Byars - Stratford Oklahoma Tornadic Supercell 4-22-2011

It was just Justin Terveen and I this day since neither James or Colin could chase. James stayed at home and nowcasted for us and was a huge help in keeping us up to date on storm positions. 

A cold front was pushing south through Oklahoma and a dry line was stretched along and west of the I 35 corridor. After examining the models and the HRRR I couldn't really decide where I wanted to target. I figured the intersection of the dry line and cold front would be good, but I also wasn't sure if the cold front would undercut storms or not. So, while storms were likely along the cold front I wasn't sure if I would really want to chase them.

The HRRR showed several big supercells blowing up along the Red River, so I knew that I didn't want to miss something like that. With the cold front supposedly moving into Central Oklahoma and  anywhere along the dry line (especially along the Red River) being ideal for supercells I decided to target Ardmore. It would be a good place to reach anything that either blew up on the dry line or along the front.

We left my house in the Metroplex early (around noon) since I didn't know when storms were expected to fire. We got to Ardmore around 2pm and then waited. We waited and waited till boredom sank in.
I then decided to go to Turner Falls and take in the scenery there since I didn't know how long it would be till initiation of thunderstorms.

After taking in the scenery there  for a while we went back south to Ardmore and waited some more there. It was probably close to 4pm by the time I noticed a storm developing south of the Red River. It had just barely reached the tropopaus, but figured it would be the days play. So we blasted south on I 35 to target the Gainsville area.

It quickly became apparent that we weren't going to make it to the small cell I saw. But I figured I had at least found a decent initiation point along the dry line. There were many small cells trying to fire in that general area. But, by the time we reached Gainsville the storms had all collapsed. Bummer!

At the same time it became apparent to me that nothing major was going on south of the Red River the dry line/cold front intersection began to light up with storms up near Pauls Valley back in Oklahoma. So, we turned around and headed back into Oklahoma. It felt like we had just been "pacing" this stretch of highway all day.

The storms near Pauls Valley really took off by the time we got there (5:30ish ?). And after a quick supper break it was game on.

It was apparent that things were supercellular but the contrast was terrible.

The structure was actually quite good with a ground hugging wall cloud, but the contrast was so incredibly bad that photography seemed almost pointless. It didn't help that it was raining at our location either.

We stopped in the town of Stratford to watch the storm approach and see what would happen. After a while it became apparent that there were two dominate supercells and that the one further west was becoming the most dominate. The first wall cloud and meso we saw got swallowed up in the rain from the second to never be seen again. But as that happened the wall cloud from the second storm (now completely dominating) came into view.

We sat just east of Stratford on highway 19 and watched a breathtaking show take place.
The lightning and been intense all day but now became really intense. In fact, it was really the most hazardous thing I had experienced up to that point. The strikes were close and so frequent that I captured this image... and didn't even know about the lightning bolt in it. 

And while we had this view to the west-northwest we had a great view of mammatus to the south and east.

Several locals stopped on by to ask what the storm was doing.
I told the first guy that the wall cloud didn't look to have major rotation since it looked like it was primarily all inward rushing air at that point. However, I made sure to point out that I still thought it a bad idea to head in its direction.

The rising motions on the right side of the wall cloud were just incredible! Some of the fastest upward moving air I had seen since... well... since the previous chase with the tornado in Tushka.

And while it was not rotating at that exact moment (that we could see), that changed very quickly.
There was a sudden surge in the Rear Flank Downdraft (RFD) to the wall cloud's left that forced the area into a tight counter-clockwise circulation.

This large panorama of the entire storm base shows how wrapped up the storm was getting. The wall cloud in the previous image is on the right side of the mesocyclone near the very bright light filtering through the heavy rain. It had just started to rotate violently. And at this point I was convinced there was a tornado in there.

This radar image is at about the same time as the panorama and you can really see the tightly wound hook. We are just barely east of Stratford in this image.

While it is unlikely that Justin or I actually saw any of the two tornadoes produced we were sure convinced that one was present. We sat along 19 just east of Stratford for too long with the lightning getting steadily closer. And I certainly spent too much time outside the vehicle.
I think it was when I saw lightning strike the Stratford water tower that I decided to get into the car. Justin got an amazing time laps at this location with the nearly continuous lightning.

