{"id":7349,"date":"2012-05-19T00:00:05","date_gmt":"2012-05-19T08:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/?p=7349"},"modified":"2012-09-23T12:25:11","modified_gmt":"2012-09-23T20:25:11","slug":"may-19-2012-taloga-ok-supercell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/2012\/05\/19\/may-19-2012-taloga-ok-supercell\/","title":{"rendered":"May 19, 2012 Taloga, OK Supercell"},"content":{"rendered":"

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This day was a crazy and sad one, as one of our tour guests passed out in the van during the chase.\u00a0 Steve was not responding despite the heroic efforts of two of our other guests to keep him alive as we waited for an ambulance near Weatherford, OK, and as a supercell was bearing down on us!<\/p>\n

Our trek commenced from Alma, NE, and I had a fuzzy focus area around central KS.\u00a0 Another area to monitor was northwest OK.\u00a0 Tornado chances were on the slim side, but a beastly supercell was not out of the question as shear and instability were finally looking good.\u00a0 We stopped for lunch in Stockton, KS, and then dropped south towards Russell and beyond on U.S. 281.\u00a0 Storm towers were already going up to our south a county or two away, near St. John\/Stafford.\u00a0 We needed to get in front of this big storm, but it wasn’t going to be easy, especially if it was going to move east or east-southeast at a moderate pace.\u00a0 Near Great Bend we stopped briefly to get take a look at the impressive updraft towers, and then needed to blast south again towards the St. John storm.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the storm split, and the left split was coming northward, right at us!\u00a0 The radar and warning information suggested hail no larger than an inch in diameter, so I decided to press southward to try to get to the “right split”.\u00a0 No such luck — golfball-sized hail and even 2-inch size stones began smashing the earth around us.\u00a0 We turned around and found a carport for the vans, barely avoiding breaking glass issues!\u00a0 The hail delay cost us about 10-15 minutes, and that right-split storm, now to our SSE by perhaps 25 miles, was getting bigger and better and moving east to ESE at about 25 mph.\u00a0 UGH.\u00a0 Brian Morganti was in good position on it, and he reported some interesting lowerings.<\/p>\n

I made an aborted dash to the east in order to try to skirt the precip core and to get in front of the updraft base.\u00a0 But, the math just didn’t look that good —- it was going to take too long to accomplish this —- and by the time we made it there, would the storm even be worth the trouble?\u00a0 I didn’t know.\u00a0 One thing I DID know was that the cap was a bit stronger in NW OK, where strong to severe storms were expected a little later.\u00a0 It was still early, around 4 p.m., and there was plenty of time to get in front of something in NW OK.\u00a0 Here in KS, the cap was weak, and semi-early convection such as this often results in junky outflowish storms that interfere with each other.\u00a0 I didn’t like that.\u00a0\u00a0 SPC had issued a severe watch box for central KS, as it appeared that the low-level wind fields and the high storm bases would not be very conducive for tornado-making.\u00a0 Even though we were fairly close to the KS storms, though out of position, I elected to keep going south on 281 into NW OK.<\/p>\n

We stopped in Pratt, KS, for fuel, and new towers were exploding not too far to the east!\u00a0 Gad—-this day is going to make me crazy!<\/p>\n

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Convection was developing south or even SSW-ward from the earlier activity.\u00a0 There may have been a report of a weak and brief landspout-ish tornado by this point in time, but it didn’t seem like the new development would become a great big tornadic supercell, so I stuck with the NW OK plan.\u00a0 About an hour or so south of Pratt, near Medicine Lodge, we started to hear the news of plenty of tornadoes with the activity we had just driven away from.\u00a0 That is exactly what you do NOT want to hear — EVER!\u00a0 Well, the storm east of Pratt wasn’t exactly a monster tornadic supercell, but it was spinning up a number of weak tornadoes and one long-lived and robust tornado, along some sort of N-S boundary above which the new towers were exploding.\u00a0 Oh well.\u00a0 This hybrid stuff is almost impossible to forecast, and we’ll see what OK has to offer.\u00a0 Cells were going up there, and we would be able to get into proper position on these.<\/p>\n

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We continued south through Alva and Seiling to Taloga, and finally found a healthy updraft to our west.\u00a0 Low level organization looked great, but, unlike the KS situation, there was no boundary lurking to help spin up tornadoes of any sort.\u00a0 The first Taloga supercell sputtered to our north, and another one loomed to our southwest.<\/p>\n

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As you can see, the structure with these supercells was quite nice!\u00a0 Our group was lined up on the west side of 281 to watch, except for Steve.\u00a0 I checked with him inside the van to see if everything was okay, and he said he was fine.\u00a0 It was weird, though, that he wasn’t outside enjoying the show.<\/p>\n

As sunset neared, a large storm beckoned down along U.S. 40 near Clinton.\u00a0 We managed to get in front of it between Clinton and Weatherford.\u00a0 It sported a bit of an RFD cut and action area, but never got really serious about making a tornado.<\/p>\n

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It was time to get out in front a bit more and to enjoy the structure and lightning as it got dark, so we headed to Weatherford and then south a few miles to a hilltop.\u00a0 At this point in time Steve had collapsed in the back seat of one of the vans and was not responding.\u00a0 We had him out on the ground and were trying to keep him alive as we waited for the paramedics as the big storm loomed to our west.\u00a0 Finally, the paramedics arrived and transprorted Steve into the hospital in nearby Weatherford.\u00a0 Somehow, the supercell weakened or veered away and did not impact us.\u00a0 I thought for sure that we were going to get blasted by hail and wind.<\/p>\n

The evening was filled with very nice lightning and anvil crawlers, but our group was subdued as we waited for word on Steve.\u00a0 He was breathing now and his vitals were okay, but he was still unconscious.\u00a0 A few days later, he passed away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  This day was a crazy and sad one, as one of our tour guests passed out in the van during the chase.\u00a0 Steve was… [Read More]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48,22,15,11],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-48","7":"category-cumulonimbus","8":"category-sunsets-and-storms","9":"category-supercells","10":"entry","11":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7349"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7368,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7349\/revisions\/7368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stormbruiser.com\/chase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}