We are headed towards the Oklahoma Panhandle region today as our target. Modelling is showing three areas of possible outbreaks with one down into Texas, one over the panhandle, and the other in extreme southeastern Colorado. We are choosing the southern location. SPC has a slight risk of severe weather over the region, however tornado probability is low.
On our way to the target area, we received word from the National Weather Service that the tornado in El Reno, OK last Friday would be upgraded to an EF-5. The OU RAXPOL radar had detected wind speeds of 296mph or 476km/h. The tornado also had a maximum width of 4.2km making this the largest tornado ever recorded in history. There was also word that it went from less than a mile wide to 2.6miles in about 30 seconds.
It's no wonder that this tornado caught everyone off guard. There was literally no way to escape.
My heart goes out to the families and friends who lost loved ones in this storm. It was a freak of nature. I thank my lucky stars that I am still here to talk about it, given are location in the outer circulation of the tornado.
We are down in the Texas panhandle and wow, is it ever hot. Temperatures are around 36°C, but dewpoints are quite low, so humidity is not an issue. We pick a target area, but after analysing some data, it's decided that the dewpoint spread is way to high, meaning the air is very dry. This doesn't bode well for storm initiation.
So.. back up north we go through Oklahoma and into southeastern Colorado.
There are a few severe warned cells into Colorado with one cell being tornado warned.
As we get into the region some incredible cloud structure developed.
Take a look...
We also witnessed a dust storm ahead of a thunderstorm outflow in southeastern Colorado.
All in all, not a bad day going between Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado and going between Central and Mountain Time.
It's off to Amarillo, Texas for the night as we target the region of western Texas to New Mexico on Wednesday.
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