Beautiful Outflow, Day 3: Along a Familiar Trace
Limon to Sheridan Lake CO (again!)
18 June 11
SHORT: Observed high-based, outflow-dominant supercell with “cheezenado” near Kit Carson CO and deeply textured spectacle of structure. Pretty sunset near ITR.
LONG: This was the third straight day of outstanding outflow in the American Outback. We started the day in LAA, with a stop at Bent’s Fort along the way to our target area, which remained the LIC-PUB corridor as supposed the previous night. While the Fort was fun to visit and photograph again, we slept in too long, got there later than hoped (midday), and stayed long enough to miss the initiation and early stages of a supercell near LIC.
Roaring N out of Rocky Ford, we caught up to the thrice tornado-warned storm just S of LIC (it was, fortunately, rather slow moving up to that point). Despite its fine appearance on radar reflectivity for over an hour prior, early visuals suggested nothing even close to tornadic: a high based storm with a rather small, tilted updraft and opaque to translucent core. The temperature in that RFD was 56 deg F, not exactly priming the pump for tornado action given the lofty LCL of the storm.
We took a little bit of mainly sub-severe hail, from the trailing (rear-flank) precip area while turning around to jog S and E toward Hugo. A major core-dump just N of Hugo (as seen looking NE from just W of town) sent the storm on a southeastward, outflow-surfing odyssey that seemed quite familiar. Already, the irony wasn’t lost: the storm of interest was in the same general area, also high-based and apparently outflow-dominant, and headed roughly the same direction, as the supercell the afternoon before. Indeed, we would retrace much of the previous day’s familiar path.
One difference this day was that the storm legitimately threatened to produce something tornadic on two occasions–both when my phone’s signal-bar area was stamped “No Service.” [Thanks again, AT&T with your disingenuous "97% of the population" advertising.]
We pulled off US-287 near Wild Horse and drove a few miles up a dirt road for a better view, only to see that the terrain constantly was higher between us and the storm. As we got closer, a lowering I had seen for a few minutes in the distance became visible as a persistent, smooth, bowl-shaped (and sometimes fat-cone shaped) protuberance embedded in translucent rain. It was rotating–not very fast, but noticeably. As I got out to take this wide-angle shot, the lowering’s bottom became more rounded and higher, and it went away within a minute. I was imagining what a supercell like this could do with less outflow, lower cloud base and more inflow-layer moisture.
Meanwhile the already-nice structure just kept getting more and more textured and beautiful (looking NW from near Kit Carson). The sharply defined, undular raggedness of the bottom of each cloud-base terrace gave me the impression of looking upward from beneath at a boiling liquid surface.
::::: Begin meteorological interpretation :::::
In a way, though the causative processes are much different, the convective principle is quite similar, when you consider the “liquid surface” analogy as a reverse counterpart of the CCL or LCL. In boiling water, the liqud turns to vapor. At the cloud’s LCL or CCL, the vapor condenses to droplets. Amidst a very broadly intense updraft, little bitty parcels neighboring each other are reaching their condensation pressure fast, but at slightly different elevations, giving the underside of the cloud mass such a rough, sandpaper-like appearance. The difference in condensation level from any one of the “mini-parcels” to another probably is related to a combination of slight variations of pressure, temperature and/or humidity in each one, before and during its ascent. This contrasts with the laminar (smooth) bases we often see in supercells, where the vertical pressure-gradient force compels a sheet of air to rise along a gently sloping path (along an isentrope) to a less locally-variable LCL, then ultimately to its higher LFC, where now unshackled from CINH, it really goes ballistic and rockets upward at speeds even faster than CAPE alone can support. In this specimen, LCL and LFC were either roughly the same level, or LFC was lower (free convection occurring before saturation).
::::: End meteorological interpretation :::::
Back to the chase… This stunning view (17 mm wide-angle), looking W from 6 W of Cheyenne Wells back toward Kit Carson, compelled us to stop for a spell, knowing that the forward-flank core would move overhead and force a southward turn of our own soon. Little did I know that this most unlikely-looking of high-based High Plains storms was about to produce a tornado.
See the precip-filled occlusion slot in the lower middle of the last photo? A few minutes later, as I was gawking and babbling with semi-coherent admiration at the sky-filling structure, I heard Elke yell, “I think there’s a tornado in there!”
