Chasecation June 5th - 10th 2011 Day 1

This was a real treat. Four days outside of our typical chasing grounds with the 5th day being back in Oklahoma. We left Sunday the 5th and came home on the 10th.

This was the basic outlook I put together the day before we left. Basically it was all based off of the GFS and NAM. So, some might consider this not so much an actual forecast as an interpretation of data.

What amazed me is how well the models performed overall (and my interpretation wasn't all that bad either). 
Monday was basically right on but needed to be extended into Montana. Tuesday mainly needed to be more into North Dakota. Wednesday... well... that turned out to be more upslope in Colorado and Wyoming. But Thursday was right on... or very nearly.

Day one:
After spending Sunday driving into Nebraska we then set out into South Dakota on Monday anticipating supercells across the northern and western portions of the state. There was a frontal boundary draped across the northern areas with easterly flow towards the black hills along and ahead of it throughout the state. Wind shear was not overly impressive but favorable for some rotating storms up near the front and towards the black hills.

We spent a large chunk of the afternoon sitting in Midland north of I 90 trying to decide where to go. This was one of those "sit and watch visible satellite" days. Towards evening it was begining to look like our best bet was to take I 90 to Rapid City where the most pronounced cumulus were due to the forcing along the black hills. That easterly wind was helping to ram the warm moist air up against the mountains helping to erode the cap in that area.

However, as time passed and we reached Rapid City big HP supercell-like storms erupted just south of the South Dakota boarder in Nebraska. They were basically over the unchaseable sand hills we had driven up through earlier in the day. I really didn't want to go after them due to the better shear being further west near Rapid City and what began to be storm initiation over the black hills.

The storms over the black hills really didn't get organized though for a good long while and one can't chase in the black hills very easily. And as we drove west the storms to our southeast continued to get bigger... but still lacked any real organization.

After supper in Rapid City it looked to me that we might have busted since the cells over to our west continued to not do much of anything. Still, there was one complex of tightly packed cells in a little line trying to pass over the mountains. I figured we'd at least want to photograph lightning out of that apparently disorganized mess if nothing else.

There is one thing that I had overlooked that James had informed us about earlier:
The sun takes much longer to set in the northern plains than it does in the southern during this time of year. That became pretty apparent after the first day.

By 7pm-ish we had our first cluster of small cells coming over the mountains to the south of Rapid City and we headed south to meet them. These basically had formed a beautiful gust front that, at first, didn't look impressive. Once we were south of town a little ways it quickly came fully into view and we were stunned by its beauty.

This is one of the few moments where I have actually felt poetic... but even I am so bad at poetry none came to me. And therefore you will be spared any.

Well... no... I actually won't spare you completely:

The heavens declare the glory of God, 

and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
Psalm 19:1

In Hebrew, at least, it is poetic... and true... so very very true...

I still can't figure out which of the two panoramas above I like most and whether or not it would be worth going back and doing HDR. Oh well... I'll figure it out sooner or later.

Normally when I see the leading edge of the outflow push that far ahead of the precipitation the storms doom is nigh. Or something like that. However, this guy kept firing cells on its leading edge for the next couple of hours or more. In fact, for all I know this small complex of storms traveled at least another hundred miles before dissipating sometime after dark.

Another interesting phenomena were the nearly continuous downbursts occurring due to a lot of evaporation of the precipitation in the mid levels. This little "bow echo" was severe warned for high winds and we got a brief taste of it with little rain.

I just have to say that driving underneath an incredibly high based shelf cloud with phenomenal structure in the rolling green plains of South Dakota was probably one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had to date.


This guy is KUDX and he provided all of our radar data for this evening. The HDR attempt on him is kind of sloppy... but then again it was done just to figure out how this HDR stuff works.

We had some amazing light after the storm had passed on the South Dakota hills. Kind of funny that I thought this first image was going to be the best with the HDR. But I was terribly wrong. With the second I just didn't know what I was doing which is why I stopped work on it, then did the first, and then went back to it after getting comfortable with photoshop's method of HDR.

Some of my favorite images to date and all from South Dakota. Still blows my mind that I was actually there.

