Target Area: Ada/Atoka, Oklahoma
Chase Area: Ada/Atoka, Oklahoma
Observations: one wall cloud, one supercell, and lightning
Distance: ~350 miles
Time: ~7 hours
Chase Team: Terra Thompson, Bill Ladwig, Nick Biermann, and myself
SPC Convective Outlook: Slight Risk (Upgraded to Moderate) (Click to see SPC products, data, and storm reports)
Chase Setup: A deep, negatively tilted upper-level trough was situated over northern Kansas. A surface low was located over central Kansas, with a cold front/dryline draped southward into central Texas. A warm front was lifting northward through southeast Kansas with dewpoints rising into the 60s within the warm sector.
Chase Log: This was my first storm chase since moving to Oklahoma in June. We set out for southeast Oklahoma with low expectations. Eventually we saw some storms build up just before dark, and got on a supercell near Atoka that had really great radar structure.
After it got dark, we watched lightning light up a low-hanging wall cloud. However, the roads were starting to get more sparse and we were starting to get into the hills and forests, so we let the storm go and headed back. Less than 15 or 20 minutes after we turned around, we heard that the supercell had produced a tornado.