Go grab a cup of coffee... or better yet... just skim through and look for the images. But I wouldn't mind if you at least read the opening thoughts. ;)
I have had a very hard time getting this one started. There is so much to say and so little space to say it. And I have always had an aversion to writing. I don't see myself as a writer and can't ever foresee myself getting into it.
Why this fascination with tornadoes? Why go chase them?
These are questions I've been trying to answer for the past year or more. I guess because I feel the need to justify it. Does anyone feel the need to justify staring at the grand canyon? Really I can think of only one good reason and that is found in the beginning of Psalm 19. Particularly in verse one.
The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
I've used this verse before and I am afraid it is just one of those verses that might possibly get over used as I stick it in the notes with just about any image I take. I just can't get the idea out of my head.
There is an incredible power and beauty that is displayed in all forms of weather, both severe and benign. But in severe there is an especially robust amount of beauty and ferocious, unfathomable power rolled beautifully together. It declares the glory of God (along with all else in creation).
And THAT is so easy to miss when one can reduce it down to a bunch of equations and laws of physics. (Not that I can.) It is not that physics and equations are not God's magnificent creation but it is that when one thinks that he has it figured out and is focused on trying to figure it out he may cease to worship the creator and instead worship his own abilities and/or the object he studies itself as if it were itself a god worthy of worship.
The challenge I have whenever I chase (or stare at the sky at any time) is to sit back and let the beauty and majesty of whatever it is in front of me remain a mystery and a simple, small reflection of the beauty, majesty, and mystery of the creator who loves us and is mindful of us despite all the other stuff out there. Tornadoes are majestic, powerful, beautiful, incredible events because the God who made them is.
Boy what a day this was.
I figured at some point we would eventually see something like this day but I did not really expect it in November! Even in the few hours leading up to the event I wasn't really expecting to see a text book cyclical tornadic supercell.
It seems it was an amazing day from almost whatever angle you view it. The storms and tornadoes were amazing, and the placement of the storms was such that very few communities were put in danger. There were near misses and I believe one research facility as well as one home were destroyed. But things could've been so much worse and they weren't.
SPC had an enhanced risk area within a general slight risk very near Wichita Falls. Shear and helicity looked pretty good for supercells but I wasn't so sure about tornadoes. However, SPC did mention a risk of tornadoes within the enhanced risk area.
Shear and helicity were more than favorable for strongly rotating supercell storms along with tornadoes given low cloud bases and LFCs (Level of Free Convection). However, there was definitely concern that numerous clouds associated with very strong warm air advection and lift would yield rain and clouds early in the day preventing atmospheric destabilization. I figured all we would need was surface based CAPE (Convective Available Potential Energy) values around 1,500 j/kg given the amount of shear but I wasn't certain those values could be reached.
On the morning of November 7th the outlook hadn't really changed any. SPC was still calling for an enhanced risk of tornadoes within the yellow hatched area which also consisted of an enhanced risk of particularly strong tornadoes (in the black shaded area).
Here is the surface map at 925 mb valid for about 6am showing the strong southerly flow int the risk area. Winds were 25-30kts out of the south which is pretty significant.
At 850mb things don't look too different. Interesting divergence across SW Oklahoma and Texas. But still very strong flow overall across Texas out of the south bringing in very moist air in the 850 mb layer.
Ah, now things are getting interesting as one looks higher up into the atmosphere at the 700mb level. Winds have wipped around to the West-Southwest across the target area with a strong shortwave trough over the four corners area and a strong disturbance moving into Texas.
Now we are at the 500mb level which is considerably higher than 700mb and we have a pretty similar look overall. Winds are stronger out of the Southwest across the target area.
Figure I would look at one more 6am map. This one is at around 250mb near the top of the troposphere and well into the jet stream. Very strong divergence noted across the area enhancing lift near the surface.
Essentially everything was lined up for strong supercell thunderstorms if good instability could be attained.
Justin Terveen and I left Plano around 11:00am after a scramble to get air into the tires and we were off. The plan was to take 380 out of Denton to Decator and then take 287 up through Wichita Falls. I had also hoped to meet up with Ben Jacobi but unfortunately work obligations would keep him pinned in Wichita Falls about one hour too late. (Gotta have your priorities straight ya know).
We didn't really bother with a data check as we moved towards Wichita Falls since time was of the essence but I did do the best I could with my iPhone. First I noted that clouds were not a problem in the area in question. A good portion of the sky was clear... or at least with enough broken clouds to allow decent surface heating. This yielded CAPE values of almost 2500 j/kg just northwest of Wichita Falls into Southwestern Oklahoma by 12:00pm.