May 19th 2011 HP Monsters in Southwest Oklahoma

 I really don't know how to start this one off. It was one of the most amazing days of chasing I've experienced (like half the chase days this year). The storms were moving slow, and had amazing structure and motion. However, the amasingness of this day was just about ruined when a bad move was made after dark on an  HP Supercell.

(Hadn't something like this just happened a month earlier?)

For my part, I think this chasing thing has made me a little arrogant. This is one of the ways God smacked me (at least me) upside the head and demonstrated how little I actually know.

Regardless of the reasons God allowed this to happen I know that I have been arrogant (at least in heart ) and the night time "near death" experience humiliated me considerably. That and the High Risk Bust I experienced with Justin during one of the fallowing chase days.

Comparing my (our) "Amateur Chaser Mistake" to what I would consider "New Diver Mistakes" I have this to say:

God was extremely gracious to all of us and spared our lives and any kind of damage to vehicle and equipment just like he was merciful when I pulled into oncoming traffic as a new driver, or many of the other "new driver" mistakes I've made (still make).

So to begin:
Chased with Justin Terveen and James Langford.

I remember this being a very complicated set up. In the days prior to this chase I had been shifting my target from basically West Central Oklahoma to the Oklahoma/Kansas boarder. The reason for the latter target would be more favorable shear profiles and what I thought would be closer to any upper level lifting mechanisms that might be present in the jet stream flow aloft.

I remember distinctly the short range models firing storms in southern Oklahoma, but I really didn't want to bite on that due to the best shear parameters being further north and  I didn't fully trust their initiation. But even so I knew that there would be enough shear down there for at least HP Supercells, but figured the trip further north would be more worth it.

So, what I wound up with was a target of northwest Oklahoma, basically anywhere north of I 40 and west of I 35. My two starting possibilities were Enid and Clinton. Even by chase day I hadn't really decided. I figured that call could be made once we reached OKC.

Well as we shot north on I 40 supercells began to blow up all along the dry line south of I 40 around 2pm. Some were practically to the Red River. That at least knocked my target down to Clinton along I 40. However, the storms near I 40 began to lose surface rooting and began to drift more north than east (an unhealthy sign with cyclonic supercells). By the time we had driven some distance west on I 40 it became evident that we would either have to drive way north to see anything from the storms up there which were not healthy, or drive outside my target area towards the healthy looking HP mess to the south. I caved and decided to go for the HP mess to the south (which turned out to be the best choice made for the day).

Basically wound up taking Highway 54 out of Weatherford down to the Wichita Mountains and the wind farm. The first storm we observed was a very classic, typical, and murky, HP Supercell.
(That is classic HP, not classic classic supercell... never mind).

It had a tremendously large, powerful, and rain filled RFD area with a pronounced "cow catcher" shelf on its leading edge. The storm also had some significant bands in the mid-levels indicating a strong mesocyclone was present. Rotation to the north of the RFD area was pretty well defined and persistent. However, for any of this to be seen we had to let the storm get fairly close since the haze was just awful. We actually had hailstones falling on us from the anvil overhead due to them being blown well downstream of the mesocyclone. 

At one of the interesections we encountered one of the Dominators and Discovery Channel crew. They took a road north (I believe highway 58) from our intersection on 19 and we continued on 19 to the east. They apparently witnessed a tornado in the large inflow notch of this amazing storm.

The eerie light filtering through the heavy RFD precipitation was incredible! Some of the freakiest lighting I had seen in a good while.

We allowed this first cell to pass us to the north while we took 58 back to the southeast to intercept another rapidly developing cell along this storms flank. The new storm quickly became another HP Supercell with strong rotation. We were actually in a kind of hairy situation at this point as our viewing position was very close to the Whichita mountains and the storm was coming right over them. Also, the immense size of the storm made it slightly difficult to discern where the mesocyclone was and adjacent RFD. The mesocyclone wound up wrapping up about a mile or less to our west (giving us a great view of very rapid rotation) and a new one developed just to our northeast. When the rotation first popped over the ridge it was very strong and it looked like we would have a tornado any second just to the left of the wind mills. However, it quickly dissipated due to the strength of the RFD.

