Hodown at Horntown
Another “Chainsaw Chase” in Eastern Oklahoma
[NOTE: The BLOGS at Stormeyes have been unable to accept posts for awhile due to relocation of the domain to a new hosting company. We’re back up and running now, though, and the following two entries are from storms intercepted while the BLOGs were down.]
9 May 2006
SHORT: Intercepted short-lived CL supercell NW of MLC and watched a different one get killed by a left split W of MLC.
LONG:
Although not as visually stunning or tornadically productive as the other intercept trip that book-ended my “mini vacation,” this was an interesting and worthwhile storm observing trip.
All of us wanting to stay near the outflow boundary, where the better shear and vorticity presumably would be, I left Norman with my daughter Donna as passenger and met up with Corey and Ryan just E of town. We headed toward Seminole in hopes of convective initiation ahead of the cold front, with enough time for discrete supercellular morphology before the activity was:
1. Overtaken by the accelerating front,
2. Too far into the trees, hills and sparse roads of SE OK to adeptly intercept, and/or
3. Becoming messy and “blobular” to due storm interactions.
With CINH and BL forcing each quite weak, quite a few deep towers started to develop as we cruised E on OK 9 in the corridor from Seminole to Wetumka. You also might have seen some while monitoring Ryan’s dash-cam (http://www.corepuncher.com/chasercam ). [The image shown there as of this writing is the last one taken on the chase, looking through a rainy windshield at the S Edge of the Western Sizzlin’ in MLC.]
Now that you know where we ended up, let’s go through the rest of the journey there. While evaluating the situation in Wetumka, amidst light NE winds, we noted TCu and brief glaciated attempts ALQDS. Most of them “turkeyed out, ” but two clumps S and SW of Wetumka (the latter initially S of Seminole) took root and grew. I was somewhat surprised at first at how slow the development was considering the massive amount of CAPE, but convergence was rather weak.
We decided to head S to get through the boundary and into the proximity inflow region of these new storms to see which would take over. Already fairly close to the edge of the jungles, we knew the spatial and temporal window of good intercept opportunity would be short in either event, but at least tolerable for the western (S of Seminole) activity.
Cruising S out of Wetumka, the eastern clump’s base already was sporting a pronounced but probably nonrotating wall cloud (or rotating too slowly to be obvious). This convection lined out and became mushy as the western storm assumed control of the environment in the area. Our first good view was looking W from the crossroads known as Horntown (where all but the last photo link from here on was taken).
After we arrived, about half a dozen chase vehicles showed up for the view, as well as a KFOR chopper (first noticed by Donna, who is quite a sharp and observant kid). Horntown was hosting a hodown — of chasers hoping for a tornadic touchdown. Among them were CFDGers Jared Guyer (a.k.a. The Rotating Gyre), as well as Daphne Z and her husband Jim. We had 4 people from ( ) at the same spot on a chase too, which may tie a record.
As the storm approached, the upper level features were lost to view but the basal morphology became more apparent . The large size of the updraft base, with little precip falling therefrom, was encouraging, as was its due E motion right along the boundary. We knew the storm would pass NW-N-NE of us with little hope for a good view afterward, the projected track being in the roadless hill country E of Lamar and NW of MLC, so we stayed at Horntown a good long time.
To our NNW by a few miles, the newly minted supercell developed a large, broad, bowl-shaped wall cloud beneath that big base. The wall cloud became better defined and began rotating, with rapid rising motion in the scud and edge cloud material on its right (E) side. A clear slot briefly formed as the mesocyclone moved to our N, and the circulation appeared to tighten.
We moved across the street (US 75) for a better view to the NE as the wall cloud appeared to peak and then become more flat again, still rotating but with no evidence of imminent tornadogenesis. Why was it levelling off? A distinct possibility soon revealed itself: the storm was “jumping flanks,” linking up with a new band of convective material that had developed to its S and to our SE (view looking SE as Donna looked for flowers to pick). This super-wide shot, looking ENE-SE from Horntown, is annotated with labels denoting the process.