Me: “In where? No way!”
Elke: “Right there!”
Me: “Right where?”
Elke: “In there!”
Me: “In WHERE???”
Elke: “In the rain! Behind the updraft!”
Me (fumbling with camera gear): “Come on, from that storm? There ain’t no…hmm, wait a minute. Holy $%#^, that is a funnel in there. Get on there, stupid zoom lens. Dust! I think it might be a tornado!”
As usual, she was right. At least this time, she didn’t have a road atlas with which to hit me. 
It was short-lived (~3 minutes), a long, slim, very stretchy condensation tube that began to break up even as I finally got the zoom lens attached and snapped the photo. The enhanced crop shows some of the dust it had spun up from the dry fields beneath. Other observers who were closer to the cheezenado’s location (SE of Kit Carson) also pegged it on a couple of SpotterNetwork icons, as I saw later once regaining data coverage. It was a flimsy excuse for one, but still, WFO GLD’s first tornado of the season. [The reports on the day's rough log actually were of that one event, seen/reported from different places.]
As we dropped S out of the Wells, the brief spin-up soon became almost a forgotten sidebar in the face of one of the most fantastic and bizarre visual appearances I’ve seen from any storm. At that point, other cells were merging into its back side, with an initially separate storm base visible in the more distant W.
The supercell quickly was evolving into a small forward-propagating MCS, ralphing even more outflow. The resultant, bigger storm cluster formed a pretty, tiered shelf on its E edge (looking NE). Back to the WNW of us, an outflow-undercut but visibly rotating convective column briefly formed and poked into the ambient cloud base, adding more morphological weirdness to the whole event. The earlier “rear” storm, visible in the last shot, also was growing bigger, getting closer and becoming outflow-driven.
Pulling into the same Sheridan Lake petrol station where we had been the day before, I fueled up and spoke with some familiar faces behind the counter. “We’re back, and we brought another storm with us!”
I also chatted with Chris Weiss of TTU, whose Sticknet teams I had seen deploying their wares along US-385 as part of some sort of outflow-measuring experiment. [They had arrived at the storm right after the cheezenado and didn't know about it.] That bunch should have acquired a great dataset; for the gust front soon barged through town unabated and well ahead of the main core, which itself turned left and barely missed to our E.
A few minutes later, a very concentrated and suspicious-looking, but non-rotating, dust bomb rose to the SE. Plow wind! The dust plume fanned out, advected away and eventually dispersed, as we turned back N for the 63-mile drive to ITR and a favorite motel there.
Along the way, several elevated and very high-based storms formed atop the cold pool from the earlier complex, including this one just S of ITR. South of town, we enjoyed a splendid sunset sky while parked in between wet plowed fields, and while talking to Rich T on the phone. He had seen his first tornado of the year that day–400 miles to our SE, along the OK/KS line W of BVO. We were glad for that too, as his chase fortunes this year had been awful so far.
After three days of beautiful outflow, we were ready for some meaty supercell action as portended by richer moisture and stronger shear forecast for the next day.
Central Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak
El Reno/Piedmont, OK EF5 with Satellite Tornado
Dale, OK EF1 Tornado
24 May 11
SHORT: Intercepted tornadic supercells NW and E of OKC, the first with a violent tornado in progress, the second offering a scenic rope-out.
LONG:
Welcome to a “High Risk” outlook and “Particularly Dangerous Situation” watch scenario that verified, weather-wise, exactly as such for central Oklahoma: in summary, three different violent (EF4+) tornadoes arose beneath three different supercells, with a fourth big tornado rated EF3 in northwestern Oklahoma (NWS Summary). Through both skill and luck, we witnessed what has been rated as the biggest and baddest tornado of the lot; yet we are respectfully mindful of the human toll that it took in spite of absolutely outstanding forecasts and warnings.
This almost classical Southern Plains tornado outbreak was so well-forecast and so thoroughly handled by SPC, local offices, local media and EMs, that I’ll eschew discussing meteorological details, offer a few prototypical 21Z (4 p.m.) mesoanalysis graphics that pretty much speak for themselves…
…and now go straight to “the chase”. And what a “chase” it was, right into the area of maximized parameters you see on those linked mesoanalysis graphics, and at about that time.