I managed to grab another shot before we left of a chaser group with the new meso in the background.

When we attempted to reposition for this storm we made the very bad choice of taking a road north into the core rather than dropping to the south and east to escape. Given our road options had we continued north, we would've been forced to drive straight east to get out under the meso, which would've taken us under what could've been a developing tornado.
We quickly realized our mistake and flipped around to head southeast, punching the RFD on the way and picking up a few larger than quarter sized hail stones.

We successfully escaped as the RFD precip cleared out quickly as one went south. We then dropped down to an RV park near Lake Lawtonka. I didn't bother to shoot pictures with James and Justin for some reason or other.

At this point we could've called it quites but, just as one of the models had shown, there was a very impressive storm right on the Red River west-northwest of Whichita Falls Texas. After a quick supper of some Burger King fried imitation chicken (yum) we dropped south on the tollway out of Lawton Oklahoma to try and catch this last storm.

The last storm was really the most incredible in my mind. Like the last two cells this one had very strong rotation. It also had more "classic" supercell structure when we drove up to it (though we didn't stop to photograph the mid-level stacked plates). The inflow into this storm had to of been in the 40 -50mph range at least. We had blowing dust, and it was difficult to keep the cameras and tripods steady enough to produce sharp images in the fading light.

Some of my all time favorite storm clouds were seen from this storm. The sky had this eerie brown color due to the sun's very low angle on the horizon behind it, and some of the gust front formations were just wiled. Also noted several gustnadoes as we sat and photographed for about a half hour in front of the storm.

This lowering had some decent rotation to it at one point. But the storm was fighting its  own RFD to put down anything in this area. However, something may have been going on back in the inflow notch of this storm way off to the right of this image and out of sight.

At this point we were being hit with strong cold outflow. It was kind of crazy to see cars emerging from the blackness of the storm up ahead. The main area of rotation and core were actually going to pass to the north of us... but we still thought it best to get a move on.

I have not mentioned the radar issues at this point but I guess now I should since it played a large roll in the mistake that we made next.
Radar data this entire trip had been very sketchy due to a poor Sprint and AT&T network. So, while we had decent data close to the interstates, any time we left them our data would be gone and radar would not update.

 When we made our next move we assumed a few things about the storm (or at least I did):
1: The storm was becoming more outflow dominate than it had been already.
2: The storm continued to be nearly stationary or drift slightly east.
3: We were far enough out in front of the storm.

Looking back these were quite dangerous assumptions. The storm appears to have actually:
1: Redeveloped a strong mesocyclone and positioned it further south than the previous one.
2: Speed up to the east at around 20 - 25mph. Which leads to:
3: We were NOT far enough out in front of the storm.

A lot of this is still speculation since I have not been able to grab archived radar data from this event yet. And really this wouldn't have been too big of a deal except for item #1 (although very strong outflow can be pretty nasty when caught out in it).

We were eager to shoot lightning so we drove north out of Grandfield Oklahoma on highway 36. We set up about three to four miles north of Grandfield and got to work on the lightning. Due to the lack of light I couldn't get my camera to focus on anything, so I walked about 100 feet away from the vehicle so that I could use its light to get an infinity focus setting.

I had just finished focusing and had begun my first exposure when I heard a shout from James. I thought he was simply trying to point out something kind of neat or perhaps was mearlly asking why I had set up so far back from the car. Either way, I didn't note anything particularly distressing in his voice. By the time I had entered my 4th exposure I had noticed that the core of the storm had come very close and we were about to get blasted by heavy rain and strong outflow. So, I began to pack up.

After that lengthy process when I was about 50 feet from the vehicle I heard a strange hissing sound that got steadily louder. Of to the northwest of the vehicle there was a dust cloud that appeared to be rotating. By the time I had made it to the vehicle the dust cloud had too. I've never stood in winds that strong before and hope I never do again unless it is in some kind of controlled experiment or something. I had no sooner thrown my tripod into the back seat when I was wiped around Justin (who was also throwing his gear into the back) and began to stumble to the south of the vehicle as the winds pushed me in that direction.