I finally decided to get the heck out of there (with some encouragement from James our nowcaster) and dropped straight south out of Stratford to get away from the lightning and away from the violent, rain-wrapped, something.

We stopped near a cemetery along 177 several miles south of Stratford and observed the storm from there. Justin got another amazing pano from that location of a spectacular mothership HP mesocyclone of awesomeness.

This is what the storm now looked like on radar. With the small town of Stratford taking an apparent direct hit by the storm. The rotation is now over the portion of highway 19 we had just been on.

As far as I know there were no serious injuries from this storm and the damage to Stratford was much less than what I would've expected to see from a radar presentation like that. The tornadoes that were produced were brief and not very strong it seems. And they mostly occurred outside of town. Its always nice to know that the storm you chased didn't cause any serious harm.

James suggested that we get a move on and so we did. However, I was eager to get back to I 35 and take it south and decided to take highway 29 over to I 35. I probably shouldn't have done this, but figured we'd have just enough time to do it. It turned out we did, but I made a critical error right at the end.

Highway 29 merges for a second with 77 and both turn to the north. Then 29 splits off and goes west again to I 35. I didn't realize we had turned north and thought that the sign said to go straight to get to I 35. So instead of heading west we headed north right into a weaker storm. Visibility was near zero and James had to help me figure out why I had not reached I 35. So, I had to turn around and get back to where 29 splits off. Once I did this we were out of the rain quickly and able to shoot some lightning in the Arbuckle mountains near Davis.

We ended the chase on another distant supercell well west of I 35 (that James had informed us about) and shot lightning from it for a while. Most of those images didn't work out so well for me as I had a slight focusing error and most of (if not all of) the bolts were too distant to really capture.
But, still it was a fun way to end the evening.


Here is a radar loop of the supercell.

4/14/2011 Tushka Oklahoma Tornadic Supercell and some Lightning.

If the last chase event was memorable than this one certainly was.

This was another one of those "wake-up-call" type chases with this one involving the destruction of the town of Tushka Oklahoma. And surprisingly most storm chasers would consider it our most successful to date. I am kind of debating that since July 12th 2010 yielded much more beautiful photographs for us.

I was not at all expecting to chase this day and neither was James Langford. I had a physics lab that was supposed to go until about 5pm that afternoon and James had something else going on. But, wonder of wonders, I got out of lab early (around 3:30?) and James also got finished with (whatever it was he was doing) at about the same time.

He called me about the time I got out of lab (or I called him, can't remember) and he toled me that storms were already erupting on the dry line in Oklahoma. So, we decided to go ahead and make a quick run up 75 just to see what we could see. Justin Terveen also came with us.

There were a lot of storms up in Oklahoma but only one of them was really significant and it was the southern most one with the most unobstructed inflow. When we began our trip up 75 to basically target the area north of Durant Oklahoma the storm of interest was due north of Lake Texoma and drifting slowly east-northeast.  The chasers already on this storm got some amazing structure shots, but as it continued eastwards contrast under the storm began to decline.

We made it north of Durant just about the time the most intense circulation was fixing to cross the road. While we could see the supercell's overall structure the contrast was indeed terrible.

After grabbing some images here we decided that, just for kicks, we would drive underneath the base and see what was going on (sound familiar?).

From this point on I was focused on videoing our trip into the beast rather than taking stills. When we crossed underneath the meso there was a pronounced RFD cut... probably one of the most impressive ones I had seen up to this point (I say that about everything don't I?). As we drove further north a significant lowering emerged out of the merkey darkness ahead. Given its location under the storm  (north of the RFD with the RFD wrapping around the south side of it) I knew that it had to at least be a significant wall cloud. When it took on a distinct cone shape as it crossed 75 everything about it was screaming TORNADO. I was almost screaming tornado and I am not sure how I managed to sound so relaxed and composed on the video. The funny thing was is that James and Justin couldn't even see it due to the contrast being so bad on it. (James was focused on the road, and Justin was in the back seat).

As we got close enough to the feature to really see the spin we pulled over to the side of the road and filmed the rapidly rotating color cloud around the multi-vortex tornado and some of the vorticies underneath. I had never seen rotation on that scale before that close up. Despite this I was still second guessing myself about it actually being a tornado (the contrast never was that great and though I thought the feature was only about a mile or so away it was more like three or four).

