Bill Osterban and I left GRR Sunday afternoon around 3pm EDT, arriving in Tulsa around 3am EDT. I got about 3 hours of sleep as I drove the whole way. We later met up with Dan Robinson and headed to Perry, OK around 1pm. In Perry we met up with Ben Holcomb and Eric in the Walmart parking lot. We observed on satellite a Cu field developing and surging NNE toward Enid, OK. We all decided that we needed to head further west towards Enid. Ben and Eric left first as we had to take care of a few things in Perry. Dan, Bill, and myself wound up waiting near Garber, OK. We were watching the storm cell that erupted to our west and a cell that was struggling with the CAP to the south of that. We finally decided to head north to intercept the dominate storm. We intercepted the supercell 2 miles west of Medford, OK.
Tower and anvil as we approached Medford:
There was a brief wedge already on the ground when we arrived on scene. This is confirmed by looking at other chasers accounts especially from Mike Hollingshead.
The wedge dissipated and soon after multiple vorticies touched down.
Then a single tornado developed to the right of the multiple vorticies. I believe it was still a part of the same circulation.
While the above tornado was on the ground a satellite needle funnel formed to the right of that and then touched down for nearly a minute.
Bill and I observed several funnels after the tornadoes as we headed back toward to Medford. We got caught in the chaser traffic. We felt that we were losing the storm as it was heading around 50 mph to the north east. We headed to I-35 and headed south to catch the next supercell north of Red Rock, OK. We waited for the the core to pass over I-35 as we drifted south. We encountered baseball to golf ball size hail on the road. We had the base of the storm in sight as some one called out a tornado on the HAM radio. We looked over in time to see the brief tornado. We knew that with the road network we would not be able to keep up with the storm. We got off and took 412 towards Tulsa to try and catch the supercell forming over OKC. It had just been tornado warned. We dropped south towards Shamrock, OK and then over to Henryetta. As we drove through Okmulgee, OK we decided to go for it as the hook was still near Clearview, OK.
Map of travel a total of 148 miles 3 supercells and 7 tornadoes:
We exited the precip core and saw the end of the Clearview tornado which was rain wrapped:
We continued for a mile or two south on Route 75 which turned into the turnpike just pass I-40. We witnessed several tornadoes near and in Henryetta.
Map from Tulsa’s NWS survey:
The next two pictures are of the brief tornado south of Henryetta airport
A new wall cloud redeveloped and shortly after produced a 10 mile long Ef2 tornado with the following images. There were brief periods of large debris plums and many multiple voticies with lots of lightning in and near the circulation.
Power flashes south of Henryetta
This storm once again occluded and we headed to I-40 and followed the supercell east. It produced yet another large wall cloud and produced another large tornado.
Wakita/Medford Oklahoma tornadoes.
Henryetta, Oklahoma tornadoes.
