Target Area: Enid, Oklahoma
Chase Area: Enid/Canton/Fairview, Oklahoma
Observations: two tornadoes (one was multi-vortex), one supercell, and hail
Distance: 350 miles
Time: 9 hours
Chase Team: Jeff Makowski, Mark Narramore, and myself
SPC Convective Outlook: High Risk (Click to see SPC products, data, and storm reports)
Chase Setup: A shortwave trough was moving through Oklahoma in the evening, a nice surface low was was setting up around southwest Kansas / northwest Oklahoma with a dryline just west of I-35, dewpoints were near 70, and there was high instability and high wind shear. Everything was ripe for explosive supercell development along the dryline.
Blog Entries:
Chase #9: High Risk (before)
Very High Risk Day (before)
Chase #9: Two Tornadoes on a Devastating Day (after)
May 24, 2011 Tornado Outbreak (after)
More Info On The Outbreak (after)
Upgrade to EF4; May Go Higher (after)
Chase Log: I didn't write up a full chase log right afterwards and I don't recall a lot of the details as it was a pretty messy day. We started by going to Enid, and then saw storms forming southwest of there.
We intercepted the supercell near Canton, where we saw a brief multi-vortex tornado at 3:20 pm. Continuing to follow the storm, we also saw the rope-out stage of an elephant trunk tornado near Fairview at about 3:48 pm. Unfortunately my pictures didn't turn out very well as the rain was starting to fall and my camera was having trouble focusing. That and I was busy trying to call in the tornadoes and plot our next route.
There wound up being storms pretty much all over, and things quickly got crazy, so we didn't stay out chasing too long. The high risk was certainly warranted. Sadly, there were many large, destructive tornadoes that affected many cities from Kansas to Texas.