Drove from DSM Friday night (March 26) to ICT with a target of CSM Saturday (March 27).

Severe storms: 3
Supercells: 3
Hail: marble
Wall clouds: numerous
Tornadoes: 2
Watches: 2 tornado
Warnings: many severe and tornado

Mileage: 1,446

Introduction

My chase partner for this chase, Blake Naftel, and I were attending the National Weather Association's Doppler Radar and Severe Storms Conference in Des Moines, IA this weekend, along with many other chasers, storm enthusiasts, meteorologists, EM's, etc. We knew there was at least some potential for a chase this weekend going into the conference and were prepared to chase if a good opportunity came up.  It did.  Luckily, Sat. was the least interesting day on the agenda so it wasn't too difficult of a decision to blow off the last day of the conference. After looking at the 0Z ETA Friday night valid for 0Z Saturday, I thought that western OK looked like it had the best potential for supercells, given the WSW flow at H5 over the dryline, as opposed to a little more SW aloft farther N. Instability looked to be fairly uniform over all of western OK, with some drop in CAPE as you progressed N into KS. I didn't want to target any farther S than western OK due to the position of H5 jet into that area.  Areas farther S could possibly experience subsidence S of the jet, not to mention the 5C line hugged I-40 (which is considerable warmth for this time of year).  Blake did not disagree so we set out for ICT, departing DSM around 10:30 p.m.  Also accompanying us was Tony Laubach from CO, who provided not only his laptop computer, but interesting banter over the ham radio to keep us awake on the drive down.  We arrived in ICT around 4 a.m. and were greeted by a cluster of strong t-storms that provided vivid lightning and heavy rain as we arrived. After checking some data and e-mail, we finally got to sleep by around 5 a.m.

The wake up call came as even more of a shock that I thought it would, 4 hours later around 9 a.m.  We began looking at data on Tony's laptop.  The massive area of clouds and early morning convection over much of the central and southern plains ahead of the dryline was disturbing.  Blake talked to Tim Samaras who incidentally left ahead of us last night from DSM and was better rested.  He along with Carl Young were already on the road by 10 a.m. and reported that despites the negatives, they were continuing to their target of W OK.  I noticed a decent area of clearing in far SW OK and the SE TX panhandle that had SFC temps. 5-8 degrees warmer in that area.  That is another reason I wanted to head farther S---to get closer to some of that clearing that should be working its way into SW OK.  After showering, getting gas, and some snacks, we were on the road by 11 a.m.  We had a minor navigational error that delayed us about 25 minutes.  I won't elaborate further since we are idiots!  I blame lack of sleep.

The Chase 

By about 1 p.m., we began to notice a large area of clearing to the W as we progressed toward OKC on I-35 S.  This was a nice surprise given the massive area of clouds and rain early this morning.  This also should have been a warning to maybe not continue farther S, but we had to get pretty far W so it seemed logical to take the fastest route W---I-40, and then adjust N or S from there once out near the dryline.  By the time we got close enough to receive TV signals from OKC around 1:30 p.m., tornadoes were already beginning on the storm up near Woodward.  Whoa!  Where did that come from?  We also could see there was a lone storm on I-40 at the OK border with TX so we decided to commit to that storm since we were already to OKC and it would be the easiest intercept.  So W we went on I-40, as Gary England continued to break in with tornado reports from NW OK.

By 2:30 p.m., we broke out of the low clouds that covered much of central OK and could see our target storm near CSM.  It was great to see deep convection again after a long winter and that large area of clearing between the grunge and our storm.  The storm was not moving very quickly so we opted to continue to Clinton for intercept.  We arrived at Clinton at 2:45 p.m. and headed N on US 183 just as a tornado warning was issued for our storm---the first one (there had only been severe warnings before this point), so that was convenient.  A large and flat RFB loomed to the NW.  By the time we got to Arapahoe, a small, compact little lowering began to form and before we knew it, was producing a thin rope-like tornado that angled to the ground at about 30 degrees just as we cleared the town.  With a tornado forming that quickly, I thought we were in for a big show as we stopped and set up to film rapidly rotating rain curtains near the jct. of US 183 and OK 33.  However, this was not to be as the storm did not produce another funnel until the meso was N of Custer City, and it didn't even appear to touch down though radio chatter suggested it was a tornado.  We continued to follow the storm NE along OK 33, but the storm appeared to be struggling and becoming more elongated.  We could see from Blake's TV that another storm was developing back toward Weatherford and beginning to take on supercell characteristics on radar.  So after giving our storm a chance almost to Watonga, we decided to go after the southern storm. 

I plotted us a course back the way we came, except we would take OK 54 S to Weatherford.  This would cut it a little close with the core of the storm, but we had good information from several sources including ham radio and TV as well as NOAA weather radio that indicated there was no tornado occurring yet and that major hail was not occurring.  So we dropped S on OK 54 and encountered rain and some marble hail as we entered Weatherford.  The supercell updraft looked awesome to the SW, especially for March, which Blake's wide angle lens captured better than my camera.  So we dropped a little S of I-40 to get out of the rain and hail and stop to set up.

More to follow...