The entire interior of the vehicle was filled with dust and those of us caught outside (Justin and I primarily) were more or less sand blasted. It probably took a good 20 seconds for all of this to occur though it is hard to tell or even remember much of the details.

Afterwards everyone was able to get back into the vehicle before the rain hit. The funny thing was that despite what could easily have been 60 mph winds in the rain it seemed fairly calm compared to what had just happened earlier.

The question then for the evening was "What in the world just happened?"
The dust cloud had some clear rotation, but it looked like it still could've been on the leading edge of a larger dusty area on the outflow. This kind of lends itself more to the gustnado. But when we examined later photographs it is apparent that there was at least rotation overhead in the storm base and perhaps a small funnel. It still could've been a gustnado as there will never be completely conclusive evidence for one or the other. And I think I may leave that discussion up for a later post as this one is long enough as it is.

Here at least are a couple images that I created from one of my own.

Arrows kind of outlining some of the cloud bands I see in this photo that were also confirmed in James' and Justin's photos. The area of rotation lines up very nicely with the debris cloud that formed as well, and the small cone funnel that seems to be evident in a couple of images taken by James and Justin. 

In the end it really doesn't matter so much whether or not it was a tornado. (Tornado just sounds so much more dramatic doesn't it?) Gustnadoes and weak tornadoes can be nearly identical in the amount of damage they can do. Regardless there really appears to me to be strong evidence of rotation and a quick glance at radar that evening (once we got data again) seems to indicate strong rotation in this area. A stronger tornado could've formed without us knowing it and we would all be dead right now.

It was a dumb mistake to try and shoot lightning under the base at night without data. In fact, being this close to a storm that is known to be a supercell of some form or other at night regardless of radar data is dumb. The only excuse I could possibly make for doing it again is if the storm is KNOWN to be rooted above the boundary layer (not surface based and therefore not able to produce tornadoes and probably not damaging winds). In the past when we had shot lightning from these kinds of storms we would be 10 miles or so from the core, and generally far enough away to capture the amazing anvil lightning that is so common with these supercells.
I think this and the previous event show just how overly confidant we have grown in our approach of these storms at night. And HPs are especially dangerous at night.

I went ahead and called the Norman office with the report of a tornado/possible gustnado in my shaky/squeaky voice while leaving out the part about the impact. Since the event was 20 minutes old by the time I alerted them I doubt it did them much good.

In the end we all simply thank God that our over-eagerness didn't get us killed.

If I ever get around to a more in depth study of this event and the other near miss I will post my findings. It really bugs me that I don't know for certain what was actually going on in either case.

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. 

Storm Chase 4/8/11 And a Close Encunter to... Something...

 Would I call this a successful chase? 

Yes

Were amazing storms witnessed?

Yes

How about the photography? Was it good?

For me? errr... No... not really. 

Was it fun?

Yes

Were we almost killed because we were dumb enough to drive underneath the base of a massive tornadic supercell at 11:00pm?

Probably not but can't say with any certainty... and not all the facts are in.     o_0

Chased with James Langford, Justin Terveen, and Colin Miller. 


This was probably one of the more unique chases I have had thus far. And I think it was one of the more educational... and that is not necessarily a good thing.

So, we had a target picked basically northwest of Oklahoma City. Dry Line was expected to push east in the late afternoon with an impulse in the upper flow expected to help erode the cap.  There would be strong surface heating making this easier and dew points were generally well into the sixties... especially east of I 35. One thing we were lacking some what was low level shear and helicity, but there was a nice boundary (warm front) along the Oklahoma/Kansas boarder that would come into play and provide some of those ingredients late in the period.

In reality we had not completely settled on northwest of Oklahoma City. Any where along the dry line was fare game as far as we could tell and the dry line stretched from Kansas to Texas through Oklahoma... way to much area to target obviously. So, what did we do? We sat in Norman at a McDonalds and leached there Wi-Fi. We took a look at the HRRR and what did we see? A massive cluster of supercells firing basically between I 44 and I 40. The biggest developed near Lawton paralleled I 44 and moved just south of OKC. So, thinking the HRRR was onto something we decided we would stay south of Oklahoma City and wait for this monster to emerge from near Chickasha.

