5/16/10 REPORTS: OK

[Brendon Lindsey]

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4613549884_c0a370de9e.jpg

Got on it near Okeene, followed it until Piedmont. Biggest Hail I got was between golfball and tennis ball. Was very outflow dominate near the end.

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

Big hail at Rocky's!!

From Aprox.1515-1530cdt, the most intense hailstorm I can remember since living here in Piedmont, OK. occurred. A TOR was issued shortly before the storm started moving in. No visible, organized rotation was noted but there was a general, broad circulation present but was nothing of concern. Still was one mean looking storm. Just before 1515, as the meso was closing in, a very distinct hail roar could be heard along with occasional cracks of stray hailstones hitting the neighbour's barns around us.

Then the core moved in with winds basically from the NW gusting between 50-65mph, hail commenced and started at quarter to half dollar sized with occasional golfballs thrown in, then the meat of the storm was upon us with hail averaging golfball sized with some stones slightly bigger than baseballs, this being propelled by 50mph+ winds. Five long minutes went by before it began to abate. Hail ended by aprox. 1533. The ground covered in areas with lots of grape sized to golfball sized hail and mixed in were stones that were close to 3" in diameter, maybe more. Infact, at 1710, my son found a stone that was still golfball sized.. 100 minutes after the fact, so some stones could have been easily over 3 inches in diameter.

Thankfully, no broken windows, not even a crack that I've seen so far. That includes our skylights! As for the roof, so far, no visible damage, but we'll probably have to have it inspected professionally to make sure. Got video and pics .. just need to figure out how to post it. Thanks to several who called me out of concern like Dave Ewoldt, Charles Edwards and Chris Novy!

 

[Zac Goode]

Got into some pretty good size hail at nw 122 and council in nw okc.
Time was 3:52pm Guess it got pretty bad right after this in nw okc.
My boss house got some windows broke out at mustang road and nw expressway.

 

[Jeremy Jones]

I first intercepted this storm just South of Hennessey, OK. I never saw anything with any horizontal rotation to it. Lot of Vertical movement in the updraft, but that's about it. I followed this one South on Highway 81 to Highway 3, then into the OKC metro area. By the time I made it to the Metro the outflow wasn't far behind. I ended up core punching on the Lake Hefner Parkway! Got to get out and pick up a few Hail stones! It completed covered the highway with Half dollar to Golf ball size hail.

The first shot is from just North of Kingfisher, just as I noticed the cell went Tor Warned...

This shot is just South of Kingfisher looking West, at the dirt being kicked up
on the dirt road I was on. Kind of far off, but you can still see it...

The Third image is just before I came back into the OKC metro area on N.W. Expressway. By this time the Tor. Warning had expired, and the outflow was very strong!

And the last shot is of some of the hail from the core I punched! No busted windows, thankfully!

For initially just trying to head out and do some daytime lightning shooting, I will have to say this was a pleasantly unexpected day!

 

[Brett Roberts]

I arrived on the Kingfisher/Oklahoma Co. storm right around Piedmont and watched the deep blue core approach briefly before the stones started flying. Quickly found shelter for my car and rode it out -- it took a good 20 minutes before the quarters and golfballs stopped, to the point where I was actually getting bored and wanted it to be over with so I could get out from under the HP beast and see it again. After the barrage let up, I drove N a few miles (where it appeared the strongest dBZ and VIL had tracked) and found melted stones about 30 minutes old still 2-2.5" in diameter 6 NW The Village:

After enjoying the hail-covered landscape for a few minutes, I got back on I-40 and moved W to take a look at the new, weaker storms going up around Weatherford. I dropped S from El Reno on US-81 and was quite surprised at how photogenic this small supercell(?) was, despite never being severe. Here are a couple shots from around Minco and Tuttle as it hovered a few miles to my W.

It shriveled up and vanished rather quickly as it moved towards Newcastle, so I headed home. I sure didn't expect to see a storm that looked like that with the vertical wind profile we had today!

 

[Chris C Sanner]

Crazy awesome day today. Targeted watonga and ended up on the eventual tornado warned storm before a svr was out on it. Storm "looked" outflow dominant unless you were in the inflow notch where it had a very impressive lowering for a good while. Storms hp nature probably prevented many from seeing the money zone since you had to be just e of it to have any view.

Cell then moved into the metro, we bailed west for supercell #2 which had above average structure fork awhile then it died a painful death. However, we were nit deterred and left the storm well before it's demise for good development west.

Supercell #3 had a great look to it for more than an hour before it finally kicked the bucket near hinton.

All in all, this is exactly why you make your own forecast because I would call 6+ hours of straight supercells a win today chasing. Very happy with it...pics to come later.

 

[Rebekah LaBar]

One of the best impromptu chases ever!

I wasn't aware too much of what was going on until I looked at the radar just before 3pm. As soon as my chase partner (Jeff Makowski) showed up, I was out the door, heading off to Oklahoma City.