Phase 1: Intercepting the Piedmont Supercell
After looking at some data at home, and at Ryan Jewell’s house, Jack Beven and I targeted the area near and just N of I-40 in west-central OK, mindful of the likely fast storm motions of the day and the need not to get too close, to soon, to developing storms. As we headed W on the big slab, the earliest cell of consequence erupted SW of Fairview, not too far from the previous day’s tornadic intercept. Indeed, though we didn’t target the storm due to incompatible relative motion vectors of it and us, it would produce a couple of tornadoes over and near Canton Lake.
Storms were forming closer to each other than I like, causing some interference and precip-ingestion problems. We waited just E of Watonga for the next supercell in a broken band of them, hoping to get a quick look while ultimately targeting the southern storm in the same grouping–the storm that would become the El Reno/Piedmont supercell. A quick jog back W to the fringes of Watonga, as the storm passed, revealed an outflow-dominant heap; so we flipped the vehicle back eastward, heading for Kingfisher and the next decision point.
As we got to Kingfisher, the big deliberation was: wait for the storm E of town on a good E-W road and risk that it would right-move to the morass of stoplights and traffic of Guthrie, or head S on US-81 to Okarche and risk munching some of the forward-flank hail along the way?
The radio station was blaring frantic TV simulcast reports of a “wedge” headed for El Reno. We vacillated for a couple of minutes, and I had my doubts; but Navigator Jack’s front-of-the-map calculations convinced me we could pull it off. We headed S toward Okarche into dreadfully darkening murk, intensifying rain, and ultimately, some hail, while hearing of the same “wedge” crossing I-40. Often such tornado descriptions are exaggerated; but I knew that, on this day, violent, large, and long-track tornadoes certainly could happen. Unknown to us, at the time, the tornado was sideswiping the El Reno Oklahoma Mesonet site with an 18-mb pressure drop and measured gusts to 151 mph–the strongest winds yet clocked by that network of weather stations.
Rounding the SE turn onto OK-3, we vectored an intercept position for any tornado coming NE out of El Reno. Blistering barrages of close CGs hammered the ground all around us, a fusillade so furious that I pulled my radar-delivering I-Phone out of the car jack, and we refrained from touching anything metal. A few hailstones clunked off the roof–none ultimately large enough to do damage, though we did see stones around two inches in diameter bounding off the road. The really huge and destructive hail was no more than a couple of miles to our S and SW; we had left Kingfisher in the nick of time to get around it!
We pulled S off OK-3 at Cimarron Road, about 5 WSW Piedmont, and drove S about a mile to a fine hilltop vantage. CG activity was backing off a lot, and we were (for now) out of precip. I could commence photography in relative safety. It was so stinking dark under that storm that I had to crank the ISO up to 1600 just to hand-hold shots with 1/25-1/60 sec shutter speed at f2-f4! At a time like this, I was so thankful for having invested in a top-end Canon DSLR and the L-series glass on the front. Using lesser equipment and especially with my old slide camera (which usually contained 100 ASA film), successful collection of the following shots would have been impossible.
And so we waited, looking along a lengthy cloud base from W-SW, footed by some dark murk well to our SW. We knew where the tornado was from the constant TV reports–buried in that murk–but couldn’t quite see it yet with our eyeballs. In fact, it was only after I took this 34-mm shot at 1630 CDT, then looked at the viewfinder presentation of it, that I finally could ascertain the outline of the tornado embedded in that murk to our SW (severely enhanced crop of same photo)! It was moving NE (toward us) at 40-50 mph. We had several minutes to hold position before having to decide whether to jog S on our paved, N-S road to get out of its way.
At first a multivortex containing a fat, tilted stovepipe, the tornado took on a wider configuration with a fat barrel and adjoining cone being two of the more persistent, larger tornadic vortices involved. Even at that distance, we began to make out wild cloud motions and rapid revolution of vortices around each other. The barrel temporarily vanished at 1632 CDT to reveal a fat stovepipe within an obviously significant, broader tornadic circulation.
Despite all the precip evident to the left (SW through SE) of the tornado cyclone, it maintained enough of a weak-echo moat around its immediate vicinity that our view kept getting better and better. The tornado also was growing larger as it got closer, closing in fast, not moving much right or left. This meant we likely would have to bail S sometime soon. But first, more observation and photography ensued as the tornado’s form fattened into a wide, dust-flinging barrel, then a bonafide wedge. The ambient wall cloud and occlusion-downdraft slot also became more apparent, contrast and visibility continually improving for the time being. We were impressed…very impressed. I told Jack, “Congratulations…your first violent wedge tornado.” Jack has been taking chase vacations to the Great Plains since the mid-1990s, often with the most deplorable luck in weather patterns. This was a new and potent experience for him.
