May 24, 2011 Flailing in OK and KS

This was a big tornado day and a big chase day —- for other chasers.  It was one of those days where my forecast wasn’t too bad, but my decision-making was not good and things just did not work out as envisioned.  A handful of tornadic supercells occurred over both central OK and central KS, and we spent the day in-between these two areas in north-central OK and extreme south-central KS.  The flow aloft was very fast and forecast storm motion was predicted to be about 45 to 50 mph, so I was thinking that the best chase strategy would be to play a little downstream of the initial development.  I should also add that, though the forecast seemed to be favoring central OK a little more during the day compared to the Enid area, I was nervous about chasing fast-moving, possibly HP storms with the hordes in and near the  OKC metro area.  So, I stuck to my guns…

By mid-afternoon, severe storms had developed quickly near I-40 in western OK.  We were hanging out  at Helena (between Enid and Alva), and soon there was a nasty supercell about 50 miles to our southwest and headed our way.  A significant tornado occurred with the supercell near Canton Lake, where we were the day before.  With the fast storm motion and primed atmosphere in our vicinity, all we had to do was wait for the storm and to catch it from a favorable viewing spot and watch the tornado go by, right?!  Well, not right.  The Canton Lake storm fizzled, perhaps due to new storms near I-40, including supercells that produced big tornadoes near Chickasha, El Reno and Piedmont.  We found ourselves amidst a bunch of weak cells, feeling like the kids locked outside of the candy store.

I prefer not to dwell any longer on the remainder of this depressing chase day!  I shot precisely zero still images of clouds and sky on this tornado outbreak day.  I’ll paste my CFDG summary here.

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Our group targeted the Enid area north to the OK/KS border, and had lunch in Enid. A cell went up about 70 miles to our SW and produced the tornado(s) near Canton, and I elected to play it conservatively and let the cell come to us. Because it was moving so quickly (NE 40 mph) I was concerned that we would quickly wind up behind it and end up out of position for the rest of the day. So, the supercell put the tornadoes down, the tornadoes ended some 35 miles or so to our southwest (we didn’t see them, of course—too hazy and rainy), and we waited for the next cycle of tornadoes as the supercell matured even further in the presumably improving environment. To our dismay, the supercell sputtered on its way towards us at Pond Creek, and then Wellington, KS, as a trillion other nuisance cells popped up in and around us and the storm.

It was only 5 p.m., we were amidst a bunch of rainy cr@ppy junk, we had little or nothing to chase, and those big cells down towards I-40 were a bit too far away and fast-moving to consider. With the few hours of daylight remaining we managed to get in front of the tornado-warned cell that approached the Independence, KS, area from OK. The sirens went off in Cedar something or other in KS, just north of the OK border, and the wind kicked up to 50 mph, but the circulation was 5 miles or so west of town and wrapped in rain.

My record is fairly dismal on high risk days. Today my forecast was somewhat flawed, as tornadic supercells were absent for the most part in NC OK and SC KS. We could have been on the Canton supercell without much difficulty had I not been nervous about falling behind in the chase race early on. I guess the problem in my target area was too weak a cap and/or too much forcing and consequently too much convection. I kept hoping that a switch would be flipped and the messy convection would morph into a couple of big bad cells (which occurred on May 25, 1997), but that did not occur before late evening.