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June 8
June
8 Continued
We continued through
Harper hoping to get ahead of the circulation so we could
view the wall cloud without getting nailed by hail. My windshield took a direct hit
from several hailstones approaching baseball sized. Unfortunately, I developed
several spider web cracks as a result. We pressed on, but the hailcore continued
to increase in size and intensity. We finally reached the east side of the core, but
not until we were about 7 miles east of Harper. The wall cloud had gusted out
from the intense look it had approaching Harper. With the assist of the increasing cooling
associated with the hail core, the circulation became outflow dominant.
At 3:30 pm, the circulation appeared to have weakened considerably. The inflow
was not strong enough to balance the advancement of the gust front at this time.
We also saw a weak gustnado spin up to our west near Danville, but it was short-
lived. Shortly after the gustnado appeared, the wall cloud started to suspend the
gust front and actually reintensified rotation. At 3:40 pm, the wall cloud spun-up
and looked like it might actually produce a stronger type tornado. We watched it
wrap up, but the circulation remained too broad to concentrate a vortex.
Right after we reached
the town of Argonia(Sumner Co.), a tornado warning was
issued for Sumner Co. by the NWS Wichita. The tornado warning bulletin advised
of a developing tornado near Argonia(to our nw actually) moving e-ne. The sirens
went off in town, and the usual tornado pandemonium insued. We wanted to get
a better look at the wall cloud, so we headed out of town towards Wellington on
U.S. 160. The wall cloud was becoming embedded in precipitation unfortunately!
The storm was plowing into deeper moisture and was now becoming the hard to chase HP
supercell. We watched the wall cloud rotate strongly amidst the rain curtains. At 4:28 pm,
a funnel cloud appeared to the north of our location about
5 miles(or about 3 miles nw of Wellington). For a time, there appeared to be a
debris cloud underneath the funnel for a few minutes. Unfortunately, the swirling
rain curtains and haze made confirmation difficult. The weather radio alarmed
a live broadcast indicating a tornado touchdown in this area. Radar indicated that the
circulation was definitely embedded in rain/hail, but that there was a fairly pronounced
inflow notch indicated north of Wellington.
The inflow along I-35 was
noticeably stronger than earlier over Harper Co. Winds
were actually gusting to over 30 mph at Wellington. The tornado warning in effect
for Sumner Co. was reissued to include Cowley Co. as well. The warning placed
the circulation(rain-wrapped) 5 miles northeast of Wellington at 4:40pm. As we
progressed into Cowley Co., several tornado reports were broadcasted on a
local radio station between Udall and Oxford. The circulation looked severely
rain-wrapped , and had the wrapped up gust front look at this time. We could not
see the wall cloud at all, just a very bright precipitation core and an advancing
bow-shaped gust front approaching Oxford. Since our vantage point to view
the wall cloud was obscured by the core, we decided to head east toward the
Winfield area. The wall cloud was still rotating to our north but the storm was in
the decline stage. We decided to leave this storm for another supercell which
was 30 miles to our south moving into Osage Co. Oklahoma. A tornado warning
was issued for this storm, and it showed a hook echo on radar as it was moving
towards the Shidler Ok area. We dropped south quickly and were in Kay Co. and
near Kaw Reservoir at 5:42pm. The tornado warning indicated that a possible
tornado was developing west of Shidler.
We tracked the storm as
it crossed Osage Co., but it failed to maintain the strong
circulation it had earlier. Since we figured the storm was on the downward trend,
we decided to head south towards Tulsa and home. On our way through Osage
Co. on the way to Tulsa, I noticed that the outflow boundary(which focused earlier
supercells) still remained over C.Oklahoma. Not only did I notice this feature, but
I also noticed that the outflow boundary/ dry line intersection was located to the
west of Oklahoma City. A storm started to develop in this area just before sunset.
We figured that this storm had a lot of potential due to it's proximity to the outflow
boundary, and backed surface winds along the boundary. As we progressed on
to I-44 near Bristow, a large and diffluent anvil spread east overhead from the
storm entering Oklahoma Co. At 8:40pm, the storm was slowly working across
N.Oklahoma Co. and was near the suburb of The Village. Large hail and strong
damaging winds were expected with the storm in Oklahoma Co.. We decided to
head southwest towards the storm since it was tracking our way slowly. Although
the tornado potential was lessening, we still hoped to video the lightning show
as the storm approached. Darkness provided this opportunity, and what a show
it was!! Very spectacular in-cloud lightning was observed by us as we pulled the
Blazer over along I-44 near Chandler.We watched the storm for a few hours as it
very slowly tracked to the east.
After reviewing the data from this day, it was apparent that the outflow boundaries
in Oklahoma provided the focus for today's strongest/tornadic storms. The storms
over Oklahoma "robbed" the Kansas storms of the best available inflow. All of
the
Kansas storms were ingesting "worked-over" modified inflow as a result of the
severe storms in Oklahoma during the afternoon hours. This explains why most of
the Kansas supercells produced only F0-F1 tornadoes, when the strong tornado
potential was forecast to be much higher there.
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