm's charge structure can also be looked at using this data.