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Well, today was an intersting one. We had been eyeballing this as a
possible chasing day from severals days out. As time went on, severe
storm probabilities became better looking. A moderate risk was issued for
most of western/north-western OK and into SW KS either late the night
before before the storms or during that following morning (I forget
which). Regardless, everything looked to be coming into place for a nice
round of storms.
As the day progressed, however, it became apparent that a significant
capping inversion existed across most of Oklahoma. In fact, the special
18Z OUN sounding revealed a cap strength greater than 8 degrees C. Yuk!
Needless to say, hope began to dwindle... The instability and dynamics
were definitely present. Obviously, the problem would be whether or not
anything would initiate...
The moderate risk was lowered to a slight one by afternoon along with wording on NOAA Wx Radio of a
cap "nearly impossible" to break. Things began to look rather bleak. It was a tough call, but given
the facts that I was bored out of my skull and had absolutely nothing else to do, I decided to give
it a try...if nothing else, just to get out of Norman for a while and go on a nice road trip. I
honestly didn't expect much to happen...
The dryline, which had not been moving much the past few hours, was
lined-up in western Oklahoma from (roughly) Alva to Altus. A few small CU
were developing along it. We decided the best shot for storms would be in
the NW, were the cap would be weaker. But an area of locally strong
surface convergence near Hobart also caught my eye. Torn between the two,
we decided to drive west on I-40 to Hydro (an aptly named city to make
meteorological decisions...I thought) and re-evaluate the situation there.
Nothing looked even the slightest bit intersting until we passed El Reno.
Although not visible to my chase partners, because of horrible lighting
contrast along the horizon, I believed that I could make-out a fairly
solid line of cumulus beginning develop off to the NW through my
sunglasses. Once several miles west of El Reno, I was nearly sure of it.
With that being the case, I turned north onto US Hwy 270. At Karns we
turned off onto crappy county roads, beginning our pursuit of definite
towers going up to the NW.
The first tower put up quite a fight against the cap. But, after a few minutes, it began to lose
definition. However, a nice "stairstepped" flanking line of smaller clouds extended to the
west/south of the dying tower. We hoped one of them would pick up where the first left off. Sure
enough, the next CU in line began to shoot upward and, after a bit, began to develop a decent anvil.
This was it! We stopped off in Hitchcock, OK (Blaine Co) to snap a few shots of the now fully
developed thunderhead...complete with a beautiful back-sheared anvil...still off to the NNW. Shortly
thereafter, we continued north on OK Hwy 8 to Ringwood (Major Co).
In Ringwood we stopped under to storm's updraft base. It seemed quite impressive with a nice
flanking line to the SW and an ominous precipitation core off to the NE and E. Little areas of
rotation would spin up every once in a while, but nothing significant appeared. More storms were
developing extremely rapidly off to the SW along the flanking line. We decided to follow our
original storm though.
As we approached Lahoma from the west, a tornado warning was issued for Garfield County. Individual
storm definition was becoming harder to see with multiple storms now quickly growing to the west and
south-west. Never the less, our storm continued to look very impressive. As we came up upon the
road north to Carrier, we began to hear NOAA Wx Radio reports of a large tornado in Carrier, moving
ENE. Looking off to the north, a large area of precipitation was visible...telling us that this
thing was likely rain-wrapped.
We turned north a bit and then continued east toward N. Enid. Once north
and east of Enid, near Breckinridge, we observed an extremely impressive
and well defined precip core off to the NW moving E. A massive, dark
cloud base hung overhead. The setting sun began to peer through from the
west, under the base. This lighting situation gave the clouds a very
menacing look. An area of defined rotation and upward motion existed
directly ahead (to the east) of the precip core. We postulated that this
may have been the remnants of the Carrier tornadic circulation...
After that spectacle, we began to hear of more, possibly tornadic storms,
developing to the SW of Enid, moving NE. By this time, light had
diminished significantly. We decided to turn west and head back toward
Enid. While stopped under a gas station canopy in Enid (protection from
hail!), we watched the next storm roll in. A possible tornado was spotted
near Vance Air Force Base to the south. The storm rained dime to nickel
sized hail down on us continuously for about 30 minutes. Much larger hail
was reported in areas nearby.
About 45 minutes after arriving at the gas station, with hail STILL falling, I decided it was too
late and that we should try getting back to Norman. With that, we set off. A couple of hail stones
hit loud enough to make me reconsider my decision...but, we continued our way back to US Hwy 81.
Before making it back to Norman, we did stop off in Kingfisher to observe
a massive severe storm with amazing inflow moving toward northern
Kingfisher Co from the west. As it turns out, not more than about 30-40
minutes after we had passed through Hennessey, the storm we were viewing
had pummeled that area with baseball sized hail. Good thing we left Enid
when we did! A delay of only a half hour or so could have ended up being
a tad messy...
It was certainly an interesting chase. We nearly caught tornadoes near Carrier. But, considering
the "nearly unbreakable" cap that had existed earlier, we felt pretty lucky just to have seen
anything.
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