Anytime I wake up early on a chase day, see a tornado watch already in place, supercell composites ALREADY at 12 just to my east (and the sun isn’t even up yet!), and the first wording I see on the SPC Day 1 outlook is:
–A POTENTIALLY SIGNIFICANT SEVERE WEATHER EPISODE IS EXPECTED THIS
AFTERNOON AND TONIGHT WITH A THREAT OF STRONG…LONG-TRACKED
TORNADOES–
I know the day is going to be quite the adventure!
Don’t have a lot of time this morning for a detailed post. Suffice it to say, it’s going to be a very long, exhaustive day full of chasing adventure. Appears that there will be more than one round of tornadic supercells cross the state of OK today looking the simulated radar reflectivity models for today, and it looks like it will get started early! Areas along and east of I35 especially will be under heavy tornado potential.
It appears there will be a dryline punch somewhere in the central OK area. Right now I am going to primarily be looking for two things on the way to OK. Any areas that clear out and can heat up, and areas east or northeast of that dryline punch. Where those two intersect I believe will be my target area. Of course on a huge dynamic day like today, that is definitely subject to change on future evaluation.
Just a word of caution for any less experienced chasers that might be heading out today. Please be careful and extremely vigilant. These will be deadly storms today, moving quickly, and there may be a lot of them. This is not a chasing day for anyone the least bit timid. It would only take one bad road decision to get yourself run over bad a fast moving tornado. So just be careful, and if you don’t have a lot of experience, either find someone you can go with or maybe sit this one out.
Make no mistake about it, this is going to be a difficult, exhausting chase day. A LONG day for spotters, chasers and emergency management alike. It’s quite possible people will die today, and communities will be heavily damaged. Just be really careful folks, that’s all I am saying.
Is this October or April???