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| Written by Dick McGowan | |||
| Tuesday, 10 April 2012 16:37 | |||
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Yesterday, TVN (Chad Cowan, Chris Chittick, Shay Phillips and myself) chased NW OK, with hopes for just some large hail, but we ended up seeing several tornadoes, including one up-close! Having no data the entire day, we chose a target of Beaver, OK, where the first towers of the day exploded. We time-lapsed the towers going up for about an hour near a wind farm just north of Ft. Supply, OK and went after the northern cell after it showed signs of strengthening. We were just north of what would be the dominant supercell of the the day, as the towers exploded just to our west, but left it for the northern one, initially. Upon catching the northern one, it was clear that the storm was linear and was beginning to go outflow dominant, so we blasted south towards Woodward.
We set up just south of Woodward, OK, where we witnessed our first brief tornado of the day to our west, which was cone-shaped and lasted maybe a minute. We then blasted back to the west and then south, watching an elephant trunk tornado develop (and briefly touch down) along with baseball size hail falling at our location. Approaching from the north, the RFD surge was intense and we could tell that something big was about to happen, so we continued south punching through it, and heading back east where multiple vortices were present. The tornado, at the time, was multi-vortex, or so we thought, with rapid right to left motion moving just above the ground and strong westerlies at our back. The tornado seemed to be stationary for a good 5-10 minutes, spinning up vortices and occasionally putting a full condensation down of various shapes. Looking back (and seeing other video/photos), it seems we were on the outer circulation of the tornado, with the vortices being underneath the main condensation funnel--which was not visible due to our location directly beneath it! It was an incredible day, but unfortunately, Reed could not chase due to other obligations.
Tomorrow, could potentially be a big day, dependent on moisture return, and tonight's expected MCS/storm clusters, which could hinder moisture transport to SE CO and NE NM. Starting Thursday, a threat will exist from W KS through the TX panhandle, where large hail and tornadoes seem likely. Thursday, Friday and Saturday have the potential to be HUGE across the Plains as well, so stay tuned! Don't forget to follow Reed's Facebook fan page and Twitter account, for real-time updates during the chase!
Below, is the video from yesterday!
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