That mess eventually evolved into the forward-flank meso and subsequent bow that TUL red-warned near MLC. We decided not to mess with that mess, and headed S for a better view of more cells lining up on the boundary near US 270, as well as the distant Coal/Stringtown storms (not shown…mosquitos were getting bad). It was getting late, so we decided to go after the closest development, including one new storm to our N-NNE that began to look promising. At Stuart, strong convergence and some rotation was noted both with chasers (another assembly of vehicles, including the TIV contraption), and within the storm base, which was OVHD-WSW.
We proceeded S from Stuart, intending to take the E road that winds past the N side of the Army Ammunition Facility. A western updraft of the new storm was starting to rotate and look promising…then got brutally reamed by a left split that raced NNE from the Stringtown storm. We drove through a lot of rain and some small hail on the absolutely horrible road (paved but with a surface resembling wet moonscape), eventually landing in MLC. With the Stringtown storm sitting on our only route to it (US 69) and sunset rapidly approaching, we gave up on the chase and — instead of going in search of Bigfoot — gulped down copious quantities off the Western Sizzlin’s feeding trough.
For some of the drive back, Donna and I were treated to a delightful blend of in-cloud lightning to our S-SE, and moonlit edge to the anvil from SW-OVHD-NNE.
Ultimately the atmopshere provides the answer key. And now — too late to be useful for ourselves as observers, and more importantly, too late for those who became casualties at Westminster — the answer key says that clearly the optimal combination of environmental ingredients and storm mode were in Collin County, one county N of my home city. That “rogue” event surely will be scrutinized quite closely at ( ), FWD and elsewhere to better understand why the storm went up there and did what it did, when it did. Had the Westminster storm been 20-25 miles farther S along the same path, it would have been much worse, with solidly developed parts of Dallas the near-northeast suburbs in the way.
RE
The Stunning Beauty of Patricia
5 May 2006
I admit: I spent an evening with a gorgeous lady, Patricia, a tall and striking dancer and twirler with a spectacular figure, a body of rare beauty upon whose form I couldn’t help but gaze for hours in rapt admiration. The best part was that Patricia was a storm, not a person, the body was cloud material, and that I shall remain happily married to my true love in life, Elke, who truly would have appreciated the storm as much as I, had she been able to witness it. Now for the real chase story…
Steve and Sarah Corfidi joined me shortly before 1000 for a long drive from abNorman to the general target area of MAF, with the idea of refining some as we got closer. Though the distance was long, Steve’s interest in electric lines and insulators, as well as his expert interpretation of cloud processes witnessed en route, kept us entertained and educated and made the drive time seem shorter than it was.
As expected, the stratus did burn off and allow the insolation to cook the frontal zone nicely, and as bc mentioned, the boundary shifted to somewhat N of MAF by the time we got there. Along the way we had a few phone conversations with bc, Rich and MattC, all most welcomed and all reinforcing the idea that the best play was going to be on the western portion of the frontal zone region, NW of MAF and near the NM border, where solar cooking of the BL had been relatively strong for the longest. The two Allsups burritos I had consumed at Seymour also could be counted upon for helping to boost theta-e in the inflow layer of any storms we would intercept.
Wheeling NW out of MAF toward Andrews, the earliest Cb glaciation near Hobbs came into view to the NW. We already could see ragged attempts at wall clouds under the distant base as we entered Seminole from the S, large chunks of scud forming off the edge of the rain foot and rising, accreting to the cloud base to form ragged wall clouds. The storm appeared as a rather elongated, complex updraft region, occasionally calving of weak left splits.
Our first stationary views were a few miles W of Seminole near “Paynes Corner,” where ragged scuddy lowerings could be seen (17 mm wide angle, as are many future shots) on that part of the elongated updraft region closest to the main precip core. We let the SE portion of the elongated updraft area move almost overhead (looking NW), then decided to move E through Seminole before the hail got there.
Meanwhile the updraft region concentrated itself and assumed better definition, while gorilla hail started cascading from the vault region and nascent hook.