 Since we didn't want to have to cross OKC (I am sick of typing Oklahoma City... such a waste of space ya know) in rush hour traffic we decided that it would be best to stick to one side or the other. And since the HRRR wanted to play a joke on all the chasers dumb enough to believe it we decided to stay south of OKC.

While the HRRR was not wrong in the type of storms it developed nor there areal coverage, it was wrong in there placement. The HRRR turned out to be about 150 miles to far south... go figure.

By 4pm-ish (or perhaps a little later) towers began to build west of Oklahoma City and the El-Reno area. We decided to head west and possibly make the turn south towards Chickasha. We noticed on Radar scope that chasers were packed along I 40 and north of there. We then also noticed as we headed west towards the Union City area that reflectivity was beginning to show up north west of El-Reno. We also noticed towers exploding over head and especially north west. It was becoming clear that the action was going to be further north than originally thought. We decided to take highway 81 north through El-Reno and see if we couldn't catch the developing convection.

Unfortunately it was about 30 - 40 miles to our northwest and moving north-northeast at about 40mph. (At least initially). Another tower exploded just to our west as we got lost and wandered around El-Reno looking for the stupid SR 81. This tower fell apart and the convection well to our northwest was exploding into a massive supercell. We decided to chase it as we didn't know if it would be the only one worth chasing or not.

As we raced towards Hennessey another storm developed way west of us and since we were not crazy about the idea of trying to race the first supercell down along with all the rest of the storm chasers in Oklahoma we decided to target the west cell. This was both a good choice and kind of a bad one.

First, we were in a much better position on the the western cell and could catch it much more easily. The bad news was that for some reason (probably due to lower helicity and or lower moisture content) this storm took forever to organize.

We chased it while the first supercell (now off to our northeast) continued to look amazing from a distance. And our storm (near Fairview)... well... didn't seem to have any organization. It split multiple times and these "left splits" were more intense than the "right split" we stayed with. We even core punched it due to its weakness. We drove all around underneath it looking for any tail-tell signs of  mesocyclone development. But none-emerged... until sunset.

At that point we had almost given up. We had found a storm and it looked kind of neat. It had dime size hail that had pelted our car, and it had given us something nice, at least, to look at. But our expectations had been so much more. (At least mine). BUT... as we let the storm drift to our north so that we could shoot what we could in the fading sunlight, an obvious change began to take place in this disorganized cluster of storms.

One of the predominate ones was an inflow band coming straight into the storm from the east. Another, the lowering of the cloud base (possibly due to a combination of surface temperatures cooling along with more moist air advection). Those wonderful little anvil crawlers (or anvil zits as we like to call them) started to really show up in the fading light.

We moved north with it to find a closer place to shoot photos hoping for lighting shots as the light faded. It was here that the most dramatic change in the storm occurred.

 A large wall cloud developed. And compared to the rest of the storm base it was practically hugging the ground. What we were watching was the development of a strong mesocyclone that would produce at least one tornado (confirmed by another chaser's pictures).

The interesting thing is this storm continued to have a multi-cellular characteristic while at the same time developing strong supercellular characteristics. This lead to multiple mesocyclones in fairly close proximity to each other. This showed up on radar as more of a line of supercells merged together in a line running east to west, moving to the east. Each with its own little hook area, and each had its own wall cloud visually. 

The first was large and showed sings of increasing organization the entire time we watched it.

  

 While we watched this wall cloud pass off to our north another formed to our northwest and fallowed the same path as the first. It also steadily increased in impressiveness as it passed to our north.

Here both wall clouds can be seen, with the first being the hardest and off to the right. 

While these images were not all that great it made the trip worthwhile to see this. We soon decided to call it a night and head back to I 35 to begin the return trip home. However, the moment we left it and started heading back east on highway 412 a tornado warning was issued for the storm. The lead rotation had dominated and began to wrap up a nice hook on radar. Since it was going to cross I 35 not too far to the north of 412 we decided to go ahead and race it to I 35. This would've been a lot easier if the town of Enid had not been in the way... but you can't have everything.

