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May 24 - Last Day and More Magic

Today, the forecast problem was "which storm do we chase?" It was a classic with better shear to the north, and massive CAPE further south (4500 or so on SPC analysis page). We decided to go to the library at Wellington to watch and wait. We weren't there long before storms started to fire - the first only 10 miles south of us. Pretty soon there were storms all over the place. We met up with Matt and Betsy, and Mike Umsheid and Jay Antle, and proceeded across into Oklahoma - targit Hollis. We chased a cell up near Mangum, then went south to Altus and chased another. These cells would show some organization, and then would lose it and merge into a long line. Finally we decided to head south - we had heard of tornado reports near Guthrie. As we approached the Red River we observed a beautiful storm to our immediate west:

EarlyCell.gif (131651 bytes)

As can be seen in the photo, this storm, unlike all the others, did not have a storm to its immediate south. It had nice inflow bands and a good RFB. As we watched, it developed a new mesocyclone on the NE side, which rapidly descended in a bowl shaped lowering to very near the ground. This lowering then produced an opaque cone shaped tornado which lasted about a minute. Unfortunately my picture of it did not come out. It then produced a multivortex tornado which continued for another minute or two (in other images the extent all the way to the ground can be clearly seen):

MultiVortex.gif (163741 bytes)]

After this.... it was getting dark, and clearly time for a celebration. We stopped at a nice steakhouse in Quanah (I think) and had a good dinner.

Celebration.JPG (49883 bytes)

Around the table from my empty chair, in an anticyclonic (clockwise) direction:

bulletBeth Moore
bulletLinda Kitchen
bulletKathy Velasquez
bulletMatt Crowther
bulletBetsy Abrahms
bulletMike Umsheid
bulletJay Antle

After dinner, we split up... Beth and myself heading west towards home, the rest to Childress for the night.