5/19/10 REPORTS OK

[JR Hehnly]

My chase images are located at http://www.okstorms.com/images/chases/2010-05-19

Began near Clinton, dropped back east of the pre-frontal trough, then went north to the cell developing near Okeene. Follwed it to Hennessey then bailed south to the storm near Kingfisher. Watched it relatively alone for at least 25 minutes before the crowds came out of the storm.

 

[Jerry Funfsinn]

I saw the first tornado near Leedy,OK and continued following the storm along the Canadian river for I don't know how
many hours. Played the storm like most, mainly trying to stay ahead of it. The times I did get into position it was
cycling. The best play was when I headed north towards Loyal just ahead of a beautiful meso that quickly got wrapped.
Thus I decided to take dirt roads north and east instead of trying to jockey back for position on 3. I was worried the storm
would overtake me but I was just ahead of it when I stopped on N2830 RD southwest of Dover about 4 miles. I could make
out a cone forming back in the precip that quickly emerged with wrapping funnels.(viewed from 5:50pm to 5:53pm GPS
location N35 56.7550' W97 57.6756 looking west) The tornado tracked south east and I believe there was damage reported
somewhere nearby.

I won't comment about the NASCAR inspired, Jersey Shore, L.A.M.E (look at me everyone!) chasers fiasco in
and around the storm, lol. But I wanted to point out a good service that someone provided to a man walking on the road in
the path of the tornado. I don't know why, but he was walking south before the tornado formed along the road and he did not
seem too concerned with the storm. When I blasted south after the tornado got rain wrapped I remembered he was there but
when I got to his location a white pickup had motioned him into their vehicle. Whomever the person in the white pickup, I
applaud you for stopping and helping save this guy from certain danger.I had plans of putting him in the back of my vehicle but
you took care of it.Thank you.

 

[Nathan Edwards]

Like many others, caught the Leedey Tornado as it gave me just enough time to set up the tripod and camera for it's brief if photogenic appearance.

Here's a very wide angle shto of the entire storm at the time of the tornado...

Then I got swallowed in the 'chaser' convergence on Highway 33 for most of the evening. I say chaser but I imagine a large amount of the people causing the problems were locals out following Vortex2 as they kept stopping in completely pointless places next to the DOW's and other vehicles, on the south side of the rain wrapped meso, when any chaser would have been blasting east to get ahead of the storm so they actually had a chance to witness the action part of the storm... Not sure they realised those DOW's can quite happily 'see' through the rain!

My shots are pretty similar to others posted already of the structure only out the back window of the car as I am driving so I'll leave them. Thought I saw something rainwrapped west of Hitchcock, but even contrasting up the pictures it isn't conclusive. After getting off the storm at Guthrie due it being just too HP, I headed north to catch some Mammatus at sunset, and they were amazing.

Following shot is from Perry:

 

[Steven Martinaitis]

Our group left Norman around 2:30PM and noticed the two storm going up along the E-W boundary. We decide to target the eastern storm, but ensuring that we had the quick west option to head towards the then Rodger Mills Co. storm. In the end, I'm glad that we never made it to the western target with all of the chaser mayhem.

Sat just outside of the western edge of Hennessey and witnessed the cone tornado outside of town. Tried to move east of 51 only to start driving into the RFD. We doubled back south towards Dover on 81, and we took a paved county road back towards I-35, where we re-intercepted the storm ahead of a large group of chasers at the interchange of I-35 and 51. We stopped well ahead of the storm on 51 between I-35 and Stillwater to view the tornado that touched down east of I-35. We continued to stay on this storm well east of Stillwater, observing very crisp mammatus and the entire low and mid-level structure of the storm. Eventually turned south as the two main supercells began to merge and take on a more linear shape. Ended the day with an amazing sunset heading back westbound on I-40.

 

[Charles Kuster]

We also chased the supercell that tracked from Leedey, Oklahoma to near Guthrie, OK. After sitting in Weatherford for most of the morning, we moved north and first observed this storm near Oakwood, OK. The storm passed just to the north and we moved east to Road 2740 and took it north towards Loyal, OK. About one mile south of Loyal, we observed a narrow tube tornado from about 5:33pm to 5:35pm CDT before it became wrapped in rain.

We continued east with the storm on Road 0720. At about 5:50pm CDT I noticed small brief vortices behind a thin veil of rain from my position 8.4 miles east of Loyal. About one minute later we observed a cone tornado from about 5:51pm to 5:53pm CDT before it too became rain wrapped. From this point on, the supercell took more of an east southeast turn and we followed it to Guthrie, OK and then to Carney, OK. The storm exhibited decent structure, but we did not observe any more tornadoes. Congrats to all who saw storms yesterday!

