05.14.10
Monday’s Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak
Updated as of 3pm…two upgrades to EF4!
On Monday, while I was up gallivanting around northern Oklahoma, there were two EF4 tornadoes that occurred within a 5-mile radius of my apartment! Looking even farther out, there were twoEF3 and two EF4 tornadoes that occurred within about a 30-mile radius of my apartment, and roughly ten tornadoes that occurred within that same radius.
The National Weather Service is still working on damage surveys following Monday’s tornado outbreak, but as of this morning, here’s a map of the tornadoes (click to enlarge) that occurred around central Oklahoma. Note the EF4 that passed over south Norman and Lake Thunderbird formed right around the National Weather Center. Yikes!
Tomorrow I hope to spend some time compiling some information on the outbreak and doing a post-storm analysis of the day. Once I get that together, I’ll make a webpage for it and post the link. For now, the National Weather Service in Norman has some good information, mostly on the tornado tracks (but it’s being updated pretty frequently), on their website, so you can check that out if interested in where some of the other tornadoes occurred and what they were rated.
The top rated tornadoes were EF4 (meaning the strongest tornadoes of the day passed through south Norman and Moore).
Later this afternoon and evening I plan on posting some photos and possibly video from Monday’s chase in northern Oklahoma, as well as a chase log and a few photos from Wednesday’s chase (long story short–saw an impressive tornadic supercell near Clinton, but didn’t see the tornado).