At this point I turned to Justin and said something to the effect "Remember I said I would be happy if we got 1,500 j/kg? Well we have 2,500! I think were are gonna do well today." It was just one of those moments that I knew would be memorable.
And as expected SPC issued a mesoscale discussion concerning the tornado threat in Southwest Oklahoma and West Texas.
I had really hoped that we could meet up with Ben Jacobi out on the plains, but as we moved through Wichita Falls he was still at work. It was pretty apparent that the weather was not going to wait for him. Storms were already beginning to fire in Oklahoma and far East Texas Panhandle. Given the storm motions it looked like we would driven north of the Red River fairly quickly if anything fired south of 287. At about that time the area under the mesoscale discussion was upgraded to a tornado watch given a significant threat of tornadoes.
The storms near Childress and on northeast were already taking on supercellular characteristics. Given the storm speeds there would not be time to catch those. However, it was clear that there were numerous storms firing out ahead of the rapidly intensifying supercells and the environment was even more favorable where these new cells were.
A storm quickly caught my attention west of Vernon Texas. It was racing north-northeast at maybe 35-40pmh. It was clear that if we wanted to catch it we needed to get to highway 183 on the east side of Vernon and take that north across the Red River. However, as we start making our play on 183 yet another cluster of small cells fires well south of 287 in Texas. These may have been as much as 40 miles south of us. However, given the motion I figured we still needed to be across the Red River any way. I didn't want to give up on the storm further to the west just yet.
We drove into Davidson Oklahoma on north 183. At this point I began to realize that waiting on the storm southwest of us to move north-northeast towards us might be a lot smarter than running after that storm to the west. On top of that it was more isolated from the other rapidly intensifying supercells and had completely un-obstructed inflow. Meaning that the air feeding into the updrafts from the southeast was devoid of any rain cooled air from other storms. Not quite so with storms further west and north.
It was a very hard choice though. As we sat in Davidson watching supercells to the now west-northwest explode in intensity (with at least one of them becoming tornado warned) the cell we were waiting for did a lot of nothing. Radar images of it were less then spectacular. Visually as it approached it took on a starved LP supercell type look. The reason for this was that yet another cell had fired just to its south and was dumping rain into the supercell I thought we were going to chase. The updrafts were chocking on rain cooled air from the storm to the south. Oh well, the new storm on the south side of this two cell complex would now be the target.
This southern cell that chocked off the northern one then became THE storm of the day. And I do mean THE STORM. While tornado warnings were issued for a couple cells to the northwest I do not know of any confirmed tornadoes on those. The storm we were now waiting on to come north towards us would become a tornado producing machine called (for those of you non weather nerds) a cyclical tornadic supercell.
We decided it was time to move north and allow the little-bitty-baby new cell to come north and mature. We drove into the town of Fredrick Oklahoma and this is where things began to become very clear. Up until the moment we entered Fredrick we had lost radar data. Now a brand new image indicated the cell had EXPLOADED in intensity. We stopped at a gas station to fuel and asses the situation.
I just remember how excited and tense I became when I saw what was behind me. The photo is nothing spectacular but the motion and everything about the storm suggested something totally different. Here the rain free base can be seen with nearly all the rain and hail being deflected well away from the updraft area thanks to the very strong wind shear. A lowering can be seen and it had rapid upward motions indicating the presence of a very powerful updraft. The storm was showing signs of rotation on radar, though visually that wasn't so obvious just yet. However, given the almost funnel shape of the lowering and the context of where it was positioned underneath the storm all pointed to something significant about to happen.
1. The wall cloud had grown huge with INCREDIBLE rotation. The rotation was unlike anything I had seen even from other tornadic storms. And the wall cloud as practically ground scraping. It is likely that by this point tornado #1 was already in progress.
2. The sirens in Fredrick began blaring indicating that a tornado warning had already been issued.
It really didn't take long for the tornado to show itself. Several little vorticies were rotating around the base of the wall cloud kicking up debris and then this tight spin up developed in the middle.
At first I was concerned about Fredrick because I had no idea how far away it really was. It passed well west of town and nearly hit the town of Tipton. Some sort of facility in that general area was destroyed giving it its EF4 rating.
The tornado progressed quickly from its multi-vortex state into a more condensed large vortex.
I believe it was on the ground for 39 minutes which is really significant considering most tornadoes don't make it past 10 minutes. Here it is beginning to shrink while a new ominous wall cloud develops to its east. That wall cloud would later produce tornado #2.