Here’s the view from 6 E Seminole, looking W, as the baseballs started pounding some chasers who had not gotten through town as timely. Seconds after this wide view, the storm began hurling 1-1.5 inch hailstones way out ahead of the updraft, and right down on us. We thought this storm might have a tornadic future, and Steve isn’t the biggest fan of huge hail bombardments after what Rich did to him on 22 May 1995 in McLean. So we bailed E in 4-5 mile increments to stay ahead of the storm and remain in position for wide angle structure shots. This was easy to do given that the storm stayed near US 380 around Seminole, where roads were sparse, then broke well S of 380 once the road network got more dense S of Lamesa.
The storm remained pretty but rather high based as seen from rural eastern Seminole County, W of Send. Meanwhle Rich called to inform us of tornadic and potentially tornadic storms farther NNW and NE in the frontal zone. This storm was suffering a little from well mixed and somewhat drier inflow, and apparently didn’t look as good on radar. Nonetheless, we decided to stick with it, given its projected track into better roads, its unencumbered inflow, increasing dew points to its E, and the likelihood that LCLs could fall as the CBL cooled somewhat, reducing dew point depressions.
We dropped SSE on TX-829 to stay slightly off the storm’s starboard bow when the structure rapidly and dramatically improved, assuming an inverted wedding cake structure with large, blocky wall cloud. The storm had quickly shed its precip area and started to rotate intensely aloft. Rich called about this time to tell us the storm was looking better again. Needless to say, we agreed! (17 mm super-wide view) A large plume of inflow dust began to roar northward and obstruct our view beneath the updraft base, so we bailed farther SSE toward Patricia and let the storm move toward us. Meanwhile we could see a visually obvious supercell to the distant S (S of FST) and another convective pile erupted under the edge of the Patricia storm’s anvil to our ESE.
The Patricia storm was blowing us away…with its beautiful structure — bands, tiers, flared bases and nice lighting. Intermittent lowerings could be seen in the rain too (contrast-enhanced zoom of last image), but nothing obviously tornadic. [The shots that follow were taken from a location 12 SE Patricia (6 NNW Lenorah) along TX-137.]
The storm kept spinning along as it moved from WNW to NWto N of us, past Patricia. Gorgeous as they are, I’ve not seen too many storms that look like this produce tornadoes, so it came as something of a surprise that we started seeing a suspicious lowering in the murk. The camera picked it up at 2008, a couple minutes before our eyeballs did (regular & zoomed+enhanced, another regular & zoomed+enhanced).
The tornado started to be visible to the eyes around 2011, the ambient storm structure and lightning still outstanding (regular & zoomed+enhanced, another regular& zoomed+enhanced). By 2012, the storm was to our NNW, the tornado itself likely just S of Klondike and becoming more visible ( wide angle shot and another). As the occlusion downdraft cut deeper into the “horseshoe,” the tornado became less well organized, the condensation funnel more ragged and higher above ground level (regular & zoomed+enhanced). By 2014 it was dying, roping and writhing in contorted struggle before a rather unsafely parked chase car.
The show wasn’t over, though. A sunset spectacular of stormlight bathed the skies to the WNW as the storm’s bell crossed to our N. We observed a very high mid-upper level funnel bathed in the golden rays of the setting sun (upper right, ovhd-WNW in this 17 mm view). Then a bulbous, last-gasp, weakly rotating but low-hanging mesocyclonic funnel showed up to our NE at 2027. We couldn’t see debris or ground circulation beneath, but another very trustworthy observer (who was closer) did, and the WFO will record this as a tornado. That area of interest got hammered by precip, and after one more dazzling show of stormlight (ESE and E), it was time to head for Big Spring for a celebratory buffet dinner. We briefly chatted with Bill Reid there (always great to see Bill — an uncommon man of class in storm observing), then embarked on the 6 hour drive home.
Photos can’t even approach the sense of grandeur of witnessing, first-hand, a storm like that, but I hope some sense of the experience is conveyed here. The forecast worked, and the storm put on a show to remember as it traversed the southern tip of the Great Plains. Every bit of the time, mileage and effort was worth it for us.
LATE ADDITION: WFO Midland graciously has provided us with this map which depicts the surveyed tracks of the two tornadoes near Patricia.
RE