Chad Lawson, Susan Walling, Jo Radel, and myself left Norman just before noon headed west on I-40 to Clinton. Dwain Warner alerted us to the cell developing near Sayre, so we kept west on 40 until Canute, where we turned south and positioned ourselves about a mile SW of town, watching a wallcloud begin to rotate. There was no one else around, and I was tripoding in the middle of the lonely intersection.
This storm tried very hard a few times, but failed as each occlusion through Canute/Foss/Stafford yielded no tornadoes. After a bad navigational decision by Yours Truly, we corrected and got to the north side of Clinton as the storm began to wind up again. A mile or so north of town, a wal cloud developed extremely rapidly, and within seconds a small needle tornado formed. Just after it appeared, hills blocked our view. We missed about half of it, but I still managed to get about20-30 seconds of good video, though the tornado didin't last more than a minute tops anyway. We continued with the storm ENE on OK33.....
North of Custer City, a second smallish tornado developed and snaked its way down. It began to get wrapped in rain quickly as the meso wrapped it up, but we somehow managed to keep it in sight and got video of the entire event, about 2-3 minutes. After this one, we continued through Thomas and went south on OK54 just east of town. There we witnessed a large cone funnel about 1/3 of the way to the ground, which lasted several minutes and seemed to be either on top of or maybe just south of Thomas. We couldn't confirm a touchdown from this one, but later Scott Currens, Amos Magliocco, and Eric Nguyen said they thought they'd seen some small funnel-shaped whirls on the ground beneath it.....they called it "half a tornado"....LOL, I'll count it as a tornado if reports verify.
After the Thomas funnel/tornado, we continued NE on Ok33 but the storm seemed to be losing a bit of punch. We heard of the new cell developing SW of Clinton, so we abandoned the storm and headed back to this new storm with high hopes.
We had a beautiful view of the updraft base just east of Corn as the cell became tornado-warned. A lush, vast shimmering field of wheat lie in the foreground as the wallcloud quickly developed. However, this storm too didn't get it done with either of its first attempts, so we found ourselves moving back ENE to I-40 near Hydro as the storm moved north of I-40 and seemed to weaken somewhat. With darkness immienent, we decided to stop for gas and food, thinking the day was pretty much over.......yeah right.
As we waited for our food, we monitered the storm, which was still severe but seemed less of a tornado threat as time went on. Regardless, after receiving our food, we headed east on 40 to exit 115, then proceeded noth, with the mere intention of getting some sunest structure shots (which we did, and they were spectacular!)
After our sunest session, we noticed the NE flank of the storm seemed to be developing an interesting lowering, so we again gave chase, hitting Calumet then backroading it ENE from there towards Concho. Somewhere west of Concho, maybe 5-6 miles NW of El Reno, Chad said "I think that's a tornado....."
Out of nowhere, two funnels appeared simultaneously, the right one much larger and snaking 3/4 of the way to the ground, the left one much smaller, about 1/3 of the way down. We could confirm a touchdown with the larger one, but not the smaller one (though we remain open to persuasion :lol: )
Shortly afterwards, we ran into the three aformentioned chasers, and had a nice, quick roadside pow wow (I hadn't seen Amos since CO '02).
So for you stat people, here's the day in a nutshell:
359 miles
2 supercells
A dozen or more cycles/occlusions
Numerous funnels
3 tornadoes, 1 probable, and another possible (maybe 5 altogether)
NOTE I would like to give a BIG THUMBS DOWN to the Kingfisher County Sherriff's Office; I called 911 to report the dusk tornado(es) west of Concho, and was met with the most sarcastic voice on the other end, which blandly stated "Uhh, we're already aware of that I think" in the most sarcastic tone I've ever experienced while reporting. I said "NW of El Reno, right?" to which the voice again sarcasticly replied "Uh, yeah."
F-you too buddy, lol.
Anyway, wonderful chase today!!!!
Thanks to Dwain Warner, who stayed with it all day long and provided pricless assistance in today's chase - you da man bro!!!!
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