Logan
County - Guthrie storms Report:
Clyve Herbert
Today we met with a real dilemma....I'm sure that a
number of Australian chasers would know what I'm talking about - and that is a large area
of the south - central from Oklahoma to Missouri had a real chance of tornadic activity.
In some locations such as Missouri, the rating was a 7/10 chance...eastern Kansas 6/10,
and 6/10 for northeast OK and 5/10 for the southeast of OK. The busy day we had before
chasing the TX Panhandle got us into bed around 2am, so this is where we had difficulty
with decisions...get up at 5am and race NE to Missouri (8 - 9 hours plus), or perhaps get
out of bed at 6am and run to northeast and eastern Kansas. Another option was to maintain
our location at Elk City and wait for the possibility of late supercell breakouts in
southwestern OK, or split an option for near OK City and to the southeast and then combine
that with the chance to get into northeast OK - we took the latter option.
The synopsis for the day was a cold front dribbling
into northern OK, storms were expected to break out along the cold front relatively early
in MO and northeast KS, and were not expected to breakout across northeast OK till later
afternoon or evening. The cap was more pronounced in southern OK and an upper cooling was
anticipated to move into northern OK associated with the front. The cap was also weaker in
northern OK.
We wandered around areas southeast of OK City till
mid afternoon and watched suppressed cumulus held down by the cap...temperatures
approached the high 20'sC (high 80's F), and we clocked dewpoints near 20C (68F). With the
cap holding from around OK City, we decided to go north and take up our split option. As
we approached the Perkins / Stillwater region we noted an explosive development along the
front near the OK / KS border. Our concern with this set up was the rapid development of
linear storms and the cold front overrunning updrafts..the storms were only growing along
the frontal boundary. Within half an hour, the linear band of storms extended from
Missouri to the central north of OK. At Stillwater, we headed west in the late afternoon
to approach a large storm west of Hennessy. We also noted another very large storm north
of Stillwater, possibly near the KS border. Again, options of chase became difficult...we
continued west.
Approximately 10 - 15km east of Hennessy, we pulled
over to photograph a developing storm line to our north. It was obvious that the mid and
upper levels were extremely unstable. We noted the alignment of the cold front 20 km to
our northwest and most updrafts were generating along this boundary. The storm to our
north took our interest with a persistent rain free base. This storm matured producing
brilliant cg's and a massive anvil. Meanwhile, further west we spotted a better alignment
of convergence and shifted our position closer to Hennessy. This area of convergence
became progressively larger, finally producing a focus point of updraft. This large area
of development later became the precursor to the Logan County - Guthrie storm.
We followed the pulsy nature of this increasingly
severe storm (which was tornado warned) from east of Hennessy all the way to
Guthrie...this storm produced fantastic lightning, wall clouds, and eventually 6cm hail.
In fading light as we approached the north of Guthrie, we came across a group of mini
buses carrying hordes of storm tourists...they were excited about bagging a tornado in
eastern Kansas that afternoon. We continued into Guthrie as we suspected the storm
following us was a hail producer. As we pulled under cover of the motel for the 2nd time
in 2 days, we could hear the loud thumps of hail on the roofs...for the next 20 minutes
the storm dropped 2 - 6 cm hail, unbelievable lightning and eventually killed the power
supply to all of Guthrie.
Footnote: just prior to our arrival at Stillwater,
barely 20 miles to our north, the massive development we saw there produced a tornado. |