Storm Chase Log: October 17, 2007 C Okla. Fast Moving Storms

[SamSagnella]

Storm chase describes quite accurately what went down Wednesday here in central Oklahoma. Tommy Winning and I were on the Grady County cell that tracked across OKC and into areas N and E of there. We initally headed west out of OUN on HWY 37 towards the Tuttle/Minco areas, along the way seeing convection firing to our W and SW. When we got to Minco we turned south onto US-81 and drove several miles while seeing both cells becoming better organized. We decided to turn west on Dutton Rd (Pocasset) and skirt along the very north edge of the southern cell's (OKC storm) precip core, so that we could maintain a view of both its base, and the cell now to our NW (later Kingfisher/Logan cell).

The following series of pictures shows the base of the Minco/OKC storm as seen from the west. I was initially bothered by the powerlines, but, noting that all of these were literally taken within a two-minute window, their changing angle actually serves as a testament to the speed at which these things were moving. (check out the hail core).







Yeesh; screaming NE.


After the inital pass that the storm made in Grady Co., we had a futile game of catch-up ahead of us, which ended at Kilpatrick and US-77 . A nice day overall, but this was our first encounter with having to keep up with such fast moving storms, and honestly, it will probably take a pretty extreme setup to get us to attempt this again .

[CajunMama]

More great pics from you!

In the second and third pic...is that kinda like an inverted rainbow on the ground? I don't know what else to call it.

[CrazyC83]

Great job chasing the start of the outbreak!

[pawlee]

fantastic images once again

[SamSagnella]

Thanks, guys.

Yeah, Kathy, that was a low-angle rainbow, which you can actually see breaks in where the hail and rain alternate (especially in photo five).

One quick note: you can almost see it in the pictures, but that secondary updraft (the one spitting out the hail) was visibly rotating about a vertical axis at that time. The tornadic potential never materialized, but the quick acquisition of updraft rotation that day, coupled with very low freezing heights, make me realize that OKC didn't miss a significant hailstorm by very much;the largest hail reported from this storm was around 1" in diameter (quarter-sized).