Gorky

Good Heli footages here http://www.news9.com/

Lots of tornado reports so far... Some good footage from the usual suspects. Andy Gabrielson got a nice intercept before his stream went down due to 'car troubles' which apparently are that he flipped his chase vehicle! He apparently got into another car and just continued chasing The Dominator got an intercept near Tipton and there is now a 3/4 mile wedge which has just passed Snyder and is luckily in an unpopulated wildlife refuge at the moment. You wouldn't think it's November

Well my doubts about the GFS possibly being accurate that far out seem unfounded. Still looks good for an outbreak this afternoon with only a couple of caveats. NAM is showing 2500+ Cape juxtaposed with strong low level shear and great DPs for this time of year. Only worry would be cloud cover and perhaps too much convection resulting in large MCS or squall line. With the great looking curved hodographs, I'm guessing we'll get at least a few hours of supercellular activity. As for a target, I'd originally been looking at a Texas target by the Red River (Somewhere between Childress and Wichita Falls) as I though best chance for something discrete would be down here with maybe too much convection into OK. However, the NAM is painting a picture of multiple discrete cells forming early afternoon into W OK and that seems almost too good to bypass if it plays out. Will probably choose Altus as a start location as a balance between the two.

Looks like this thread is going to be active for the next week or two. The fall season is about to burst into life a little late but possibly with a bang as the 6z GFS looks rediculous for next week, especially Monday which shows the hallmarks of a decent outbreak around the Red River in WTX/OK if the current forecast verifies (although at this range out it surely won't!). There's also indications of troughing persisting right throughout the forecast period so it would be unlikely to be the only event in the next few weeks. Definitely something I'll be keeping an eye on. One thing is it will be huge for those suffering from the drought in the area as moisture return over the affected area is going be very robust and it will bring a lot of rain regardless of sever mode...

Already reached Hurricane strength as it appears to be rapidly intensifying. Now forecast to reach Major hurricane status as it approaches the Yucatan Peninsula.

Insane storm out there at the moment in ND. Amazing structure. Stacked plates 70,000 feet high. Recently had a large rain wrapped wedge with it. Theres some good streams of it on Severe Studios and TornadoVideos.net

Looks like you guys have had fun with the airlines. Makes me wonder how I wrangled my trip out for £430 earlier this year if prices are that high right now... Oil is cheaper than when I booked earlier so that's not an issue.... Is Phoenix just an expensive route? Not looking forward to next year if the prices stay this high!

It's been pretty active here. Another storm overhead right now. Thunder rumbling away frequently. Been like this on and off since about 11am

Wouldn't be surprised to see a tornado report from the Scarborough area. Not that there was anything tornadic here. The leading edge of the gust front just passing by was pretty much vertical as it passed by. Classic Scary Looking Cloud which no doubt someone will submit to the local paper again as being a tornado... the Sky is absolutely black to the North and more rumbles of thunder apparent. This will be the 6th storm of the day already with much more lined up...

There was definately an outflow boundary in play with this tornado. The entire complex was pretty multicellular and right moving along a east/west outflow boundary prior to the EF5 forming. A seperate updraft formed south and east of the main mess by a little way if I remember right and it produced the EF5 tornado as it was merging into the big mess to the north. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some mechanic with the outflow from the main precip NW of Joplin helping to strengthen the RFD of the growing Joplin mesocyclone which was being fed by unimpeded inflow from the South. Given the storms southerly track post Joplin, I imagine that it may have hooked onto another outflow boundary more favourably orientated for the storm to become tornadic also. It goes to show how unpredictable tornado forecasting is. I'm sure there are many people in the scientific community who would trade years of data to have had a DOW on that storm. It's also worth noting that tornado lead times were 20 minutes for the EF5 damaged part of town which had the majority of the casualties. They'd been tornado warned for a separate cell prior to that as well so if anything, tornado warning fatigue was likely a cause of more deaths than a lack of warning. Joplin has been missed by a lot of big tornadoes in the past and many people will have just continued driving thinking it would be another miss. The Picher-Racine EF4 narrowly missed to the south a couple of years ago and will have quickly vanished form most Joplinites memories for example. If there is one video which proves the mentality of some people in Joplin, it's the one shot from Roger Hill's tour. They were right in the path of the storm and the traffic almost killed them because they struggled to get out of the path. You can hear them discussing taking shelter in the Home Depot which was ultimately razed to the ground, but they got lucky once power was out and traffic moved more freely without stop lights every quarter mile. The amount of people out and about was unreal and many of them probably didn't make it. One thing to note from that video is the only indication there was a mile wide EF5 torndado a mile west of them was the occasional power flash and the broad scale rotation of the mesocyclone collar cloud above them. 99% of people would have not seen it coming, I'm sure.

