5/8/07 REPORTS: TX/OK

[Chris Vagasky]

I never thought I would start one of these threads. I'm sitting in Lawton, OK right now, the storm lined out. Had two funnels with the storm around 7:30-7:50. One was brief, the other was a little more sustained and made it about half way to the ground.

Didn't have any hail with these storms, just a lot of rain, wind, lightning, some decent structure, and a couple funnels. Will post some video captures later.

 

[Robert Balogh]

I was up at the Visitor Center in the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge watching one of the cells come up from around Cache. Saw one lowering but then had to cut back east for a road north. By the time I got up around 58 and 19 the storm had lost much of it's structure. Ended up in Carnegie at 58 and 9 as darkness fell. There was a cell of to the east between Boone and Ft Cobb that I couldnt see into

Headed back south 58 and went thru fairly heavy rain, no hail all the way back to Lawton

Interested to know if anyone got anyhting good on video

 

[Chris C Sanner]

On a day I did not plan to chase I can honestly say this was about as sweet it gets. I started out at 6:00 heading out for Walters toward a storm that had displayed some rotation on it. I observed a large lowering about the time I was getting to Walters and spent the rest of the next 30 mins or so getting to it.

This storm was just gorgeous, all I can really do to describe it. I finally got underneath the meso when the Storm was S of Lawton. I'm shocked there are no official reports of Tornadoes with this thing. When I was about 6-8 SE of the lowering (AoA 10 minutes before the warning was issued) I observed some rotating motion underneath the thing and I'm not sure if anyone got a better vantage point on it but it certainly looked like a ragged funnel (storm was S/SW of Lawton at the time).

I approached Lawton and pretty much entered the bears cage and was within a couple of miles from the storm as it passed through the Lawton area. The RFD kicked out about this time and I observed some really strong rotation and a funnel that came very close to the halfway point. The storm came very near producing at this point which it thankfully didn't because the Tornado likely would have been in town.

I then repositioned by cutting through Lawton and then north on I-44. The storm was probably at its best at this point. I ended up at an intersection near Lake Lawtonka before seeing the RFD was again surging and I was in the path so I repositioned near Porter Hill (?) and saw a definite needle tornado with the funnel at least 3/4 of the way to the ground in the Medicine Park area. That occluded within 20 seconds (at least on video ) and the show was over for me as it was getting dark and I had skipped supper to get a storm chase in.

Video:
http://www.maddenmania.com/chris/webversion.wmv

The following pics are pics from my digi cam. I'll grab some stills from the 'Nader as well as a bunch of other stuff from the more exciting part of the chase. What you see below is structure shots mostly....

S/SW of Lawton before I made a run at it

Driving on I-44

Fun Under the Meso (Did I catch a comet in the upper right portion of the shot? Lol)

Video Still with improved contrast and brightness so you can barely make out the Tornado. It looks much better in HD (of course):

EDIT: Tornado Now added to the Storm Reports. I'm sure the Channel 9 Storm Tracker (Val Castor is who it looked like) called the tornado in as I saw he was 1/2 mile to my South at that point.

EDIT EDIT: VIDEO is now up!

 

[Brett Roberts]

I left Norman to head down the turnpike around 8:00 in hopes of getting some good lightning shots, and maybe decent structure. Just after I'd passed Chickasha, I heard it become tornado warned again on NWR, so I sped up a bit and soon caught sight of a nice base with lowering. Lightning was occurring, but not extremely frequent, so I couldn't make out much of anything with my eyes. I did take a few stills though (very poor quality because of the high ISO and long exposure times) from near Elgin ~8:55-9:05 PM.

 

[Paul Sherman]

Fun day got on the discrete Supercell near to Throckmorton before the nasty squall line came munching us.

 

[Andrew McDonald]

Hi all,

Bit of a long-winded report but its moreso for the benefit of the people back home (in Australia).