Picture taken at 5:51pm CDT from 9 miles east of Loyal, OK and is looking southwest. This was the second tornado of the day.

http://i50.tinypic.com/2dqu4xx.jpg (First tornado. Low quality picture taken at ~5:34pm CDT from 1 mile south of Loyal and is looking west.)

http://i50.tinypic.com/280sksj.jpg (First tornado. Low quality video grab at ~5:34:30pm CDT from ~.5 mile south of Loyal, OK and is looking west.)

 

[Scott Sims]

I sat east of Clinton an exit or two until after the first two storms fired. I chose the Eastern storm as it appeared to be ready to make the right turn into the best area of backed winds along the boundary.
I would gripe about the (Choose your word: horde, mass, throng, convergence) of chasers, but hey, its just part of the deal now days, so everyone better get used to it or QUIT CHASING and help the rest of us out

My angle of the Hennessey Tornado.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjpCLG-SQcw

And the Stillwater brief rope tornado.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRfXkcvuEYA

 

[Ryan Pfannkuch]

As I proclaimed a bit too dramatically for my own liking in my video: "The streak is overrrrrrr!" ...which simply meant that a nearly 4-year personal tornado drought came to a screeching halt with the cone just NW of Hennessey, which I witnessed from the southbound shoulder of Hwy 81 just north of town. This was my first tornado intercept of any kind since 8-24-06 near Mankato MN, and my first OK tornado since 2001.

Frankly, much of this solo-chase day was "too good to be true" given my frustrations of the last several years. Started the day in Enid by nailing the forecast with my "4-county target area", which was posted on here at 1042 AM as: Kingfisher, Logan, Canadian, Oklahoma. Wandered just west of this area initially, setting up shop in a pasture about 7 miles west of Watonga at 2 PM. Didn't necessarily realize it at the time, but the initial towering Cu that eventually became the Highway 51 supercell literally initiated almost directly over me, based on video I took at 220 PM. The next sign that things were just flat-out going my way came around 330 PM when literally the second I was starting to turn west onto Hwy 33 to make my way toward the Leedey storm, the TOR warning was issued for the much-closer "shower" near Okeene. Like others I'm sure, I couldn't believe that thing had already become such a player given its meager radar presence. So long story short...I caught up to the supercell near Lacey and followed it to the Stillwater exit on I-35, playing leap frog with the masses and seeing one more distinct narrow tornado along the way a few miles west of Marshall. At that point I decided to break off the storm and head south into Guthrie for the "other" storm, but in hindsight I probably should have just continued east. Oh well, can't complain now that the drought is over Ended the day with an awesome mammatus display looking east-northeast from near Marshall, as also depicted in my photo below, and especially above in the great shot by Nathan Edwards.

Link to "short version" of video featuring tornado clips only: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nhz050hc0g
Longer version with more storm structure, radar imagery and post-storm mammatus footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSOZV6SIH2w

 

[Brian Mette]

After leaving Norman, I headed down to Lawton. After lunch, I headed a bit further north to the Elgin area. After the storms started firing up north, I booked it up towards Canton to catch the western-most of the first two tornado warned cells.

It was about that point, I discovered my radar hadn't updated in a while. Turns out I had found myself in a US Cellular dead zone, in which I would remain for the next few hours until I headed further east.

Anyway, so I sat just to the south of Canton for a bit, as a storm approached. I probably should have headed further south, but I was too fascinated by the beautiful approaching storm, and the crazy storm motion. Recorded some video, took a couple pictures. Then, the first hail stone dropped.

At that point, I jumped in my mustang, and booked it south, fast. But not fast enough. I did get caught in a hail core, and my poor mustang did get a few dents. A little while later after the storm passed, I went back and found some golf ball to tennis ball sized hail.

Even saw a tractor plowing hail off the road.

Eventually, I was too far west of everything to catch it, or so I thought. I started my long drive back towards Chicago. On the way, I actually ran back into the storms, and got some awesome lightning on my camecorder. Here's a screen cap of one:

 

[Tyler Burg]

Full report now up here... http://tonightssky.org/accounts/051910.html

 

[Connor McCrorey]

After chasing the storm that formed near Lawton until it got to I-35, we finally decided to break off of that mess and head south to the supercell coming toward's Paul's Valley. It had some of the most amazing classic supercell structure I've ever seen for a while, but nothing going on in the low levels. That all changed at around 8:30, when it suddenly lowered, began pulling up a ton of scud, and by 8:35, it had a multiple vortex/cone tornado on the ground just west of I-35 near Wynnewood. We saw power flashes that initially indicated it was on the ground, and from there we had to go by the dust swirls in the distance, because this tornado never fully condensed even though it was probably on the ground for ten minutes. Then of course, TWC puts me on live right as we get slammed by the RFD.