As this grinding behemoth drew closer, I was supremely confident in its violence, while dearly hoping nobody was sheltering above ground inside its path. [I didn't know it at the time, but this monster had killed several folks already around I-40.] The motions in and around the tornado were of a ferocity I’ve seen, in person or on video, only with tornadoes ultimately rated F4 or F5. As the sides of the condensation wedge appeared to froth and oscillate wildly, chunks of scud materialized at ground level in incomprehensible fractions of a second and raced diagonally up the and around the vortex at breakneck speed.
Given its slight rightward translation, I was reasonably confident the tornado would miss our location–but not my much. Any rightward turn, however, and we would be in grave peril with precious little time to spare. At 1635 CDT we turned S and drove a mile. As we pulled back onto Cimarron Road, a well-defined, horizontal accessory vortex formed on the near (NE) side just above ground, coiled around the N side, and rolled vertically up the rim of the tornado. This was a new experience for me, having seen the phenomenon only on videos of violent events such as Red Rock OK (26 April 1991), Golden Gate IL (2 Jun 1990) and Tuscaloosa AL (27 Apr 2011). Had I stayed at the previous location 30 more seconds, I could have photographed that too.
As good luck would have it, the tornado took a temporary NNE jog as we rolled S, maintaining safe distance. As bad luck would have it, torrential rainfall began wrapping around the SE and E sides of the mesocyclone, thoroughly dousing me in a veritable firehose of water after I jumped out and ran into photographic position. Barely able to stand in the roaring inflow, I hoped for just a shot or two before the camera would get too wet. It grew into a very wide, menacing wedge all the while, its collar cloud blasting around the mesocyclone with amazing speed. As the tornado moved to our WNW and NW, I clearly heard its roar–a throaty, primeval rumble somewhere in pitch between the closed-mouthed growl of an angry bear and the muffled booming of continual heavy-artillery fire.
This was one bad, bad, bad mother.
I reeled off one final good shot at 1638 CDT–capturing a satellite tornado that had just emerged from behind (W of) the big one, and was orbiting around its near-SSE side, throwing up a dust plume of its own. The satellite then turned NNE in front of the main event’s E side, and became lost in worsening contrast. The last and only other satellite tornado I saw was on 3 May 1999, near Chickasha.
Within seconds, the big tornado right-turned ENE again and got so wrapped in rain that we barely could see it anymore. It crossed OK-3 just W of Cimarron Road, and as we cautiously crept N back toward OK-3, crossed Cimarron road less than a mile to our N. Needless to say, I was glad it was moving away from us, while glancing overhead and around often for more satellite vortices. Furiously wrapping rain curtains parted just enough to reveal the E edge of the condensation vortex to our near-NNE, rightward of some power flashes. This was my last clean view of any part of the tornado, at 1640 CDT.
Meanwhile, the combination of inner-edge RFD plus southern-rim inflow to the tornado was severe at our location. The forward housing for my outside rear-view mirror launched itself like a rocket off my vehicle and sailed airborne for hundreds of feet out into a field to our NE, as the vehicle shook in the gusts. We were safe (barely), but also, not inclined to go any further N for a minute or two.
Even though the tornado did miss our initial photographic location, it wasn’t by much. I’m still glad we moved…under half a mile from the edge would have been unsafely close for a certifiably violent, still-expanding, precip-wrapping monster with proved tendency for satellite tornadoes and accessory vortices writhing around its rim.
Then hit a horrifying realization-–this tornado was headed generally toward the residence of my friend (and fellow storm observer) Rocky Rascovich, N of Piedmont. I tried to call and nobody answered; fortunately, it turned out they already were in shelter. His wife assured me later that it (barely) missed them and they were OK. It was the sort of tornado–fast-moving, expanding, wrapping in rain–that is the most dangerous and hardest to observe safely.
Later news of the deaths near El Reno and Piedmont humbly counteracted any sense of gratification I had that evening at getting the good-contrast, big-wedge shots about which I had dreamed since childhood. This is the ethical paradox and dichotomy of conscience for any storm photographer.
