SCORE!!! :-)

I finally broke my curse!! :-) Jay McCoy, Kanani and David Drummond and myself chased the big isolated cell that erupted in Hemphill County, TX and moved into NW OK. We made it up to Perryton, TX where we munched data. It became clear that we needed to head back towards Canadian/Shamrock. Towers were starting to pop up down there in an area that was looking rather tasty on SPC mesoanalysis as well as good dryline convergence...not to mention the Caprock upslope.

We got south of Canadian and a cluster of towers started exploding. Game on. We stayed with the first cell until it scooted off north and replced with a second cell which quickly started rotating. We took a gamble and flirted with the large hail core to punch north on a good bob's road that crossed the dreaded Canadian River. That gamble nearly resulted in getting severely cored.

After dodging hail up to baseballs (I could see some hitting all around us), we finally got east to Arnett and cleared the hail core and precip. We quickly turned south Hwy 283 as we watched a rapidly developing and lowering wall cloud...with rotation!! The structure of the storm was INCREDIBLE! A funnel quickly formed and the big show began. I hastily found a good spot to setup just as the funnel cloud started to touch down. For the next 20 minutes, we enjoyed quite a spectacle of a tornado. I've got some great video and pics below.

After it roped out, we played tag with until east of Woodward before calling a night with a celbratory dinner at Mazzios in Woodward. We got to partake of some breathtaking structure before we did though. MAN!! WHAT A STORM!! I want to do this again tomorrow. :-)

Some of the best pics of many I took:

SW OK Tornadic Supercell

First, I forgot to mention the nice little SDS session Kanani Foster and Jay McCoy attended last Thursday. I got to see their incredible video from March 28th. It was among some of the most mesmerizing footage I've seen. It was fantastic!!

I wasn't paying too much attention to the possibilities today, but lo and behold, Oklahoma submits it's first serious 2007 application as a member of the "Federation Of Tornado Alley States" today. ;-) A very impressive and dangerous tornadic supercell transversed the areas just north of Duncan and Lawton and along State Hwy 7 and 29. This thing was at one time cranking a couplet in excess of 100mph with a real vicious looking hook ~0000z.

With W/WNW flow aloft, a pronounced jet nose, CAPE 500-1000j/kg, SE surface flow, and warm front, the parameteers ended up being pretty darned good for a cell like this.

Here are a few radar grabs (click to get full image):

2347z


2347z SRV-1


0008z


0000z SRV-1