At about 2:00pm I was checking through the latest obs and SPC meso analysis data and noticed a nice pocket of moisture converging around the Abilene area along the OFB. With the heating and the moderate influx of moisture, CAPE values had gotten up to 3000j/kg over that area (interesting!). A quick check of the sat pic showed an enhanced cumulus field in the area and within 30 minutes showers and weak storms were showing up on radar along the boundary from Abilene to N of Mineral Wells and the tops were getting up to around 40-45k feet.

We casually got our things together and headed out the door and dropped S from Wichita Falls to Graham. By the time we got there, two cells were looking the most impressive. One NE of Abilene and one to our west. We headed west from Graham with the thought in mind that we’d hit the Abilene cell as it was clearly looking stronger than the other one but as we neared the first cell which had moved just N of our west road, it produced a nice little wall cloud and a few nice CG’s. We stopped to watch for a short while before we blew it off for the cell which was now nearly due W of us about 20mi away. The first cell moved off to the N but maintained its structure but as we neared the main cell, we realized that this was the main show. A nice low-hanging wall cloud was present as were mid-level inflow bands. We kept heading west to get closer and eventually stopped in a clearing <there are quite a few trees in this area> and watched as this supercell rotated nicely as it ambled slowly due north. Inflow from the east in the lower levels was clear and this cell had some fantastic structure for most of its life. The wall cloud lowered several times and dragged along the ground for some time. We videoed this and have since heard reports of some weak tornadoes with this – we’ll have to review the video to confirm but some of this “ground dragging” may’ve been one of these weak tornadoes (although it didn’t look to be rotating that strongly so who knows). We moved further west and then north to sit just N of Throckmorton where we set up and watched this cell which sat just off to the west of us with its nice laminar structure. It put down a nice RFD at this point but again we didn’t see any tornado. We pushed a little further N as the cell put out what looked to be its last “cycle” <if you can call it that> as another RFD pushed out quite strongly and appeared to undercut the base. We were fairly close to it at this point - less than 1mi - and were hoping it was going to put down a weak tornado but it didn’t.

We let it pass off to the N and whilst taking a short break <2 mins> we noticed the line of storms we had been watching all morning and afternoon over south west Texas had really raced eastwards in the last few hours and was now merely 15mi to our west. Soon a long low guster came in to view and it was flying along! We dropped back into Throckmorton and were going to head east to get into a position to video/photograph this 4-layer guster but another isolated storm had developed ahead of the line to the SE of Throckmorton and had blocked our east road option. This guster was looking mean and green and we pushed east as far as we could without going into the storm to our east and we stopped for some video/pics of the guster. This was all fine until one part of the guster took on a more base-like look appeared to be rotating rapidly and was racing right towards us (video subsequently shows some nice rotation here). Not wanting to take any chances, we decided we’d rather encounter some hail and heavy rain than get caught in this brief but slightly intense front flank rotation. So we punched into the rain from this cell <which was starting to look nicer on radar and was showing up 1.5 inch hail and 65dbz echoes at 20,000ft on wx worx>. We encountered a short barrage of pea sized hail and a handful of larger stones possibly up to 3/4 inch before we broke out into the front of it…and what a sight! This little storm had gone nuts. For some reason, the air we came out into was significantly more warm and moist than we had had earlier in the day and this cell was just feeding on it. A nice guster had developed on the front flank <NE quadrant)> but the base was still evident on the south eastern quadrant. We stopped for a few brief photos of this just near Newcastle. It was looking really green and the lightning picked up rapidly with some CG’s striking out in front of it at this point. We took off east for a bit to get ahead of it and about 3mi down the road, we stopped again for a look and it although it appeared to have a HP’ish look to it a wall cloud had developed under the base on the front flank in a little notch. It was rotating rapidly and it produced a brief stout cone-shaped funnel and we thought it was going to do the job but the funnel dissipated then redeveloped again soon after, persisted for around a minute and then dissipated again before the cell became outflow dominated. We had to move again at this point as the cell pushed out strongly towards us and was threatening to blast us with outflow and hail. A gust of 76mph <122km/h> was reported just to our N shortly after this. For the next 15-20 minutes we raced east and stopped and raced east and stopped to get photos of this now very impressive guster. Great fun chase on a day with low expectations.