Phase 2: Intercepting the Dale Supercell
Cruising along the mostly empty Kilpatrick Turnpike (around N OKC) we briefly debated whether to go up I-35 and meet the storm at Guthrie; but its deep precip-wrapping and messy radar appearance convinced us to jump SE for newer storms headed out of the Chickasha area. Early reports of tornadoes from those sealed the deal.
Jack and I tried to get S of Norman, but were stopped by a traffic jam on I-35 in town (flipped car unrelated to tornadoes) and couldn’t get to Goldsby readily to observe that event. Had the Goldsby tornado turned slightly more leftward and gone up I-35, it could have plowed through hundreds of stopped vehicles up and down the highway!
Instead we waited a short time near the North Base for what was left of the Newcastle storm (by then, nearly nothing), then backtracked some back roads to I-240/40. Along the way I spoke to Elke; they headed to my neighbor’s underground shelter as the Goldsby event headed for Norman. In northern Norman and along I-240/40, Jack and I encountered occasional marginal-severe hail and falling small debris (insulation, leaves, small twigs) that had been launched by the Goldsby tornado into the supercell’s far-forward flank.
The Goldsby storm also had been slammed by a left-mover, temporarily disrupting its organization, dousing the once-violent tornado before it could grind through some part of Norman. I was glad of this, as it spared a lot of destruction in the town in which I reside!
As the supercell reorganized, we vectored the new mesocyclone to cross W of Shawnee near Dale, in a mostly hilly and forested area. Fortunately I knew of a large, flat, open field just S of the I-40/OK-102 (Dale) exit, from which I had photographed the OKC ice-machine storm of 16 May 2010. We headed there and waited for the reorganizing mesocyclone region from the approaching supercell to come into view.
From the murk, at 1830 CDT, a low-hanging, conical cloud form appeared to our W, hard to see at first beyond the red farmhouse in the last shot (super-enhanced crop). This feature had good temporal continuity with what would emerge more visibly by 1832 (super-enhanced crop)–the Stella-Dale tornado, as a tilted cone beneath a deeply clear-slotted wall cloud. We weren’t totally sure yet by our eyes, even then (given the hazy conditions); but by 1833, it was obvious that a tapered cone tornado with debris fan (super-enhanced) was moving in a general ENE direction to our WNW, very close to I-40.
As the tornado grew closer, its form gradually became sharper and also more sinuous, contorting spectacularly into a long curved tube. I was so mesmerized by the wondrously serpentine evolution of the visible vortex that I didn’t think to slap on the zoom lens until the tornado roped out at 1836 CDT. What was left of the mesocyclone next moved N of us, got undercut by rain and outflow, and vanished into the murk N of I-40.
We cruised E on I-40 to look at two more supercells near Prague and Okemah; but their structure was more amorphous, with little evidence of robust low-level rotation by that time. Along the way back, we noticed mostly minor (Ef0-1) damage alongside I-40 2.5 W of the Dale exit, where the tornado crossed. The wreckage of the big rig, whose trailer got blown to pieces, still was being hitched up to a towing vehicle.
By the time we got back to Norman, we were thankful that my home (and those of others in Norman) was spared, and that we got a high-contrast view of a violent wedge…but also, once again saddened for the casualty toll from yet another deadly tornado day among far too many this year. We met up with the Fogel crew for dinner (they had far worse luck than we with tornado observing on this day), as well as Elke and my kids, swapping stories of a great chase (us), a frustrating one (DF’s crew), and another Norman scare (my family). Aside from a dollop of mental exhaustion, my other impression was: “I’m about ready for the High Plains!”
At Long Last: Birthday Tornadoes
Hickory and Ada OK
21 May 11
Prologue:
This was my birthday. I never have seen a tornado on this date before this year, despite the seemingly ideal time of year for them.
Hold on! Tornado climatology isn’t always how it may seem. For strange cosmic reasons that shall remain a cryptic mystery, that date (green in the graph below) also is an inexplicable and pronounced low-day for tornadoes in the U.S. during this time of year, as shown by Chuck Doswell in one of his research papers published in the Electronic Journal of Severe Storms Meteorology.
