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May 24
May
24 Continued
The unusual tornado
continued to track quickly e-se, resulting in numerous
power poles, trees, and other objects to be snapped, uprooted, or damaged.
At 7:15pm, tornado #2 started to dissipate into a diffuse dusty circulation 4-5
miles nw of the town of Sand Creek Ok. The cyclic tornado process was well
underway; a new tornado formed (#3) about 8 miles w-nw of Wakita just about
a half mile from our vehicle. The tornado was approaching rapidly from our nw
so we had to scramble back into the Blazer. The only problem was my door
was locked and I was the driver!! Not a good situation to be in when a tornado
is bearing down on you!! Fortunately for us, we were able to move up the road
before the small F0 tornado swirled immediately behind us. This tornado had
a short life span (2 mile long track) and remained at F0- weak F1 intensity. The
tornado dissipated at 7:18pm, and yet another tornado (#4) developed 4 miles
west of Wakita. This tornado was a brief F0 dust swirl and dissipated after a
minute or two after touching down. As this tornado dissipated, tornadoes #5
and #6 were coming to the ground!! So far not many intense tornadoes, just a
lot of them!!
Tornado #5 was
anti-cyclonic in nature, and tornado #6 was anchored a mile
nw of tornado #5. Tornado #6 was cyclonic and moved very little during it's
lifespan. Both tornadoes touched down in the area 3 miles west of Wakita and
both were F0 intensity. Dust swirls characterized both tornadoes. The rapid
cyclic tornado continued! At 7:27 pm, tornado #7 was on the ground 2 miles
southwest of Wakita. This weak tornado (F0) tornado was truly unusual. The
tornado was comprised of 5 separate dust whirls and 4 small condensation
funnels simultaneously underway beneath a laminar wall cloud. For the sake
of accurate documentation, the individual circulations will be counted as a
single tornado. A substantial RFD plowed into the updraft base, and dissipated
the tornado. The RFD generated brief shear vortices which swirled in the area
south of Wakita. We continued on towards Medford to track the storm which
was far from being through!
We were on Ok 11 when
tornado #8 touched down near Gilbert at 7:35 pm.
This tornado was brief and was F0 in intensity. The cyclic tornado process
was still underway as the storm progressed across Grant Co..Tornado #9
touched down solidly (F1-F2) at 7:46pm about 2 miles southwest of Clyde.
While tornado #9 approached Ok 11 and intensified, tornado #10 swirled
to the ground about 2 miles southeast of tornado #9. Tornado #9 remained
fairly strong for much of it's 4 mile path. Tornado #10 was a flash-in-the-pan
type tornado. The tornado formed quickly, moved east very quickly, and then
abruptly dissipated. Tornado #9 was an occluding type tornado. It moved
slowly and gradually widened, then slowly wound down as a dust column to
our west. The time now was 7:55 pm and we were west of Medford in Grant
Co.. We continued east with the storm and saw yet another weak tornado form
west of Medford.
We wanted to get out
ahead of the storm and headed into Medford. As we
approached Medford, sporadic large hail started to fall. We also noticed an
awesome sight- the whole updraft region was becoming a large laminar bowl
with very pronounced edges. It was apparent that the storm was transitioning
to a more HP supercell structure. The updraft area ,which was primarily rain-
free earlier, was now becoming marked with rain curtains swirling under the
base of the large flying saucer/bowl shaped updraft. The enormous supercell
updraft was sw of Medford at this time. We headed sw from Medford and saw
our last tornado briefly touch down near the town of Jefferson.
We continued on southwest
on U.S. 81 through the town of Jefferson. We could
see a very dark area under the updraft, but could not tell if a tornado was on the
ground. As we approached the town of Pond Creek, occasional golfball and up
to baseball sized hail was ejected well in advance of the storm. We decided
to pull over on U.S. 60 west of Lamont and watch the impressive supercell move
slowly e-se. The area we stopped was visited by a F-3 tornado later in the eve-
ning by the way! We headed east on U.S. 60 through Lamont as darkness was
upon us. We were dazzled by the impessive sight of the large laminar storm
tower which remained nearly stationary. The lower levels of the tower were very
much striated indicating tremendous storm rotation. The upper levels of the
storm were characterized by boiling cloud formations which knuckled back into
the sharp anvil. The massive barrel shaped storm moved slowly southeast. We
were unaware of the intense tornado which was developing to our west near
Salt Fork. This tornado was unfortunately after dark, but was definitely the strong-
est of the day. The F-3 tornado blasted the area just southwest of Lamont and
actually moved northwest for about 6 miles. We were camped out on the east
side of the storm at this time. The video of the unusual lightning associated with
the storm was incredible. The cloud to air lightning was frequent, and at times,
it appeared as though the storm's rotation prevented the lightning from reaching the
ground. The lightning was being drawn into the storm tower. We shot video
of the stationary storm's lightning display for well over an hour!! What a sight!!
Pat McMahon had the best
and the worst chase - all in one day!! Pat worked his
way through Grant Co. and had some close encounters with tornadoes and with
extreme RFD winds. We were separated from him after observing tornado #2
and he also observed many of the tornadoes we witnessed. He was having a
good chase up until his transmission started to fail. From that point on, Pat was
dramatically slowed down in his chase efforts. Pat did shoot some great close
up video earlier in the day.
On the subject of video,
we shot up to 3 hours of storm chasing video including
all of the above tornadoes(except for the Lamont F-3). We captured incredible
lightning video with the Lamont supercell while the F-3 tornado was tearing up
the area west of Lamont.
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