Wednesday, May 13, 2009

"Tail-end Charlie" chase near OKC

We didn't quite make it to Ponca City today. After 7 hours on the road from Lubbock we pulled off I-35 north of Oklahoma City onto the exit for Stillwater at 1600 local time and never went any further north. We decided to sit there and wait for the cap to break. It did, with towers going up around 1730 along the cold front ~ 50 miles to our west, so we moved in that direction on local roads. Finding a spot along a relatively quiet (with the exception of a few locals and a bunch of chasers) north/south highway we parked for a while as one cell gathered its strength a few miles west of us. As it had a hail marker on it we ensured that we weren't in the path of the hail core while we watched the CGs lance down and listened to the thunder echo around us.

Not seeing much in the way of organized circulation in this cell (which wound up with tornadic circulation later!) we pulled up stakes and headed south to catch the next storm in the line, which was the "tail-end charlie" of the entire frontal line. We hop-scotched through several vantage points and finally watched as this one showed some circulation:
Keeping ahead of the heaviest rain we continued south and found several places to marvel at the lightning display and the deep bass of the thunder. We finally did see a significant wallcloud from two different vantage points:

On a couple of occasions this complex exhibited a tornado vorticity signature on radar, but we didn't see anything more than these views before the rain and darkness set in. We tried to follow the storms after dark to see if we could catch a glimpse of any circulation via lightning flashes but the rain was too heavy. So we called in a day, found a hotel and food, and are settling in for the evening. Tomorrow's initial target: Wichita. There may or may not be chaseable storms tomorrow, but we liked the idea of getting set up for Friday's chase in southcentral Kansas.

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