March 2nd, 2008 Western Oklahoma Supercells
Last Updated on Monday, 04 January 2010 15:44 Written by Roger Hill
I couldn't resist my first chase of the season into Oklahoma Sunday March 2nd. The set up was good for supercells, but less than ideal for tornadoes. A fairly strong trough was moving in from the Rocky Mountains, with a surface low developing near Childress, Texas and decent southerly flow bringing mid to upper 50s dewpoints into Oklahoma. A strong cold front would help fire off storms with strong lift, but could also rapidly undercut them as it advanced southeastward.
By mid afternoon I was in Altus, Oklahoma waiting, watching high based towers go up along the advancing dryline. Soon a few disorganized cells formed, while the better storms were well north along to the cold front. By late afternoon, storms became better organized as shear became much better, however surface winds started veering, thus diminishing the tornado threat. I caught several storms, two nice supercells, and one was tornado warned near Gotebo, Oklahoma, pictured above. Check out the rest of the pics below. You can click on the thumbnail image for a larger image .Enjoy!
First decent storm in southwest Oklahoma east of Altus. |
Multiple cells shown here with 3 distinct cores. |
One storm finally gets going northeast of Altus. |
Wider shot of the structure of this supercell. |
Storm gets better organized. |
Pretty classic/borderline HP supercell with wall cloud, striated tilted updraft and wet rear flank. |
It came close here to doing something very interesting. |
Here too, southwest of Gotebo, you can see the wall cloud with wet RFP. It was spinning viciously here. I though I would get a tornado soon! But, not be. |
About 30 minutes after the previous picture, you can see it has clearly developed into a gusting out HP storm. |
Southwest of the Wichita Mountains park, another cell forms and intensifies becoming severe. |
Not much good lightning with these storms. |
Mostly inter cloud. |
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