Once we reached I 35 we shot straight north towards the storm with the thought that we would at least try for some lightning again. 

We stopped at some truck stop or gas station along I 35 and tried to shoot some of the anvil lightning which was insanely frequent. But a mid-level cloud band was already rotating around the storm and overhead blocking our view of the bolts. 

Here is where the story gets interesting.

I have tried to pay careful attention to this part as it will probably impact how we handle night time events in the future.

At this point the tornado warning had been allowed to expire and we decided to head up towards the storm base again just to see if anything was going on. The point was not to get close to anything, but to simply see if any structure could be viewed in the downdraft/updraft interface.

We drove up under the storm base trying to maintain what we thought would be a safe distance. I figured that since we were experiencing decent outflow winds and that the main area of rotation remained a few miles to the north we were fine. There were lowerings all under the storm base... but none of these I was too worried about as most of them were just scud, or outflow clouds.

But, as we were looking for an exit to pull off the highway onto in order to watch the main area of rotation to the north, Colin announces that he sees a funnel due west or west-northwest of us. Hmmmm... I look out that way and can't see anything. Since I was on the east side of the vehicle I really can't see what he sees. James also sees something and pulls the vehicle over. Colin then reports that whatever he has seen has lifted for the most part but a lowering was still present. 

I stick my head out of the window to get a view over the car to the west. I don't see anything that made me overly suspicious. There were several lowerings on the horizon... none of which looked especially menacing or organized.  Colin insisted that whatever he saw was still present and that we needed to find a way to turn around. This would be difficult since the nearest exit (the only one we had seen for miles) was about 1/4 of a mile up the road. Colin and James didn't know if we could make it there before the lowering passed over the general area. 

While the debate as to what to do was taking place I finally began to notice what Colin had, but at first it still didn't impress me. But then the lowering began to take on an obvious wall cloud shape. There even looked to be an RFD cut immediately to the south of it. The outflow we were experiencing was from this down draft area and it was picking up speed. The wall cloud also was not moving but remaining in a fixed position under the storm base (another sign of very suspicious activity). James, after attempting to snap a few pictures of the wall/funnel cloud (to help us get a better idea of  what it looked like) decided that staying put was not safe... nor would trying to cross the medium to make a u-turn (both illegal and would likely get us stuck... with the latter reason carrying the most weight in the present situation). 

We made the drive up to the exit and as we approached a strong wind shift was noted. First we had winds out of the west coming out of the downdraft immediatly to our left. Then we had winds whip around to the east and get fairly strong. This coincided so well with what I had seen above that I was now fully convinced that we had indeed witnessed and driven through a circulation of some kind. Once we got flipped around on the highway the lowering was already either on or just east of the road. Since the lightning remained to the west and north the lowering was front lit and therefore completely invisible. I believe we gave it a minute or two before we headed straight back south on I 35 to begin the long journey home. 

Once the storm had crossed I 35 it went tornado warned again and became an absolute monster. It developed a very large and impressive circulation on radar. The towns of Tonkawa and Ponca City were pounded during the time we had spent under the storm with one report of 94 mph winds and baseball size hail in the general area to our north. 

It really was a blast all around and am very glad we made the trip into Oklahoma. But we did make a number of mistakes and only have God to thank that a full blown tornado didn't make minced meat out of us on I 35. 

Preparing to chase on 4/8/2011

This is certanly not the best set up I have ever seen but it is one which we will be chasing nonetheless.

Models are forecasting a decent capping inversion to be in place during the early afternoon, but erode it away in places along a dry line running through Central Oklahoma. The most recent run of the NAM has actully pushed the dry line further east before stalling it in the evening. The seems to me to indicate some possible lift along it.

Dry Line position by 7pm can be clearly seen here.

CIN looks to be weakest near and north of Oklahoma City. But is weak all along the dry line.

There does appear to be some kind of disturbance moving through at 7pm in the 500mb level.

From what I can understand most think that this will not be much of an event. But given the strength and amount of deep layer shear Supercell storms would be likely if convection can develop. I think we will be targeting Ardmore Oklahoma to start with and then see where to move from there.