May 13, 2008
Storm Chase
Central Oklahoma
Editor: Putnam E. Reiter
Forecast/Setup -
Risk Area: Moderate Risk
Initial Target Area: Lawton, Oklahoma
SPC Products: SWO
-
LSR Plot
NAM 00z Initialization:
Surface Pressure
- Dewpoints -
CAPE
- MLCAPE
- CIN
- 0-3 Km Helicity -
Surface Temperature
- 850mb
Temperatures -
850mb Dewpoints
- 850mb Wind -
850mb Vertical
Velocity
- 700mb Wind
- 700mb
Temperatures -
700mb Relative Humidity
- 500mb Temperature
- 500mb Wind
-
500mb Relative Humidify
- 500mb Vorticity -
250mb Wind
- 250mb Relative
Humidity
Hook-Echo Discussions
- see the blog, sequence number is 2008-11-X
This year has been really tough, I guess I say that a lot. However, 2008
has been much worse than this year for our prime chase area. If you're in
eastern Oklahoma, it has been a very rough year, espcially Picher.
However, looking at tornado data there have been 2-5 tornadoes east of I-35 this
year. That is out of 40 for the state in 2008. This is a very odd
trend, especially for late May.
I'm not going to waste a lot of time going over the meteorology for this event.
A strong cold front moved through the region after May 10th and nudged into the
Gulf. Despite this, rapid moisture return was expected across the region.
The models have had a very tough time this season and this may be due to the
ongoing 6 wave Northern Hemispheric patterrn.
The system for today was not handled well and eventually the models settled on a
solution. Despite the southern stream system closing off and dropping
south, we had hope there would be enough parameters in-place for severe weather.
SPC's outlook certainly gave us reason to hope. However, when all was said
and done storms failed to get going. There was was storm in east central
Oklahoma, but it was mainly a hail producer. The northern stream system
did push the cold front well into the state Tuesday afternoon with the dryline
also in-play. The NAM/GFS caught on to weakening flow at 850/700mb due to
the southern stream system sinking south and the northern stream going too far
north. The upper level winds were great, but it wasn't enough.
Another problem may also have been the widespread clouds over southern Oklahoma
and north Texas. Temperatures appeared to cool during the afternoon and
didn't stay above 80F for long. This limited CAPE values and the ability
to breach the cap. The front finally did it for a few storms, but that was
about it.
The Chase -
Team 1 - Brett
LaBare, Rob Ferguson, and Putnam Reiter
Miles Driven - 100
Departure Time - 15:00 CDT
Return Time - 19:30 CDT
We left Oklahoma City and headed south on I-35. We got
to Purcell and sat at 74 and I-35 for a while. Seeing some decent towering
CU to our southwest, we drive about 2 miles south on 74 and sat there for a
while. We watched towers go up to our west and then move across us.
We thought a better storm might be going up to our north, so we drove back to 74
and I-35.
By this time we realized that nothing be sustained and many of
the clouds we say were blow off from the attempt updrafts. We waited until
7pm and when nothing had developed, we headed home. The cold front was
south of us and a storm did develop on this boundary. I didn't think much
would come of it and sure enough it didn't. It was a wasted day, but
that's been this year for central and western Oklahoma.
One of the nice things about a bust, these things are easy!
Lessons
Learned -
- Forecasting: It happened again, not sure
why. I think the low level winds were too weak and the rather thick
cirrus deck in Texas cooled us down too much.
- The only other thing was I drained the car battery.
Multimedia
-
Webcam - 10MB
Encounters
-
Engaged
Storm: None
Tornado: No
Funnel: No
Hail (larger than 0.75 inches): No
Wall Cloud: No
Wind (above 57.4 mph): No