Link to pics from today...

http://macca.bsch.au.com/gallery/20070508

Andrew McDonald

 

[Randy Denzer]

5-08-07 Tx

Josh Jans and myself were leaving Abilene yesterday at noon to head home when I looked into my rear veiw mirror to see a wall cloud over the city. Wxorks did not show anything but it was definatly there. We both watched it for a while and then got back on 20 to head eat to Dallas. As We both watched the Threat Net the cell continued to grow we decided to head north and take another look at it. Glad we did as we caught a beautiful LP supercell that would spin down funnel clouds over and over. Eventually, we lost the cell north of 180 just west of the 6 split. The cell entered no-roads land and we raced back to head north on 283 and waite for it. About 5 miles north of Albany the cell dropped it's firt tornado which was a beautiful white stovepipe. We called it into Abilene 911 and ran north beside it for about 2 miles. It disipated and our veiw was blocked by hills for a while and when it reappeared it was a short lived large tornado. We continued running with it north into Throckmorton. Josh's car broke down and he had me stay on the storm as it crossed 183 north of town with another beautiful wall cloud.

Pictures will be up later at www.teammeso.org

 

[Amos Magliocco]

I was forty minutes too late out of Denton to catch the Throckmorton storm and turned for the newer isolated cell to the southwest. The southern storm's radar presentation was similar to Throckmorton in its early stages, and I hoped it could cross the outflow boundary with similar results. I also calculated the southern cell had a few more minutes before the squall line swallowed it.

I intercepted the storm in southeast Throckmorton County about 5NE of Woodson and found a tall and narrow updraft with rapid motion at the base. I would describe the storm as an LP-classic hybrid, with an LP style updraft, but a wider and more dense precip core than I'm accustomed to seeing on LPs. Several disorganized collar clouds and wall clouds formed and dissipated immediately prior to the gust front's arrival. When the squall line accelerated, the isolated storm morphed into a rotating inflection in the line.

I stayed ahead of the high, multi-tiered shelf as it surged east on 380, following me home. This is always fun, looking for cool objects for the foreground of a fine shelf shot.

http://www.cycloneroad.com/2007may8.htm

 

[Randy Denzer]

We will have the video of the full life of this cell at www.teammeso.org later today.

Randy

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

A navel puckering experience!

The tornadic cell associated with the MCV affected our farm just north of Piedmont a little past midnight.. yet another close call for the Rocky&family. Earlier I went out to get lightning pics at a spot just north of OKC. Initially had some occasional but stunning anvil crawlers but by the time I had the camera ready to go, lightning activity had ceased and rain from the anvil of the storms from the southwest was moving in. Got back home, noticed on wxtap the cells moving in, I especially noticed a "twist" in the reflectivity pattern centred over northern Caddo County poised for my direction.

I checked the mesonets and they verified that a distinct MCV had formed. I thought this would be fun to experience this passing over the farm, but thought nothing more than this would be a non severe event. I went ahead and did other things on the computer. Just before midnight, I was ready to turn in, the wind was increasing from the NNE, several good cracks of thunder shuddered the house, I checked the radar again and to my shock, a very tight couplet had formed and looked like it was only a few miles below my house moving in my direction... I was definitely alarmed and immediately went to turn on the TV. Just then, the distant wail of the tornado siren could be heard... now my heart was racing,

I woke up the wife and kids and watched on tv as they were warning that Piedmont was in "imminent" danger. By this time roughly just past midnight, we had torrential rain, 30-40mph north winds.. if it was that close, I did'nt think it would be safe going outside to the shelter, I carefully judged that the track of the tornado would just miss us to the east.. just before we sought shelter, the rain was blinding with occasional staccato bolts of lightning and north winds gusting to at least 50mph.

We gathered in the bathroom, my daughter who actually 4 years earlier(?) to the date was in the OKC tornado.. was on the verge of panic...we heard the wind suddenly rise, a whooshing sound enveloped the house, lasted no more than maybe 20 seconds then suddenly died down, I went back out of the bathroom, and out the front door, the rain slackened considerably and the wind was about 20 mph out of the east, which I thought was a strange direction... I would think it would have been SW or W. What was fascinating was that I could hear a distinct roar and whistling sound all around which abated after about 30 sec. I breathed a sigh of relief as we knew we were out of danger, but..

