19 MAY 2003: SOUTHWEST OKLAHOMA SUPERCELLS
| McKinney, Texas--Steve Miller and I along with the Weathervine gang chased a beautiful supercell from
near Duncan, Oklahoma to near Ardmore today. The storm wrapped up with silver laminar
banding in the lower and mid-levels and displayed several wall clouds and long tail clouds
and inflow bands. Today's setup was very unusual in that the cold front produced a
vanguard windshift line, oriented north to south, which acted as a convergence axis in
much the same way as a dryline. Also, with mid-level flow oriented perpendicular to the
boundary, storms moved off the front and did not seed other cells along the forcing. The
deep cold air was well behind the windshift, and from what I understand about people who
studied the models extensively this morning, the mesoscale environment developed much
differently than progged. We enjoyed this backlit suerpcell for several hours as it
generated tornado warnings in Stephens, Jefferson, and Carter Counties. Later, another supercell developed to the west and we intercepted it just north of the Red River in Love County. This storm had a large bell shaped mesocyclone and was also visually impressive for some time. My good friends with Weathervine assembled this TIME LAPSE CLIP of the cool storms we saw today:
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