That storm was still ongoing well into the early hours at weatherford. WE had all those pylons and wind farms just out of town we could have gone to and taken some nice photographs but I don't think anyone even considered chasing any more. We were all way too knackered... To be honest I think my brain had kinda split up the medicine lodge storm and the weatherford squall into two days. I know I was pretty much comatose during the drive south! Was it the following day we were on the massive throckmorton ground muching gust front or did we get a rest day?

Came here to mention that day. Don't know how we chased the following day after that. At least it was another fairly local chase!

It was a crazy day for sure. Both the Chickasha wedge and the Goldsby Stovepipe showed what appeared to be classic EF5 damage in the survey photos with nothing but anchor bolt left sheared off in the clean foundation. NWS Norman is probably the strictest when it comes to handing out those EF5 ratings and they said that none of the houses were of high enough build quality to confirm EF 5. The same happened with El Reno but when they analysed the radar imagery from the DOW which was on it, winds were a long way over 200mph at less than 100 metres above the surface. Regardles of the ratings all those tornadoes that day were monsters and capable of EF5 damage in my opinion. OK got lucky they avoided very populated areas and dissipated when they did. I know the El Reno storm was very lucky to get it's EF5 rating as a lot of people were against this as the EF scale is supposed to strictly be a damage scale and radar indications are not damage indicators!

Good read. Nice to relive some of my experiences but from a different viewpoint on often the same storms. A couple of corrections regarding the May 24th event because I'm a little pedantic ;)The Canton tornado was only Ef3 (largely due to not hitting many buildings but I think we all know that thing had High end ef4 winds in it at least) and there was only one EF5 this day. The El Reno tornado was upgraded a few days later but the other upgrade announced about the same time was from way back on April 27th with the Rainsville tornado getting the bump to EF5 almost a month after it struck. I see a few site mentioning 2 EF5's for the outbreak and the 2nd is actually the Joplin tornado from a couple of days earlier which they are referencing. May 21st - May 26th is considered a single outbreak 'sequence' it seems On another note I noticed that someone passed away from their injuries related to the Canton Lake tornado making it the first killer tornado I've witnessed. I'm kinda bummed out now as from everything I'd read I didn't think anyone had even been injured and it's rating had been due to foliage damage entirely. Part of me hoped the Church I saw get grazed was the only building hit, but given it's size, I shouldn't be suprised it did more damage. I also see that the Denning tornado which formed out of the northern bookend vortex on the squall line which passed over my motel that night was upgraded to a >1m wide EF4... I'm so glad I didn't continue down I40 that night and end up somewhere in the path of that thing.

I presume you mean MCS. From Wikipedia: A mesoscale convective system (MCS) is a complex of thunderstorms that becomes organized on a scale larger than the individual thunderstorms but smaller than extratropical cyclones. Basically, it's multicell clusters and squall line type events...

I'd imagine there is a capping inversion preventing convection from getting too robust at the moment. With daytime heating and increasing instability it's quite possible that convection will break through this layer and we'll get thunderstorms. I've seen days pushing 9000 CAPE in the US not break through a cap before though Forcing is pretty weak down south so it's no guarantee we'll see widespread storms. However, there is a good 3 hours+ til peak heating to go. It's pretty rare even in the US to get events where the entire warm sector starts to light up. More often than not, storms form on the warm front, cold front and dryline and move off from there into the warm sector. Edit: Shoulda guessed I'd be beaten by about half a dozen people the rate this thread is going!

