Brian Thalken, Elizabeth Lyon, and myself intercepted a supercell that moved from Kingfisher (early view of the storm near Kingfisher) to Sooner Lake (near Red Rock).  This storm was as visually classic looking as can be, but it appeared to hit bad air as it passed east of Sooner Lake (view of the updraft as it moved over Sooner Lake).  The mesocyclone fully occluded and took on a cold look as it continued to rapidly move northeast past Ralston.  By this point, there were no other storms in the area that looked good enough to go after (the OKC metro area activity was too far to the south to reach in time), so we called it a day about an hour or two before sunset.  Fast storm motions, a bad road network, and too many trees/hills made this a very difficult chase day logistics wise.  Storms on this day needed a wide enough warm sector in order to allow them to organize/become sustained and produce tornadoes.  Our storm did organize into a strong supercell, but just as it was entering its tornadic phase, destabilization to its east became an issue.  One other observation...while driving west back towards Perry and I-35 (around 30 minutes before sunset), we hit the dryline, with west winds rapidly strengthening (30-50 mph gusts), the temperature spiking to 85F, and my lips becoming chapped in a matter of minutes...that was an interesting exprience in its own right.

Brian Thalken, Elizabeth Lyon, and myself hit the road once again, this time targeting Clinton, OK (western portion of the state).  We waited for initiation south of town, with a Cb rapidly developing to our southwest by 5:15pm.  This storm refused to move off of the well mixed boundary layer, which prevented it from intensifying into a strong supercell (it appeared to be an LP storm: several views here, here, and here).  It soon died about an hour after initiation, and while that happened, we left it and raced north toward a warm front, where we expected initiation to occur along as the low-level jet strengthened during the evening.  Several attempts at storm initiation occurred along the warm front through 7pm, with one cluster finally becoming sustained and developing into a supercell.  We intercepted this storm near Woodward, OK, observing a beautiful rotating updraft just after sunset.  The storm quickly dissipated as it moved northeast of Woodward, and our chase day was done.

I decided to get away from the massive chase crowds today, which led me to southcentral Kansas.  A tornado watch was issued at 2:45pm, just as Cb's were exploding northwest of Harper, KS.  I intercepted a storm which become tornado warned at 3:30pm north of Rago, KS (view of the storm base here).  The storm developed a broad area of cloud base rotation, but the base had a cold look to it, and I let it go after about 20 minutes of observations.  I then headed south and west to Attica, KS, observing another tornado warned storm at 4:07pm.  This storm looked a bit more interesting, with slightly stronger low-level rotation, but still couldn't produce as I followed it back to the northeast toward Harper, KS.  Cold, outflow dominated storm modes appeared to predominate today, with messy linear structures increasing, so I let all of this activity go and headed back home to Norman by 5pm.

Elizabeth Lyon and myself drove to Chickasha after I got off work at 4pm (being way out of position to catch a couple of tornadic supercells located well to the northwest of OKC ongoing at this time), and intercepted a developing thunderstorm moving off of the dryline out of the Lawton area.  We watched this storm slowly begin to strengthen after gaining a position immediately east of its base (picture of the widening base), with supercell structure becoming more obvious with time (rear flank of the storm).  Just as the cell began to move across and then east of Chickasha, an RFD and associated clear slot notched into the updraft base (here, and here).  Strong cloud base rotation was never observed, except for a few short-lived swirls here and there.  A meso hand-off appeared to take place as we continued moving east with the storm, but the RFD also became elongated and somewhat bowed.  The structure with the storm was still interesting to look at as we neared Purcell/I-35 (here, and here)...but we decided to end the chase as the cell moved east into the trees/hills of eastern Oklahoma.