Another circulation formed to our SW but seemed to get absorbed into the main cell off to the north, I witnessed a distinct lowering with a bell shaped updraft about 5 minutes later to the NNE of the house, heading toward Cashion, winds then became S to SW about 20-30mph which made more sense. I briefly took off and went up to the intersection of Piedmont Rd./WaterlooRd. I got a brief look at the updraft that was laced with occasional flashes of lightning as it moved off to the NE.

So.... the third time we've been narrowly missed, I feel like my farm has this bullseye on it. Three strikes though and we're out, hopefully no more close calls while we live here. Thank God Piedmont dodged that bullet.

 

[Rocky Rascovich]

Possible EF-0 Tornado very close to my farm!

The following is an addendum to my earlier post regarding a possible EF-0 tornado in my neighbourhood...


It looks like we may have had a very brief touch down of a tornado as close as 100 yards from the house... one of my neighbours came by and is currently extricating the remnants of one of those large trampolines from one of my trees about 100 yards to my SSE. Whats interesting is that it looked liked it was blown into and wrapped around the tree from the south.
Yet seconds before we hit the bathroom, the wind was screaming out of the north.. as I stated, we heard a brief but sudden gust of wind hit the house moments later. Also, an outbuilding was destroyed at another neighbours house which I can see from about 250 yards to my southeast.. and lastly, another house about 2/3 mile to my SE had their El Camino truck moved about 6 feet, it was in their driveway. In addition, several trees had damage with tops twisted or broken off, apparently, this is the only damage reported anywhere in Piedmont according to what my neighbour said.
I wish I have the capabilities of sending pictures... someday soon I will.

So..an EF-0 tornado is likely to have occured here. I think I'm ready for some peace and quiet for a few days and hopefully some drier weather so I can mow. Its great to say that again!!

 

[Wesley Luginbyhl]

I was out getting trying to get lightning pics when I notice this interesting storm headed toward El Reno. By the time I got to Moore it was Tor warned. As i was passing downtown OKC I began to hear the reports of damage and power flashes. I made my way up NW Expressway and near the Piedmont area where I saw a lowering that seemed to be over Piedmont. It last about one minute at the most. Spent the next hour and half venturing around trying to stay with the storm.

Ended up on a road that had become a lake (not literally, but it sure seemed like it). I was able to make it through about 100 yards of water where I made it to an island of sorts just to see it got worse farther down. While sitting out on the island area that was a T intersection, winds went from 0-60 in a matter of seconds. I though the stop sign next to me was about to start flying. I think this area was near Gar Creek SW of Guthrie. The whole valley I believe was under a couple feet of water due to the recent flooding rains. I didnt mean to drive through it but there was no warning and by the time I could see the water I was already in it. I was afraid to come to a stop cause i thought I would stall out. It was the same color as the road so it was near impossible to spot unless you were going about 5 miles an hour. After i got out of it I tried to stop a line of cars driving towards it, leading the pack was a channel 5 vehicle. They all just kept going, i hope they didnt make the same mistake as me. Lesson learned. Never been more freaked out in my life.

After looking back over the maps I may have been very close to a lake, I think it was just over filled and flooding the roads near by it. I am going to investigate this weekend and figure out where I was and why there was so much water there.

 

[Melanie Metz]

We got on the Throckmorton storm after it put down a tornado. We had a long drive to the Abilene area and were happy to catch it before the line moved in. We were hoping to intercept any discrete cell that went up in front of the line. We barely made it but the structure was still nice. It produced a couple funnel clouds before the shelf came in and took over. The shelf was amazing as well! It was a fun day!

 

[Dan Robinson]

This was more of a diversion on a travel day rather than a chase day, but I was able to get a lightning chase in south of St. Louis in southern Illinois last Tuesday.



http://stormhighway.com/may82007.shtml