Jon and I started the day in Ponca City while Rob, Mitch, and Candice started off in Tulsa. We had a general target of the Red River in mind -- farther south where hopefully storms would remain more isolated and stay as supercells for a longer duration of time. We were concerned that the area between the Red River and the Oklahoma City metro would evolve into non-supercell type structures quickly, so we opted for the later development down along the Red River. We met back up with Rob, Mitch, and Candice in Norman and continued south at about 11:30am. On the drive south, we totally ignored the incipient towering cu noted on visible satellite back to our northwest (one of which becoming the eventual Moore, OK EF-5 tornado) that started going up around 1:30 or so. We noticed a mesoscale area of interest between Mineral Wells and Wichita Falls, so we made our way all the way to Denton before heading west. After a quick bite to eat in Decatur, we headed northwest toward a rapidly growing supercell just east-northeast of Wichita Falls. On the way, in the town of Bowie, I got a call from Matt Crowther stating "May 3rd Part II" in Moore. We were totally oblivious to what was going on up there since I was so focused on what our next move was as we approached our target storm. The supercell storm we were after to our north-northwest as crossing the river at Ryan, OK and we made an intercept, finally, at this town. Unfortunately, this storm became HP and outflow dominant quickly.
About 12 miles east of Ryan along Hwy 32, we made the decision to blow off this lead storm in favor of vigorous development back east of Wichita Falls to our southwest. We drove back to Ryan then south to Ringgold, TX and came into a great position as significant rotation with this new storm was just off to our west. We stopped for about 10 minutes on the south side of Ringgold and watched tremendous, but fairly broad rotation to our west with awesome east inflow winds of 35 to 45 mph. There may have been a tornado buried back in one of the fairly opaque precipitation cores as the RFD region was becoming quite wet, unfortunately. We had to continue east-southeast on Hwy 82 to Nacona where we drove south on Hwy 175 to Montague. All the while during this drive, the radar velocity certainly suggested the possibility of a big tornado wrapped in thick RFD precipitation, but we never had any visual of an obvious tornado. We stopped again just south of Montague where I photographed the approaching HP storm structure, complete with the aquamarine color of the storms precipitation core. This was the best storm structure we would end up getting from this storm. The storm rapidly evolved into a mess with a storm merger occurring. We continued east and north on farm-to-market roads to the Muenster area before basically calling it quits and heading back to Gainseville. All in all a disappointing day. We never anticipated the massive, destructive tornado threat for Oklahoma City, but a more careful analysis of the surface observations and satellite would have drawn my eye to this area more. I was so keyed in on the Red River region and adjacent North Texas from the get go that I basically scoffed at anything farther north. This reluctance to change targets after a previous night and early morning forecast target area cost me on two of three days on this trip -- a very frustrating result. Jon and I said bye to Rob, Mitch, and Candice northwest of Gainesville, and Jon and I headed north so I could drop him off at his car in Wichita. On the way, we passed through Moore on I-35 about an hour or so after the interstate was re-opened. The sight and smell where the tornado crossed the interstate was sobering indeed.
A high-precipitation supercell approaching this cluster of windmills at Montague, TX on 20 May 2013:
We started the day in Pratt with a broad target in mind from south-central
Kansas down to Oklahoma City. We staged early afternoon in Blackwell, OK,
but the early consensus of the group (myself, Jon Smith, Rob Mitchell,
Mitch and Candice Daszewski) was to head down toward the OKC area. At
Blackwell, though, things started to happen quickly, with two areas to
decide on. Do we blast south toward the towers just west of OKC or do we
hang out where we were at. Long story short, we stayed north despite.
There was some disagreement in this decision. We went west from Blackwell
and intercepted the South Haven storm, somehow missing the brief tornado
that was embedded in some precipitation. We must have been driving south
at the time to get into the updraft region. There was another disagreement
on what to do next... but since we made the early call to stay north, I
wanted to stay up here because I was seeing some signals that perhaps a
non-supercell tornado would occur. Rob, Mitch, and Candice broke off and
they tried to catch one of the dryline tornadic supercells... while Jon and
I stayed north. Neither camps saw any tornadoes. Rob, Mitch, and Candice
ended the day in Tulsa and Jon and I are in Ponca City this morning. We
had a fulfilling mexican dinner and afterwards enjoyed a wonderful
lightning display just southeast of Ponca City. I managed to get some nice
images of that... which ended up being my best shots of the day, ironically
enough.
Forecast May 20:
We are leaving soon, before 10am, heading south to the Red River region..
with an early staging location Ardmore, OK. The dryline looks good today
with all the models showing storms developing...even down into North Texas
and perhaps Central TX. We are hoping something goes tornadic along the
Red River.
I met up with Jon Smith, Rob Mitchell, and Mitch and Candice Daszewski for
a 3-day chase. Our target area was Greensburg to adjacent far northwest
OK. It largely ended up being a day to forget, as we chose the wrong
storm... opting for a storm farther southwest moving into our target area
versus a storm developing in our target area and eventually exiting it. We
saw the initial, small updraft base with the eventual Kinsley-Rozel
tornadic supercell, but radar was showing a nice uptrend in convection down
in the Laverne, OK area which was moving northeast toward mid-upper 60s
dewpoints. When we got down there, it just ended up being a
northeast-southwest oriented cluster of junk storms with too much cold
outflow. We called off the chase near Freedom, OK. On the way back north,
we stopped briefly, meeting up with JR Henley and Dave Douglas at a small
rest area watching anvil lightning and some mammatus just after sunset. A
small consolation to an otherwise frustrating chase.
May 19 Forecast:
We are in Pratt, KS and are eyeing the Winfield-Ponca City area and perhaps
down toward the Oklahoma City area. There should be a couple decent
supercell storms with tornadoes a strong possibility.
May 20 Forecast:
Southern Oklahoma looks pretty good! The last of this 3-day chase.
