19 May 2015 / Central Oklahoma Supercells

(GoPro) Looking east from 1.4 miles southwest of Purcell, OK (3:09 pm CDT)

(GoPro) Looking east from 1.4 miles southwest of Purcell, OK (3:09 pm CDT)

This chase was somewhat spur of the moment.  I figured that I would just monitor things through the day from home, and take off if something looked interesting and close.

Around 1 pm, a band of storms was advancing eastward across Grady and Stephens counties.  Several storms in this band began to exhibit supercell characteristics and I started southbound on Highway 81.  It was a bit of a battle with heavy rain, some flooding, and heavy traffic, but I was able to work to the western side of a tornado warned supercell that was passing over Purcell.  As I came out of precipitation associated with the hook region of the storm, a rotating lowering appeared over the far southern part of the city.  Everything looked to be falling in place for me to observe the mesocyclone east of Purcell.  Then things came to a stop as a traffic accident on the only bridge that crosses the Canadian River had the road blocked.  The nearest alternate crossings were too far away, and I let the storm go.

I started back west and southwest toward storms that were moving across the Wichita Wildlife Refuge.  I observed a small supercell near Apache that exhibited some cloud base rotation.  This storm was soon absorbed into a line of storms that was pushing eastward across Caddo County.

I was treated to torrential rainfall on the trip back through Verden and Pocasset.  Water was flowing across several places of Highway 81 near Pocasset.