Here is our last view of tornado #1. We quickly lost site of it as it wrapped up in rain on the very backside of the storm and ropped out.
Here is an interesting part of the story. I had been having a hard time balancing my over joy at seeing really contrasty and significant tornadoes for the first time while maintaining some level of concern for the local communities. It became very clear at this point that tornado #2 was taking dead am for Snyder Oklahoma. We knew it was going to cross 183 at some point. And Snyder was right on 183 at what appeared would be that crossing point. All I could do was pray. We had had our fun and now I thought it was a pretty good idea to talk to God about the situation. Not that it hadn't been at any other point. But it was clear that if something drastic did not change Snyder might not be Snyder any more.
About the time of the last photograph in the above series (and as we approached town) Justin decided he just had to pull over and get a shot. The tornado was entering its shrinking stage at this point. By the time Justin had pulled over gotten his tripod out, and set up the camera on it... poof... no more tornado. It simply rolled right back up into the storm base as the RFD (Rear Flank Downdraft) wrapped around it and killed it.Justin just gave me a strange look. He hadn't even gotten to snap an image before it was gone.
It turns out tornado #2 did cross 183, but it had turned sharply to the right and crossed just south of town as it was dissipating. What a relief for Snyder any way.
Another tornado did touch down just to our east along the flanking line. That was quite a surprise! I've gone ahead and dubbed it "tornado #3" though I am not sure if it is the same one listed as tornado #3 near Snyder on the tornado track map. The funnel had been nearly all the way to the ground before this image. But by the time I had pulled my camera back out to snap a picture it had just about dissipated. All that can be seen is a very shallow cone.
The main area of rotation had wrapped rain around the south side preventing us from having a good view. From what I could tell rotation was not nearly as strong at this point. I figured the storm was either losing its steam or just going through a reorganizing faze. The amount of rain now in the RFD seemed to be blocking some of the warm moist inflow into the new wall cloud.
We had a choice at this point... continue north on highway 54 just east of Snyder. Or take highway 62 all the way to Lawton. From Lawton we could either try and catch back up with the storm on the other side of the Wichita Mountains, or we could head back home.
We wanted to stay with the storm as much as possible but there were no roads through the mountains that seemed decent, and it just overall seemed like a really bad idea even if there was. We did stop just on the south side of the mountains to catch a glimpse of a brand new tornado that had developed while we traveled east. Apparently the storm had gotten its act together again (or perhaps never lost it) and this new tornado became a really significant beast through the mountains. Some chasers caught amazing video as it tore through a wind farm in the mountains.
As we headed back north on 281 we saw this unique cloud band in front of us.
The previous tornado may have been ongoing still in the above images somewhere near the area where the beaver's tail intersects the base of the storm. James kept calling us and telling us about the incredible video he was watching on the news from a helicopter.
We catch the storm again near Ft. Cobb after tornado #5 dissipates. (We never caught a glimpse of that tornado). Tornado #6 was just beginning as we entered into Ft. Cobb.
This scene was probably the scariest for us the entire day. I became a little disoriented in the trees and couldn't tell if we were headed right into trouble or not. One chaser in front of us pulled a u-turn. He obviously was not comfortable with the situation. We pulled over to get some of the structure and asses the situation. The storm clearly has a rounded base in this image. And the rotation was again second to none. Virtually the entire base from our vantage point was one giant swirl of motion. Tornado #6 is trying to get going just behind the trees above the guard rail on the right side of the base.
Realizing we were safe we continued on and captured the last tornado as it developed near Ft. Cobb.
This tornado developed much like the first two we saw. The wall cloud gradually tightened as numerous small vorticies interacted with the ground. We also watched the TIV II drive by. Always fun to watch the TIV in action.
Here the tornado wraps up in rain and we call it a day. It was getting too dark for any kind of safe chasing. Thankfully this was the last tornado the storm produced and it was not particularly long lived compared with some of the others. The storm was moving into areas with greater population densities.
What an amazing day. And in NOVEMBER! I've only chased one other time in November back in 2008. We witnessed a lot of rain, a little lightning, and some fog. That was it.
This was the most successful chase for me from a meteorological perspective though it didn't yield the most incredible photos.
Special thanks goes out to Justin for driving and paying for gas while I sat pointing out all the things going on that he couldn't see due to his focus on the road. And that focus on the road is why I am still here today.
Justin Terveen has a time laps of this event that can be seen here.