Near the State Capitol, we only saw quarter-size hail at the largest, though most of the stones were smaller (closer to dime- or penny-size). We did get to stream live to KSBI for the first time, and I spoke on air about the hail footage we were showing--so that was a bit exciting for us.

After following the storm south and east for a few miles, we were asked to turn around and go back towards the storm near El Reno, in case it decided to do anything. This turned out to be great for Jeff and I, as we got to witness a beautiful little LP supercell near Newcastle (I did watch a bit of scud under the updraft base and verified that it was slowly rotating).

After a while it started to erode, shortly after one of the UMASS radars from V2 pulled up behind us and started to scan the storm.

See these links for more photos and a full chase log.

 

[Earl Faubion]

About the time the hail storm was rolling over Rocky's home I shot the following video looking north toward Piedmont.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY2EolxJKgc

 

[Elinor McLennon]

Got on the storm as it moved into the metro area. Made it to Western and Britton and got into golf ball to baseball size hail. I have never seen hail that destroyed siding on houses. Photographed lots of broken windows, street lights, etc.
Stopped to help one lady who had been walking in the hail storm! The police showed up as I was splinting her arm. I told him that I could step aside if he'd prefer to help until the ambulance got there. He looked at me and said I was doing a better job than he could and to keep up the good work! That made me feel great.

 

[Greg Blumberg]

Immediately after watching the cell morph into a supercell on radar, several of my friends and I left for Oklahoma City. We got there about 5~10 minutes before the cell started to look very outflow dominant. It was a very good looking supercell initially with a few striations along the base, but had a very long trailing gust front both on visual and on radar. There were times then the areas of the cell began removing the gust front and started forming a wall cloud, but then the gust front would reappear and rip apart the wall cloud.

One noticeable thing was the incredible lack of inflow to the storm as we were watching it. This had to be the only supercell I've seen this season that has had that.

Soon we gave up and headed back to Norman, spotting the LP supercell along the way. We watched the updraft die and went inside. Overall a great chase.

This is not my video below. The hail sizes had to be enormous to create such waves! The pool is just absolutely wild!

 

[Mike Umscheid]

After work, I chased for the second day in a row, although a little bit farther from home than the previous day. I was interested in the next shortwave trough rotating around the larger scale pattern and the subtle lower tropospheric development immediately ahead of this feature along with some decent insolation. An axis of surface-based cumulus was developing ahead of the mid level perturbation by early afternoon which was moving southeast toward Dodge City. By 5pm, a storm developed amidst this cu field and about 800 to 1000 J/kg CAPE and ~ 53 to 54F dewpoints. 500mb temperatures were chilly, however, at around -16 to -17C with enough deep layer shear for storm organization. I had all of this in mind when I left work, but I wasn't 100% sure I was actually going to chase. A storm finally developed just south of Dodge City around 5:30pm, which was enough for me to get out the door, if for nothing else to get some decent sunset photography with mediocre storms. It ended up being a lot better than I expected.

A supercell emerged from this development as it moved southeast toward Coldwater later in the evening. I followed it southeast into northern Woods County, OK which is where I did the bulk of my photography around sunset. I photographed the storm to my northeast... purposely remaining southwest of the storm purely for photography light reasons. I broke off onto some county roads east of Hwy 34 and north of Hwy 64 in northern Woods County, OK and had a field day photographing the supercell to my northeast amidst wonderful landscape of the gypsum hills. The light at 8:30pm was phenomenal. The supercell structure was pretty darn good with this organized storm. The landscape lit up in brilliant golden hues contrasting nicely with the cooler hues of the storm structure over the hills. The light just continued to get better looking to the east-northeast, and an amazing pink wall cloud emerged. I found an interesting foreground subject to add to this amazing scene. This incredible light ended just a few minutes later and I made my way to Hwy 64 continuing east following the backside of the storm. I tried for a little lightning on the backside with not a whole lot of success.

I then noticed the Central Kansas storms on radar. I debated whether to head back to Dodge City the way I came (the most direct route) or to head to Alva then north into Barber County to watch the supercells after dark coming into south-central Kansas. I ultimately decided to go after the late night storms, which were actually briefly tornadic in northeastern Pratt County. The distant lightning in the Cb was constant. I approached Hardtner where I was pulled over by a sherrif's deputy for going 41 in a 30 (came into town too hot). Instead of getting a ticket, I had a wonderful conversation with the deputy as we shared stories about Greensburg for darn near a half hour. It took him awhile to realize I was a storm chaser, since my vehicle isn't decked out with antennas, decals, etc. After that good conversation, I finally made my way to a location to shoot the southernmost storm as it was approaching the Attica area. The storm was shrinking in size but still had supercell structure. Very nice lightning-illuminated structure! Eventually, the two or three storms in this area weakened and died, and as the lightning activity waned, I made my way back to Dodge City getting home around 1:00am. Obviously, being pulled over in Hardtner cost me more late-night lightning-illuminated storm structure, but I wasn't complaining about that considering the great evening of photography I already had.