Click to open an enlarged version:
The Intercept:
Elke and I headed S towards the northern rim of vigorous return-flow moisture near the Red River, followed by a unique chase team consisting of David Fogel, his cousins Samara and Ellie, and Ellie’s friend Ella, and of course DF’s equine-sized Leonberger dog, Porthos. [Note: This meant I was chasing with Elke, Ella and Ellie...good times!] Ellie and Ella were first-time chasers this day, giving me hope for some “rookie luck” to overcome my “birthday curse”.
Our target area was southern OK an north TX just E of the dryline, and we settled for the middle: The Red River, heading to GVT to fuel up and await nearby development near the northern nose of the most robust return-flow moisture. On the way down, messy supercells were evident in central TX, well S and Sw of the Metroplex and out of the target area; while a discrete storm rapidly intensified just SW of FTW. A convergence zone was evident in reflectivity imagery extending N from the FTW storm past ADM. This was our hot zone for hot action.
Not wanting to intercept a storm through the Metroplex if we could help it, we held firm at GVT awaiting closer development. That move paid off; as the FTW storm quickly (and rather inexplicably, given the strong buoyancy) perished.
After fueling and getting some technical difficulties fixed with DF’s onboard electronics, we waited a few miles N of town near I-35, admiring wildflowers and convective towers–yes, newly developed moist updrafts to our near WSW and more distant N. The northern towers, even through haze rendered by smoke from Yucatan crop-burning, looked healthier and began glaciating, as viewed across the verdant North Texas savanna. We had a storm to target, brother.
As we pulled onto the I-35 slab and headed N, strong reflectivity echoes started to appear NW of ADM. Those developed quickly into a strong echo, already resembling a supercell by the time we exited the slab and headed E on OK-53. Intense towers rolled up into the back side of the storm with fantastic buoyant force, as seen looking NE from W of Gene Autry.
Zigzagging E and N toward Sulphur, we met the first hilltop base view just in time to view a funnel suspended from an older, occluded mesocyclone to our NW (and W of town). By the time I could pull over safely, the rotation already weakened, the funnel more ragged and not as low, the clear slot cutting well around the cloud-base mesocyclone area.
Focus shifted to a newer area of cloud-base rotation to the E. The storm already was tornado-warned and had been for some time. That appeared justified. This supercell was moving into a very moist, low-LCL air mass with big (and growing) 0-1 km hodographs. This already was the most promising storm I had seen on a birthday, despite some unquestionable jackassery that ensued while viewing the newer mesocyclone area. None of the scuddy, rotating lowerings to our NNE (just E of Sulphur) could tighten up much, and the storm was getting away.
We needed to reposition, despite the lack of great vantages in that hilly and intermittently forested part of the state. Haze clearly was a problem too, and I knew we needed to be close to get better contrast. Before that area of storm-scale rotation could cycle back up, we headed through town. Our bright-eyed, twentysomething supercellular newbies from New Jersey, Ellie and Ella, got serenaded by the stereophonic wail of the Sulphur sirens, offering them an ominously palpable reminder of the menacing side of springtime in Oklahoma.
About halfway E on OK-7 to OK-1, the organization improved, all right. Obligingly, the storm that had been behaving itself during our relocation grew a very broad, extensive updraft base–all of which was rotating, and rather rapidly. Within the tumultuous gyre, every lowering was spinning in its own right, the whole system a seething, cloud-base cauldron of eddies and whirls that defied ready classification. We stopped 3 SSW of Hickory (and 1 W of the OK-1 intersection) to watch its merry-go-round of distinct funnels, shallow and bowl-shaped lowerings, and at least one brief tornado.
Some vortices were more than two miles apart, others adjacent. Where is the cutoff between a broad, multiple-vortex, weakly tornadic circulation, and a multiple-funnel (or multiple-tornado) area of storm-scale rotation? This thoroughly fascinating process unfolding to our NW through N blurred the lines between any such distinctions on the spectrum of atmospheric vortices. Sometimes, it’s just not as simple as categorically declaring tornado or not!
Two of the longer-lasting, lowest-extending condensation funnels (middle and left here, looking NW) initially developed apart at 1924 CDT, within the same mesocyclone. The eastern (right) funnel retrograded almost magnetically toward the western one, intertwining with it as in a seductive love dance. The combined condensation vortex then became more laminar, less scuddy, more wavy, and produced a brief, faint puff of dust beneath (deep crop-n-zoom/enhancement), in an area of very wet ground.
