Day 4: A Potpourri of Severe Weather

Our second day of storm chasing was definitely a lot more active than our first! We saw flooding rains, strong winds, lots of (presumably wind, possibly tornado) damage, a weak funnel cloud, several weakly rotating wall clouds, lots of “scud,” and even smoke from an oil tank that got struck by lightning.

The storms started firing up a little sooner than yesterday, so we were on the road heading south from Guymon, OK to the Texas panhandle by 12:30 pm. The first storm we spotted had some light rotation on radar and we were able to get some good shots of a lightly rotating wall cloud. We even saw a “non-condensation” tornado dropping down from this wall cloud – a rotating column of dust at the surface that appeared to be the beginnings of a tornado – but unfortunately it wasn’t large enough to show up in pics.

As we continued following the storm, the sky got very dark, making for some stunning photos when we pulled up on the side of the road.

See all those little cloud “bits” hanging well below the cloud base? They are called “scud,” which sounds more like a swear word than a cloud in my opinion. Scud can form in different ways, but this scud was formed by rain/hail-cooled air from the downdraft being sucked back into the updraft. Since this air from the downdraft is relatively cool and moist, it doesn’t have to rise as far as the ambient environmental air before condensing into a cloud, and it is therefore below the main cloud base.

Scud is often mistaken for tornadoes because they hang below the cloud base and often form in similar areas as tornadoes. Scud does not rotate and does not pose any severe weather threat, but if you see scud coverage increasing dramatically under an updraft, it means that the updraft is becoming more powerful and that a wall cloud, a precursor to tornadoes, may form.

We headed a little ways north to track this storm and reached the top of a small hill. From here, we could see the storm’s mesocyclone traveling NE, and we almost saw a tornado form. In the picture below, you can see a very thin funnel extending from the base of a weak wall cloud.

This funnel only lasted a few seconds and didn’t turn into a tornado. We waited over the same spot for a few more minutes looking for a funnel, but couldn’t find one.

After a few minutes, we decided to head a mile or so further south to check in on a storm to our southwest that was heading northeastward. From here, we were able to get some great shots of mammatus clouds on the underside of the anvil.

And to our south, there was a lot of smoke in the distance. We ran across an old farmer who told us that this was caused by lightning striking a gas tank. Apparently this is pretty commonplace over here.

That same farmer told us to head down the dirt road below for our best shot at getting a tornado at this storm. However, being inexperienced storm chasers in a front-wheel-drive rental vehicle, we decided to head further south to the eastern Texas panhandle instead, where some very threatening supercells were firing up on radar. Props to Rob Grimes for absolutely nailing his forecast for severe storms – he said Wheeler county, Texas was the place to be for severe storms. If you are interested in severe weather, his TheSTORMCenter weather group on Facebook is a fantastic resource.

Once we got to highway 40 on our travel south, we came across some serious damage from these storms, likely due to fierce straight-line winds from a downburst. Many power lines were toppled, and these may have been key transmission lines, as power was out nearly everywhere we went in Western Oklahoma much of the night.

We had trouble deciding whether to go to the northern storm or the southernmost storm, as the northern storm was closer but tracking further away from us while the southern storm was currently farther but coming closer. We decided to got for the southern storm since we felt we had a better chance of catching up with it. Additionally, it looked sexier on radar and all the other storm chasers were flocking to it. This storm would eventually spawn a powerful high end EF-2 (possibly EF-3) tornado over southern Elk City, Oklahoma that would claim one life, injure 10 others, completely destroy 50 structures, and heavily damage another 100.

Along our way there, we encountered some flash flooding in Sayre, Oklahoma due to extraordinarily heavy rain.

With this storm quickly moving NE at 30 mph, we weren’t quite able to catch it. It didn’t help that we temporarily got caught in a “storm chaser” jam… probably the only type of traffic jam these roads ever see. Our location is given by the the blue circle in the map below.

The following shots show the radial velocities and reflectivities of the storms and were taken at the same time as the shot above. See how there is a very tight coupling of red (going away) and green (coming toward) colors near Elk City? That marks the location of the rotating updraft (mesocyclone) of this storm, which is where tornadoes are found. The stronger your rotation, the stronger your tornado can become. There is also a very defined hook echo with the downdraft (which carries precipitation) wrapping around the updraft. This is indicative of very strongly rotating storm.

We chased this storm for a little while but still weren’t able to catch up. Perhaps that’s why they call it storm chasing and not storm catching.

There’s so much more to talk about, but it’s also close to 3 pm and time for Joey and I to get some good ol’ southern BBQ! No storms today, but Thursday promises to be very active. Hopefully we’ll see our first “tornader” then! I’ll leave you all with a great montage of timelapses Joey took of the weather we saw today.