We decided to continue on up 75 just to see if it indeed had been a tornado. And sure enough we crossed into a distinct damage path left be the tornado as it crossed the road.

The tornado was aparantly fairly wide since the damage just didn't end.

Looked like a weedeater tore through the area with all the trees snapped off at about the same hight.

It was about this point we decided to flip around. We thought that Atoka must have taken a hit and decided it would be best to flip around as soon as possible. What we didn't know was that, although the south side of Atoka apparently did get grazed, it was a small town called Tushka south of Atoka that took the brunt of the tornado. We really had no idea the town was even there as you couldn't really see much from 75.

We flipped around at probably the last place one could before the backup on 75. At that location a semi had been flipped but thankfully it appeared that the driver was ok with many people standing around. It sure didn't seem like we would be of any use there blocking even more traffic when many were already stopped along that stretch of road.

Once we flipped around we shot the storms well to the west that had developed along the steadily approaching dry line/cold front merger. We had a pretty decent display of lightning and mammatus in the fading light. (Though I didn't get much of the mammatus or the lightning).

This is a vertical panorama of the new cell due west of us with lightning and some mammatus.

I don't really know how long we sat at that spot along 75 south of Tushka but it was probably at least an hour. We were all kind of in some sort of state of "shock" or something. I was kind of flip flopping from between "wow we actually saw a tornado!"  and "oh my gosh thats a lot of ambulances." There were a lot of ambulances that came north the entire time we were trying to photograph lightning. And it really drove home the point that while I really enjoy these storms someone else doesn't. I still can't seem to quite grasp what the appropriate response to something like this is. Especially when you originally came out for a good time and nothing more.  But we still didn't know that Tushka had been demolished (though the number of ambulances definitely indicated that something major had happened).

To wrap up the chase we headed back down into Texas with a squall line rapidly blowing up on what was now the cold front. We stopped in northeast Collin County and let it run us over. That was quite fun with the marble size hail and frequent lightning. The lightning on the backside was actually surprisingly good, and extremely frequent. So frequent that it was hard to get a bad shot.

The next day there was a big discussion amongst the three of us about the event and how we should be better prepaired for this stuff. As it turns out not only was Tushka severely damaged but police, fire, and EMS were overwhelmed. On Storm Track and on Spotter Network there was a call for any chasers in the area to lend a hand with the search and rescue due to the overwhelmed officials. Since we didn't have the lap top that day we had no idea that any of this was occurring and it stung. (At least to me it did). I generally have the idea that one should avoid disaster scenes as much as possible... but that isn't the case when any help is called for and one is able to lend that help. The bigger question now is whether we could've even been of any help and an even bigger question is what to do when this sort of thing happens in the future.

As a chaser for me it is all about enjoying the storms and getting a good photograph. But, unfortunatly, that is the view held be 99% of all chasers (even the ones claiming to provide life saving information). Most chasers do not even call in a tornado when it occurs but instead reach for the camera. It just doesn't seem to make since trying to get a clear report through to the NWS when the road is packed with chasers all watching the same tornado. Surely several of them have already reported it right? WRONG! Or at least wrong has been the answer on numerous events I have heard.

I will say that there were many chasers who did assist in the search and rescue efforts that evening thanks to the news of the disaster spreading quickly amongst them. 

Any way, as far as personal convictions I hope to attempt to put reporting and being ready to assist in higher priority. Well see if I actually learned anything I guess. 

This event did also spark more thought provoking questions about the sovereignty of God and why he allows (or causes) these things to happen. I mean, I always try to give him the glory whenever a forecast is successful (I suspect someone is laughing at this since I hardly ever openly state such and certainly don't act like it or I may even forget to) since it is he that brings all this about in the first place. And though it was awesome to be on such an awesome storm its also tough to swallow the fact that the same thing that caused me happiness killed at least a couple of people, injured many more, and left many more homeless. 

And now I don't know where exactly to go with all this since it is now 2:30am and that gives me a good excuse to drop the ball here. 

I still enjoy storms and chasing... can't get over that.