Oklahoma Panhandle Did It Today!
31 May 2007: Tornadic HP Supercell between Keyes and Guymon
SHORT: Mostly HP storm observed in OK Panhandle, beautiful storm structures with tiers and striations, short lived smoke tracer. Caught brief glimpse of elbow-shaped tornado rope stage.
LONG: Elke and I left Norman a little later than we wanted after my daughter’s elementary school graduation ceremony, but a parent must keep priorities in mind! The target area was the western Oklahoma Panhandle, where initiation off higher terrain prospectively would move into richer low level moisture (and hopefully, before becoming an HP mess or gusting out).
It was good to see Rocky at our gas stop in Woodward, and we proceeded on to Guymon (GUY). The condition of the U.S. highway, 412, has become absolutely shameful for the highway department of Oklahoma! Even though I had new shocks installed less than two months before, the rhythmic bumps and numerous warps in the road surface rattled everything in the car hard and incessantly, throttling us nearly senseless. This was the same road surface I had traveled in 1991 and 1987, and it showed. The constant shaking, squeaking and bouncing was very aggravating, and possibly harmful to sensitive equipment. Fortunately the road became somewhat less rough after GUY, and we proceeded onward to Keyes.
Several cells formed in SE Colorado as we headed out of GUY, and by the time we got to Keyes, we could see the nearest one as a distant base and core affixed beneath the S side of a rather extensive, collective anvil canopy. Meanwhile our good friend, “Joisey Boy” and fellow storm observer David Fogel called us from some of the more northern cells, where he had seen a wall cloud or two, and we decided to stick with the southern storm for its more optimal long-term inflow possibilities.
We had stayed a mile N of Keyes for quite awhile, enjoying the shaded inflow and singing meadowlarks, before deciding to move N toward the CO border to get a closer view of the storm, now moving just S of due E and beginning to acquire more interesting, supercellular cloud structures.
Interestingly, I recognized the very spot where we stopped, just S of the state line, as the one from which Rich Thompson and I observed my very first storm-chasing tornado (after 5 years and over 60 chases of tornadic shutouts) on 11 May 1991! The title line above came straight from a Jim Leonard video quote, uttered in excitement as he and Richard Pasch drove toward that same tornado north of Boise City over 16 years before. It would become a most fitting line for this fine storm observing day as well.
Though contrast still was poor, we looked to the NW to see a pronounced lowering with slow rotation located NE of the core (actual view and enhanced), intermittently shaped like a fat bulbous funnel, albeit from a lofty ambient cloud base. This high-based circulation persisted for over 25 minutes, sometimes with or without good cloud definition, while overall contrast and structure view improved across the fields of blooming yucca (looking W then back toward the NNW).
The storm crossed the Oklahoma-Colorado line at an oblique angle turned a little more toward the ESE, sending the core directly at us and forcing us back through Keyes…but not before some parting shots of the structure (looking W and looking NW).
he next hour or so was spent staying ahead of the supercell, intermittently stopping to admire the storm’s ever-evolving and always fascinating interplay of cloud structure, light and coloring (views at 1859, 1918 and 1922CDT), while zig-zagging along Oklahoma Panhandle roads that were becoming increasingly populated by chase vehicles of all sorts. I pulled up a nice dirt road viewpoint to find Howie and his mobile radar truck, and we exchanged pleasantries while shooting photos not only of the storm but of each other shooting photos of the storm (looking N).
The supercell painted a marvelous palette of pastels in the sky for us, from core to striated cloud bands, changing by the minute as the storm moved to our NNE. Yes, that’s a smoke plume in the inflow region, emanating from fire ignited by a hot CG several minutes prior. It made a great parcel-trajectory tracer being drawn inward and upward. The anvil CGs well ahead of the core got prolific for awhile and I was afraid someone amongst the gathered throngs would get popped.
While driving E on 412 near a place-name called “Muncy,” we saw the last 2-3 minutes of a longer-lasting tornado, by now a narrow, elbow-shaped condensation funnel that emerged from within the rain to our WNW, ending at 2016 CDT. I barely had time to find a place to pull over, safely stop the car, get out and shoot a photo before it vanished. Unfortunately I didn’t do a good job with the exposure in a difficult photographic situation requiring quick reaction in low light. David Fogel, who by now was following us for awhile, also saw the tornado, and his driver and old friend Roman might have gotten brighter photos than mine.
The storm seemed to gust out more after that, practically latching onto our bumper for a hair-raising ride through GUY. From just SW of the “Capital of No-Man’s Land,” we watched a new occlusion become rain-wrapped across the N and E sides of town before letting the storm go.
Motel rooms in GUY were very hard to find. We saw numerous chasers and tour groups congregating in front of two places, and others we called were booked full. We landed at a beat-up old local motel which (most importantly) had wireless connection, then ate a late chasers’ dinner at the local Sonic because all the decent places in town were closed. A celebratory steak dinner for (barely) seeing a tornado would have to wait at least one day!
The Keyes-Guymon supercell would turn out to be one of the more splendid visual delights of our entire storm observing vacation, and it happened our very first day out on the Great Plains.