6/9 - 1am CDT - All Sorts of Weather

As we drove south to Texas this morning we decided to stop off at the National Weather Center at the University of Oklahoma:


This shiny new building on OU's campus is home to the National Severe Storms Laboratory, the Storm Prediction Center, and other branches of NOAA. We couldn't get past the first floor without a formal tour appointment, so we just looked at some of the tornado probes and other items they had on display.

We got south of Wichita Falls, TX and found four storm cells in their infancy at around 3pm CDT. After an hour of formation, we chose the most westerly cell. Boy was that a good choice:


This storm had good enough rotation on radar to produce a tornado, but it just stopped short of dropping a funnel. Here's a video of the storm at its height, notice the inflow winds:



After this cell weakened and merged with a couple other cells, it started to take on great deal of dust with inflow winds. As the storm began to become outflow dominant, all that dust flew out of the storm in one big burst and created a bit of a dust storm:


As the storm once again strengthened, it presented another picturesque updraft base over a field of wind turbines:


This storm then raced to Abilene, TX where we met up with it after nightfall. It was a dying storm by then so we decided to core-punch it and shoot north to see some lightning. The storm unexpectedly strengthened and even started throwing out signs of rotation and notching along the southern edge as we headed into the center of the storm. Not to mention hail of 3"+ in diameter possible inside the hail core. These things plus some very intense rain made Todd change his mind and we abruptly turned around to find shelter. We found a gas station in Tye, TX and camped out under the overhang for a few minutes. While there, we experienced torrential downpours, frequent lightning, and strong winds. A transformer near the gas station blew in a fury of sparks and blue-green flashes after a few minutes of this intense weather. Needless to say, customers inside the convenience store were surprised by the sudden power outage.

How do you end an action-packed day like that? Pizza Hut!

It looks like we'll be traveling to Northern Oklahoma or Southern Kansas tomorrow. The SPC has just issued a MODERATE Risk for Central Kansas tomorrow, but we'll take a look at the data after breakfast in the morning. Here's hoping for another exciting day!