My name is Jake Wallentine. I am pretty new to posting here, but i've been a lurker for about 3 years. I'm a freshmen at OU and in the process of earning my meteorology degree. I have to say that i'm proud to be a new (active) member to the stormtrack community and have already gained quite a bit of knowledge just by reading different stuff on the forum and look forward to learning more with time. This is my second season chasing. Have to give a shout out to Scott Roberts as he helped my chase partner and good friend, Kevin Rider, and I "get our feet wet" so to speak as far as chasing goes. Kevin and I will be in a gold intrepid (I know...not a typical chase vehicle
) if we're out chasing this year. So, if you see us out in the field don't hesitate to wave, honk, or if we're not in the middle of chasing, introduce yourself.
Okay...now onto the report. Sorry its sort of late. I've been pretty busy lately with school work. If I screwed something up with the report, mods, feel free to change it to conform with the guidelines.
Kevin, Cory Martin, Craig Murphy, and I took off from Norman about 1:30PM with the target being near Snyder, OK. As we were making our way down that way we noticed the dryline and triple point had moved quite a bit east. So, instead of continuing west to Snyder from Lawton, OK, we sat on the south side of Lawton waiting for iniation. After noticing the complex of storms starting to fire and strengthen west of Wichita Falls we decided to sprint down there hoping that was going to be the main show. We thought about waiting on the north side of the Red River to see if the new storms would cross, since road options across the river were limited, but instead decided to go ahead and cross the border on hwy 44. We then drove west towards Haynesville on hwy 240. While driving westward we noticed that the complex was evolving into a more well defined supercell. Once we got closer to the east side of the storm we began to see the rain free base with a wall cloud and possible funnel looking to our WSW.
The structure became increasingly phenomenal as time passed. Finally, after awhile some of the lower level clouds moved to reveal a very nice meso.
We moved a little ways south once we started to get hailed and after we determined this beast was becoming a right turner. Meso, wall cloud, and funnel:
We watched some rapid rotation under the wall cloud to our northwest as we were sitting about 4 miles east of Electra,Tx and about 6 miles SE of Haynesville,Tx. Inflow winds were hitting us in our backs and gusting up to about 50mph.
There were times where we thought we saw something on the ground, but it was too unclear to report, as the rain and hail was begining to wrap around the main area of circulation. However, after returning to Norman and reviewing my pics I noticed something interesting in this photo:
After comparing the time with Sam Dienst it appears that this could be the same tornado that he bagged. This picture was taken at about 5:10PM. Here is a cropped and deeply contrasted pic of the one above:
After realizing the giant meso was starting to position itself directly on top of us, we drove south to hwy 287 and stopped for a minute to see what this beast was going to do next. We started SE again towards Wichita Falls when suddenly Craig and Cory looked out the back window to see a faint, weak, and possibly anticyclonic tornado/landspout on the ground about a mile or two behind us. It lasted maybe 20-30s before disappearing. If you look close enough you can see the debris being tossed around, just above and to the right of the semi truck (Photo courtesy of Craig Murphy):
Kevin called the brief touchdown into the NWS, then we continued south and east towards Wichita Falls, still on hwy 287. We stopped a few miles down the road after observing the weak tornado. I believe that the brief touchdown was possibly anticyclonic because as we got out to look at the same cloud base this tornado has just came out of, we noticed the rotation was very strong but in a clockwise fashion. This area of circulation was just south of the wall cloud that we had been watching for so long:
It was probably a good thing the storm became disorganized when it did, as it was heading towards the general area of Wichita Falls. Sitting just NW of Wichita Falls watching the meso and beaver tail as the storm began to lose intensity:
After following this supercell to its death NE of Wichita Falls, we noticed the new storms firing to our south. We headed down to Archer City, then just a little bit east to watch the final stages of the southern most storm. Tried to get some lightning pics but by the time we arrived down there the storm was rather unelectric and didn't want to cooperate with us. Anyway, we called it a night. Probably the most successful chase to date for Kevin and I.
) 
