The Destructive Moore Tornado

[Mike Johnston]

As I recall, there was also talk of a gravity wave(s) in the area this day. I hate that term - gravity wave - as it's completely a misnomer, but that's what it's called for better or worse. Anyway, possibly that had something to do with the sub-synoptic outlook.

 

[tmesias]

Watch video >



We saw the formation from I44 before we decided to stop to take a better look. This video was taken at 1915Z looking north and north east from the location in the picture represented by a black dot by Zenith who was driving the car in my group. The topic of discussion before the start of the video was regarding how fast that formation was exploding upward and if we should change our target plan of further south west from our location (reasoning that we wanted to be on the south end of a squall line). We decided not to pursue it... and the rest is history.

 

[Robert S. Thompson]

We targeted Duncan figuring that things would be similar to Sunday in Kansas with supercells rapidly turning into a line. We did notice stronger shear in OK vs TX but since we expected a line we wanted to play more toward the "tail end" Charlie. We did not mess with the Moore cell as it was too close to the metro area and chasing warnings is generally bad form. Plus the cell we were on did drop a tornado near Bray, though we did not catch that. I am glad we did not go after the Moore cell. We had intercepted the Granbury and Cleburne cells the previous week and as many of you know, chasing takes on a whole different meaning when cells are causing widespread death and destruction.

This is entirely speculation, but I wonder if the Moore cell also blew up due to wind convergence with the urban heat island. Winds slow down in urban areas. Perhaps that increased the low level shear.

 

[Keith Wilson]

This radar loop of the cell has been going around on Facebook. I have watched it numerous times, but I wish it went a little farther back to the earlier stages of the storm. One thing I noticed is that it appeared to have two inflow streams at the time that the tornado really intensified.

http://i.minus.com/iluhrlDRbUSAQ.gif

 

[Joe Karel]

I was looking at the radar loop also and the tornado damage path comparing and noticed something further. The small cell that gets sucked in from the south also has a east-west boundary associated with it that moves up from the south. Right as this boundary passes north of the tornado it starts to move directly eastward. It also seems to "push" the rain core further north after passing. It would be great to have a fine scale wind field to look at but I'll post some diagrams if I can get a good few images of of this occurring and post them so people can actually see them better. *If someone could message me the best way to attach an image that would be great, not incredibly familiar with this board*
*I'll have to get the images up in the next day or so. Currently moving/using school computers and they aren't allowing me to save things. This outflow boundary arc can be see between ~1:00PM-1:20PM PDT on the radar loop that is in the reports thread. Storms even begin to fire west of the hook on this same boundary. I assume this had some influence on the storm.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

Best way to attach images is to copy the URL of the image, manually type

and post the link in the middle so it would look like

 

[Joshua T. Clark]

How does one who witnessed this first hand recover? I have seen a lot of violent tornadoes on tv but never with my own eyes.

 

[Marcus Diaz]

How does one who witnessed this first hand recover? I have seen a lot of violent tornadoes on tv but never with my own eyes.

This is mine and only my thoughts, so take them with a grain of salt. When we saw the tornado, it was obvious to me that is was violent, causing major damage, and most likely killing people. But at the time I was only focusing on navigating our small group near and ahead of the tornado. Once it finally roped out, we kept chasing it. In that time frame we were seeing the damage it caused from KFOR live stream. It was then we knew what we had witnessed. We witnessed a historical deadly tornado. The adrenaline slowly worked its way down. But at the same time, I had the thought in my mind of "this happens usually once a year, there's nothing to stop it, and for some its impossible to run and hide from". With that, I wasn't really reflecting the damage to my personal life and asking myself a lot of "what if" questions. The only thing I could think of was helping in any way I can. At first I thought maybe going to Moore and helping out, but when they said they didn't want anyone there, I knew that wasn't going to work. Luckily it came to me the next day at work. I ended up donating $100 to the Red Cross through payroll deductions. Its not much but its about all I can do. There's only so much any one of us can do to help, so do what you can. I'll be out chasing again, mostly because I'm a pretty desensitized individual. Witnessing the tornado first hand and listening to the damage and fatalities didn't make me second guess this hobby of mine.

 

[Joshua T. Clark]

Marcus,

Those a great words. This one was pretty close to me. My son and I were at the Heartland Harvest Church at NW 36th and Indian Hills Rd. and my wife was at Intrust Bank at Main and Broadway in Moore.