Farther east a while after dark, we saw more power flashes in an area that had rotation on radar. I believe we may have had a tornado, but at this point I just don't know.

Link to my tornado video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQAodg55kEo

A few stills:

 

[Ric Burney]

I stayed in the southwest / central OK area and was treated to several funnels and a quick view of the tornado near Wynnewood.
Full report at: http://www.wxdallas.com/wx05192010.html

 

[Lane Pearman]

Was on the Hennessey storm for some time early on. The wimpy (early) reflectivity return was misleading. Sat in front of a super smelly hog farm, 2 north and 7 west of Hennessey watching as it really began to get it's act together to our west.

After about 20 minutes we were finally treated to our first, albeit brief tornado 1/2 mile south of the Highway 51 and 132 intersection. The funnel never condensed more than 1/4 of the way to the ground, however dust and debris were being kicked up as it crossed the road 1/2 mile to our south. I'm curious to know if anyone else saw this as it was still early on and most had already started to head towards Hennessey.

Pulled ahead of the storm and watched the second tornado develop and move just to the north of Hennessey

Picked up the Kingfisher storm as it approached Dover. Grabbed this photo of the tornado as it was becoming rain wrapped just south of Dover on US81.

After staying with this storm for awhile, we attempted the Purcell storm with hopes of reaching it before dark....didn't happen. All in all it was a great day, 14 hours, 643 miles and 5 intercepts.

A few other photos from our day can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/lpearman895/2010StormChasing#

 

[Randy Denzer]

Had a great day! Here is my condensed clip of the 7 tornado's I filmed!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj3_uLd9ksw

 

[Doug Drace]

Congrats to Connor and David on the awesome intercept and great video near Wynnewood, Okla! Gotta say im full of envy right now, as we tracked this storm from its initial development SW of Duncan to Elmore City, witnessing 2 wallclouds wrap up, only to fall apart before producing a tornado...then got caught behind the rain and hail core as it finally wrapped up where you guys got it at I-35, causing us to miss the entire multiple vortex tornado. Great work and Good luck the rest of the season! Doug Drace, KXII-TV/First Intercept Storm Team

 

[David Conaway]

I started the day working in Altus, Ok. I was done working at 2:30pm so I planned on chasing the Southern part of the target area. Once in Lawton, a cell started to develope and move Northeast. I got on the turnpike(44) and kept waiting for this storm to do something. This storm never got its act together until it reached the Chickasha area. I was tempted to head North to intercept the northern stroms around Enid/Guthrie area and I'm very happy that I did not after reading about all of the chaser chaos in that area. Storms had began to develope and I figured the northern area would become a HP mess and eventually be influenced by the storms developing from the South.

By this time the Chickasha storm began to right turn to more of an Easterly path. At this point, the storm really intensifyied and began to produce large hail and a distinct eall cloud. I think that because this storm began to move in an Easterly direction, the shear vectors became much more suitable for Supercell characteristics. Also, the forecasts were indicating that the shear along the 35 corridor and points east would be better for tornado activity.

The storm became tornado warned as it tracked towards Purcell. I did get a couple of funnels just west of Purcell and some good structure as it passed highway 35.

My attention then turned South as another storm was intensifying between Ardmore and Duncan. I raced South to beat the storm before it crossed 35. As I cleared the rain, I could see the wall cloud to the West. I'm not sure which exit I took but is was an exit north of the Casino at the Davis exit. I went West on a county road and witnessed a beautiful mesocyclone about 4 miles to my west. The weather service had dropped the tornado warning but it still looked to me like it could produce. A caravan of chasers (one vehicle was labled News 5) then came into the area I was located. The mesocyclone began to rotate and a funnel was spawned. I was probably no more that 1/3 of a mile from the funnel and it was moving towards my location. I took off and took the Davis exit at highway 35. The storm still had wonderful structure, but it was getting dark. I ended my chase and drove back to DFW.

There were a few chasers in the area that I chased, but nothing compared to what took place further North. This is one of the reasons that I will usually chase the Southernost storms when I have the opportunity.