Monday looks nice on the 12z early afternoon south of here. Shame I have pretty much zero chance of getting time off work at the moment! Looks to some nicely backed surface winds south of Bridlington down towards Lincolnshire. Probably due to some small scale lows which are never going to be accurately forecast this far out but it's fun to look at

Am I the only one who is liking the looks of Sunday evening more than the other days. Probably as things will be much more local for me that day but whilst the Cape values are only in the 1000+ range that day, there seems to be much better forcing to get the storms to fire, at least across the Dales and uptowards the North York Moors. It's not like these value are low in anyway, just not as obscene as some of the forecasts further south. Whilst Sunday has seemingly stayed consistent over the last few runs, Tuesday is all over the place on each run. Will be itneresting to see if Sunday continues to look good on the 12z! As an added bonus, Paul Hudson on BBC Look North said it would be cracking weather on Sunday in Scarborough so it's guaranteed to pee it down now. I'll be charging my batteries up and hoping it lasts into dusk for some night time lighting

Met Jeff last year when stuck in the field on the Bowdle day. He was possibly the most exciteable and exhuberant chaser I've ever met. Was clear he loved the storm chasing experience more than anyone I've bumped into. It's really shocking to see his reaction to all the damage here. You have to wonder how badly seeing that sort of thing would affect your desire to chase more storms. I'm so glad I didn't head north onto those cells as they popped up enar Independance. Could have made it to Joplin in time straight up the I44 but I'd rather have a bust than see the things he did.

Working on some photos I took in America during my storm chase trip, whilst waiting for my flight. I managed to get a shot I'd been hoping to get last time I visited Yellowstone. The Falls with a rainbow in the mist. Meant a predawn wakeup and trip over to the falls in sub zero temps but I just about got their in time. The angle of the sun as it rises futher doesn't allow this shot for long!

The live stream was the closest I got to the Big Texan this year. Never even visited Texas at all.. Crazy...

Laziest storm chase in a while for me. Watched the Monaco GP, went to see the tornado Alley Movie on Imax at the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson. Spent 4 hours in the museum looking at the cool stuff like the Apollo 13 capsule, Liberty Bell 7 etc. Not sure how such an out of the way museum had so much history. Left at 5pm and with seemingly no data due to account issues with my mobile broadband and data roaming, I just headed 40 minutes east to the nearest towers I could see and followed the storm pretty much to Nebraska by site. They were barely severe, though warned for the wind damage more than anything. Lots of long lived Gustnadoes and a very noticeable heat burst north of Great Bend (big wind surge and temp rocketed to 96F at 7:30pm local time!) Another heat burst was reported near York when I got here and again, there was a fair increase in temps to the low 80's (now 11:00pm) but that could easily have been a warm front as it didn't drop down nearly as much as the earlier one. Not many worthwhile pics and I have the slowest net connection known to man so not going to be able to upload anything just now. The sunset mammatus were very pretty however.

I'm giving today a miss and relaxing in Wichita... Just too exhausted for what appears to be a minor risk of anything worth chasing. Gonna catch some films and probably head to the Cosmosphere in Hutchinson tomorrow morning before evaluating tomorrow evenings and Monday's threat. Hope you get lucky and I'm sure I'll catch up later with you guys!

I'm sat up in Perry at the moment. A touch further North than I actually intended but I got carried away on the I35 listening to the radio... Still think we'll see the cap go a little NW of OKC and storms move uptowards Stillwater at about 6:00pm to 6:30ish but if not, I'll just continue north to position for tomorrow so no big loss! For most of the day, the HRRR say no storms and RUC says all things go within 2 hours. If the HRRR has come around then it looks promising as I respect that model a fair bit.

Was on multiple cells myself throughout NE Arkansas. None tornadoed from what I could see. First 2 were too foresty to see anything up near Pocahontas. The next one was very rain wrapped and HP and almost blew me off the road as I tried to escape the core. Another put out 3 or 4 funnels. A third was beautiful and LP. The memphis cell was amazing although never going to produce. Don't believe the tornado report on it as I was under the reported tornado at the time and didn't see it. Visibility was fine and I suspect it was someone misinterpretting the wall cloud which was very Fauxnado like. Got cored by the last and it actually didn't even hail on me as it collapsed just before it reached me. Surpised but happy you got a tornado near Tunica. WAs gonna head for the southern cells myself but I decided against going as I though the place was still underwater!