 

[Brian McKibben]

Joshua:

I have no idea how to handle this situation. This one hit way too close to home. Our house is just north of the Harvest Church. We watched the beginning of the twister at the turn off to Andy Alligators.

As we went up 36th/Telephone to go back into our neighborhood, there were more than a dozen ambulances that passed by. All night we could hear the sirens. I stayed up listening to the radio until about 1am. The absolute shock was overwhelming and I could not sleep. I was in the dark and had no idea what others were seeing on the TV.

A few days later I was able to drive by our old house next to Briarwood and the daycare off eastern. Once I saw those neighborhoods firsthand it really began to sink in.

I don't think we do recover from this emotionally. I will always be more fearful of a tornado than I was a week ago. Especially with a growing family. I will always get that kicked in the gut feeling you get when you think about the what if's and your family.

Time will help heal those who were affected and witnessed this.

As meteorologist/storm chasers I think we are in a unique position to help others when the next round of deadly twisters comes. I tried my best to warn everyone I could. Now in retrospect, i know there were many more I could have warned. We bring a certain amount of credibility to the table when we tell people to be prepared because we have seen these things in action.

To all: Give your wife, kid(s) and loved ones an extra hug tonight and be grateful that you are safe. Pray for those that were lost. And help warn as many people you can when the next one strikes.

 

[Steve Dedman]

One question I have is, what killed this monster? On Sunday, we saw a tube sit over Shawnee reservoir for several minutes before moving on and causing destruction and death in the Shawnee area. So I tend to think that the body of water didn't have much to do with the Moore cell dissipating so quickly. I would expect a tornado of that scale to just keep grinding, without the lake effecting it at all. Did the cell that overtook it from Blanchard cut off the inflow? I don't recall any cells further SE of the Moore cell that would have interacted to kill it. But it certainly seemed to fall apart as rapidly as it developed.

One thing I notice on the radar image is that right before the explosion in intensity, there is an area of relatively dry air that forms over Draper Lake, and gets sucked through the precip shield and all the way into the rotation. That happens at the same time as the cell to the south getting sucked into the vortex. I also notice that the little clipper cell had a pretty well-defined inflow notch on the SE flank before it got cut off by the cell further SE. So that little cell was showing signs of intensification prior to being rapidly cut off and swallowed.

I'm not sure what those observations indicate, but it has to be more than coincidence that the influx of both the drier air from the E/NE and the ingestion of the smaller cell from the south both occur almost simultaneously, right at the point of intensification.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Everyone is talking about the front/dryline intersection being in OK, and I can see that now upon looking for it on the surface map, but I am still confused as to why it was drawn in northwest TX (where I originally interpreted the placement to be in planning my target area of southwestern OK nearer the Red River) in the SPC MSD linked to below.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/md0728.html

Just trying to understand the larger scale setup that day and what I might have done differently in targeting, notwithstanding the fact that I am probably better off not having seen that particular tornado... Any thoughts on this?

 

[Jeff Duda]

Everyone is talking about the front/dryline intersection being in OK, and I can see that now upon looking for it on the surface map, but I am still confused as to why it was drawn in northwest TX (where I originally interpreted the placement to be in planning my target area of southwestern OK nearer the Red River) in the SPC MSD linked to below.

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/md/md0728.html

Any thoughts?

Don't always take SPC for their word. Either that or the person who wrote that MD wasn't paying any attention to what was going on in C OK. I don't see much, if any, justification for placing it where he did. Also, I was looking at moisture content at 850 mb to determine that the dryline was going to separate from the cold front. You could see it quite well.

 

[William Monfredo]

One question I have is, what killed this monster? On Sunday, we saw a tube sit over Shawnee reservoir for several minutes before moving on and causing destruction and death in the Shawnee area. So I tend to think that the body of water didn't have much to do with the Moore cell dissipating so quickly..

The western side of the lake likely featured a pre-existing clockwise vertical circulation, like a sea-breeze if you will, that would have been a detriment as the storm approached and ingested it. Prior events indicate that the opposite, the eastern side of the lakes, given similar surface flow, create the counter-clockwise vertical mesoscale circulations that can enhance tornado potential there.

 

[bradjones]

Does anyone have any radar images of the other tornadic storm that rolled through Pauls Valley? Remember that storm put down a tornado east of Duncun. Please share.