5/18/10 NOW: TX,OK,CO,KS,NE,WY

[James Langford]

Dave Marshall has several wall clouds with lowerings on his stream:

http://www.chasertv.com/api/static_pages/lite/229_dave-marshall.php

Pretty amazing stuff.

 

[Tyler Yarnell]

Cell east of Cheyenne, confirmed tornado on ground. GR2 TVS off the chart. Three different areas of tight rotation

 

[Tim Vasquez]

The Dumas storm has some of the most amazing radar structure I've seen in years. Very pronounced BWER and updraft top miles south of the circulation, incredible backshear (looking at anvil-level velocity) and a bear's cage several miles deep at one point. The reflectivities have been as high as 76 dBZ, too, which is about the most I've ever seen (or noticed).

EDIT: I later saw 79 dBZ at 0132 UTC about 10 miles northeast of Stinnett. Definitely a record in my book.

Tim

 

[Bobby Lang]

Spotter reported a tornado near Stinnett at 7:49 CDT.

I agree with Tim, GrLevel3 is showing dBZ well into the grey (on my color palette which you don't see everyday).

 

[Rob Wadsworth]

A snapshot from a few minutes ago close to Stinnett TX.
Tennis ball & baseball hail reported...

 

[David Douglas]

Yes, Tim. Absolutely classic storm. I wish I was there.... ugh. This is the storm of the season so far for sure.

 

[Matthew Havin]

Talk about a gem of a storm for the VORTEX2 project! Also, I don't think I've seen TWC cover a single storm this hard since the 90s.

 

[Dave Kaplow]

Pretty fascinating watching the radar loop from CYS... There's rotation on a huge scale, it looks on the loop like a bunch of smaller cells just get pulled in and sucked into a massive rotating... What, exactly? Can't really call it a meso when the area of rotation encompasses multiple storm cells... I'd love to know what created all that vorticity. Not just your normal tornadic supercell evolution going on there...

 

[David Douglas]

Matthew - agree about TWC. I never thought I'd say it, but yea, they are doing a good job.

 

[Jim Zandonai]

Kudos to TWC..great job..BUT I hope they continue this type of coverage after Vortex2 is done this month during the summer if/when there is another major supercell/outbreak event.
Extremely impressive cell ..congrats to V and all chasers on it..
MEHS on GR2A still showing over 3" hail..massive cores and DBZs.

 

[Chuck Robertson]

Yes, Tim. Absolutely classic storm. I wish I was there.... ugh. This is the storm of the season so far for sure.

I've been on this storm all day, and yes it was an amazing storm with several tornadoes visible. But the storm of the year so far? I was also on the Wakita, OK storm on May 10. It was a much better storm as far as violent, visible tornadoes. Very difficult to keep up with due to its very fast movement, but still, it was a more exciting storm.

With today's storm, most of the tornadoes were at least partially rain wrapped.

 

[James Aydelott]

DOW7 observing a TVS now on the Roberts Co. storm.

 

[Cstok]

Agreed... that one was amazing to watch. Was glued to the cams as well as GR all afternoon evening.... but now concerned b/c it seems to be cycling up again as it heads for Canadian...not over yet.

Metar KHFF Winds from the ESE at 13 MPH gusting to 17

 

[Tim Marshall]

just picked up our last instrumented pod. We deployed them in the NOTCH of the HP beast north of Pampa. What a day -which included seeing three tornadoes near Dumas.

 

[David Douglas]

I was on the KS storm too... but I'll take a slow mover any day over the 55 mph beast