By 1926, the brief tornado was gone, the area of cloud-base rotation (at left in this shot) that had hosted the small, blended tornado vortex weakened. Did you notice anything to the slightly more distant right (NNW) in the last photo? Lo and behold, another area of rotation took shape to its NNE, itself offering a ragged, conical funnel that extended more than halfway down by 1927 CDT. If this was a tornado (couldn’t determine via enhancement or independent eyewitnesses), it was separate from the other, a circulation within a circulation within a circulation. These were far from the only funnels in the storm-scale gyre in just a 10-minute span. What a gloriously complicated mess!
The broader mesocyclone soon began tightening, and we needed to get E and N again to close in for more unambiguous tornado potential. In the process, we crossed a spot of infamy–the very railroad crossing where an agonizingly slow-moving train halted John Hart and I after we saw the distant Hickory tornado of 11 May 1992. That train 19 years ago seemed to go on forever, as the supercell got away, wrapped rain around its SW hook, and produced a multivortex F4 tornado just out of sight. Today, the tracks were clear and such agony didn’t befall us. The same road we couldn’t take way back then was open for business–right here, right now.
We turned NNE on OK-1 and drove almost under the rim of a (by now) very strongly rotating and more classical mesocyclone, stopping at a spot 1.5 SE Hickory when a broad cone funnel appeared about a mile to our NE. At 1934 CDT, a brief filament of whirling condensation rocketed up from the ground beneath the cone as I was exiting the vehicle, and before I could shoot…tornado! The condensation cone soon drew lower. Sinuous, partly translucent vortex filaments materialized beneath and coiled about one another, vaporous marionettes twirled by their tornadic puppet master. By 1927, the cone retreated to a smooth cloud-base bowl, and no vortices or debris could be seen beneath.
The mesocyclone began retreating NE, so we had to zigzag E and N to maintain view as it reorganized, retreated NNE somewhat, cut a deep clear slot, and intensified again. Heading E on unmarked road “E1700″ 5 E of Hickory (a variably surfaced path of gravel, dirt and crumbling, antique pavement), we were very fortunate to find another high, relatively unobstructed vantage to our NNW and N.
Just in time, too…the mesocyclone cut a deep clear slot and began twirling funnels beneath with fervor (deeply enhanced crop). For a brief interlude, the spinning cloud mass dipped its southwestern margins into golden beams of sunshine, fluidly swirling together the concepts of atmospheric violence and beauty.
The circulation seemed to plant itself on the earth, chunks of scud forming right down to the ground, ripping across the surface at tornadic speeds, interspersed with intermittent but unmistakable suction vortices–one after another, none lasting more than a few seconds, but collectively, too many to count. This was a very low, humid, multiple-vortex carousel. Sometimes two vortices could be seen interacting while scud and/or suction spots whizzed through other areas of the magnificent maelstrom.
[Some described this tornadic stage as a "wedge", but the condensation was too ragged, sparse and ephemeral to call it that. Still, if viewed with any blockage by trees or terrain, I can see how such a mistaken description could be made.]
The last evidence of a tornado was at 1953; thereafter the cloud base rotated much more weakly and rose in height. By now, we knew of the larger, newer and stronger supercell W of Ada, but the clearest path to it up US-377 still was blocked by our weakening (yet still potentially hail-bearing) storm.
After letting that supercell pass across the highway, we had a smooth trip to Ada, barely in time to see a conical lowering below the horizon (turned out to be the end stage of its last tornado at 2035 CDT) while still driving. By the time we found a place to stop, a small and ragged funnel remained. No matter, we could marvel at the spectacular storm structure spreading across the western sky. As this storm moved NW of Ada and began weakening, assorted precip shafts cascaded from the cloud base near low-hanging scud chunks, likely yielding any remaining “funnel” or “tornado” reports.
The short but happy drive back to Norman led to a delicious dinner, steak and shrimp for the menfolk, whatever the ladies wanted, kibbles for Porthos out in their vehicle, all in a festive celebration of a fantastic storm-observing day (and for me, the clinching win on the restaurant TVs that sent the Mavericks to the NBA finals). Birthday tornadoes that didn’t hurt anybody, great storm structure, Mavs clinch a playoff series…a great, great day indeed!