Start: Oklahoma City, OK
Lunch: Seiling, OK (Crooked Arrow Cafe)
Dinner: Wellington, KS (Braums)
End: Wichita, KS
342 miles
Even better chase account by TT guest L. Ryan, with some time-lapse video.
The timing for a tour changeover was good (May 12/13), as the weather pattern was very slow for severe on the Plains from about May 11 to the 15th. On this first day for Tour 3, Bob and Chris and I tried our luck up in northwestern Oklahoma. SPC showed a marginal risk for severe, with just enough instability and shear for a decent rotating updraft.
The best storm wound up being a supercell that was a “left-mover.” These left-movers have an anticyclonically rotating updraft and they move to the left of the mean flow. So, though upper winds were from the WNW, this one moved to the northeast, from about Seiling to Waynoka and Cherokee. As the sun lowered in the west and the daytime heating abated, the updraft weakened and died. A couple of the images below show an unpaved road that was damaged by flooding. The Plains were waterlogged this spring, and unpaved roads were not an option for chasers in many areas. The storm images below are views to the west for the most part.
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