I started northwest with a target near the Kansas border but an eye out to the west. While in Seiling, storm initiation occurred just southwest of Arnett which became my target storm. Upon arriving just east of the storm, it looked really close to producing a tornado with a strongly rotating wall cloud. After a few minutes observing, the storm began to split and the left mover ended up taking about 90% of the volume of the storm with it. That was the death blow to the storm.

Storms farther east became the new target and some decent storm structure was observed west of Okeene. Storms of the day ended up being in northern Texas and southern Kansas/far northern Oklahoma.

After a season where we had generally been making all the right decisions… we came up on a day where we had a 50/50 chance and picked the wrong storm. Our supercell storm exhibited strong rotation at times in Beckham County, but came nowhere close to producing the spectacle that was farther south near Duke. After our storm shrank up to nothing, we made an attempt at getting to the south storm, but was turned away after the tornado wrapped up into intense core. It made it too dangerous to approach from the north. A few pictures:

The most significant risk for widespread storms was in Kansas, but our bet on a southern cell being more isolated paid off beginning in northwest Oklahoma. Our target storm developed just west of Oklahoma between Higgins and Allison and quickly organized into a supercell… with rotation noted on radar by the time it reached the border. The beautiful supercell tracked slightly south of due east and the following images were captured from 5 miles east of Roll… looking west… between 5:48 pm CDT and 5:56 pm CDT:

At 5:57 pm, a brief funnel cloud formed:

At this location, we could also observe a left moving storm to our south which could have caused issues with our storm, but it managed to stay just east. Looking south at 6:47 pm CDT:

A large tornado ended up forming west of Custer City and we stopped 2 miles west of the town to observe it to our west. Images from between 7:34 and 7:37 pm CDT:

Farther east, we observed another large tornado to the north northwest of Weatherford between 8:05 and 8:10 pm CDT. In the process we took a good beating from hail larger than golfball size. From 6 miles north northwest of Weatherford:

A fairly short chase on a high risk day in Oklahoma. We elected to jump on a storm northwest of Seiling that was moving northeast toward Major County. Considering how impressive parameters were on the day, the storm only gradually attained a nice appearance and began rotating.

The storm ended up producing a ragged looking weak tornado that tracked along the Alfalfa/Major county line between 6:04 and 6:11 pm CDT:

We observed one more high precipitation supercell that moved from northern Kingfisher into southern Garfield County. The storm likely produced at least one tornado, but it was heavily embedded in rain.

It was a nearly text book set up for supercell storms and tornadoes over the eastern Texas Panhandle with good flow aloft, and 70 degree dew point temperatures flowing in on gusty southeast winds. We had just entered the panhandle on I-40 when the first storm developed west of Clarendon.

The first tornado formed and faintly came into view while we were about 17 miles east of it.

The first tornado lasted a couple of minutes and then there was a brief break before the second / longer lasting tornado formed. Both of these tornadoes moved very slow and covered an area only a couple of miles wide and long with a variety of motions – all about 6 miles west southwest of Clarendon. The following photos were shot from the south side of Clarendon.

After the second tornado weakened, outflow from other storms to our south began to impact our target storm and it started to struggle.

Another supercell had been occurring well to our north / southeast of Spearman. Given the cluttered nature of storms near and southeast of Clarendon, we made the decision to head north toward the Spearman storm. While approaching, a vigorous updraft began to take shape over Spearman. We targeted that storm and observed two small tornadoes in addition to spectacular storm structure. The following images were captured looking west from 12 miles east of Spearman.

It was anticipated that a significant outbreak of severe storms and tornadoes would occur in Oklahoma. Indeed, there were a lot of tornadoes – but mostly after sunset – with the most impressive events near and east of the I-35 corridor. Most of the daylight storm structure wasn’t very sharp and the view complicated by haze. By mid-afternoon, explosive thunderstorm development occurred north of Carnegie.

This storm moved quickly northeast and began rotating over northern Caddo County. I observed a brief and weak tornado southwest of Hinton at 4:10 pm CDT:

The storm went on to produce a rain wrapped tornado in Canadian County to the northwest of Calumet.

Deep low pressure tracked from northern Kansas toward western Iowa during the day, and for the first time this season, rich low level moisture was found across the state. The main tornado show on the day was in Nebraska and Iowa, but we did find a small gem over southeast Kansas. Storms began forming near Moline, KS and it didn’t take them long to become severe. Our first encounter with an established supercell was just northeast of Longton:

We first noticed a ground circulation to our northeast from 2.0 miles west southwest of Buxton at 3:42 pm CDT. A short time later, a condensed tornado appeared:

The tornado ended up being rated EF2 as it tracked from Elk into Wilson County.

We observed another brief tornado at 4:22 pm CDT about 5 miles east of Benedict. We also measured hail to 1.86″ and 1.88″ at stops near Moran.

Closing the door on what turned out to be a relatively uneventful season.  Rob and I made it into the Texas Panhandle and had a brief period of optimism watching vigorous convection near and west of Groom.

We followed a developing supercell south before it became clear it was going to be dropping off in a bad road network around the canyon.  We elected to head north toward Borger as a more isolated supercell moved almost straight south.  It had some nice convection at times and some pretty good structure, but it always seemed a little strung out on radar and couldn’t get a lot accomplished other than producing some large hail.

We saw some nice sunset color near Shamrock and called it a day.

We worked our way west through Arnett and down to Canadian where we watched storms slowly organize from our southwest through northwest.

We finally settled on a low precipitation supercell that formed near Miami and led us all the way east to the Oklahoma border.  It had some really pretty structure at times and did produce some large hail, but never came close to a tornado.  Still, some good views: