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Monday, March 31, 2008
Storms return to Oklahoma
Sunday I drove from Dallas to Tulsa to drop off the wife and kids and then headed west and ended up chasing until 2am. Did not go to sleep until video was done at 4am and then storms fired at 6am near Enid. Got on the tail end of the first cell and it really looked like it was going to produce but then lined out. Chased them back to Tulsa. Image below was near Enid when I was sitting waiting to shoot some hail, storm wrapped up in one scan and went tornado warned on the next one!

More storms and less blogging this week!

posted by Charles at 6:41 PM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Sunday, March 30, 2008
3 in a row....
3 chances at good storms over the next week with today, Monday and Thursday. Whatever happens today will play into what happens tomorrow. If nothing fires out west today then a bunch of junk could go up tonight or in the morning and work over the atmophere and that would limit what happens tomorrow. I am in Dallas right now getting ready to leave for Tulsa and then will decide from there weather or not to head 3 hours west at 3 dollars a gallon for storms that might not even fire.

posted by Charles at 7:27 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday, March 28, 2008
A decent chase in NE Okla!!!
Yesterday I got to do something that I have not done in over two years, chase some daytime severe storms in NE-OK. Our two events here so far this year have been a night and last year we did not have anything. Couple of tornado warned cells south of Tulsa with some hail and great looking backlit cores and even though there were no tornado's it was still pretty cool. Tornado was reported near Council Hill but until someone shows me some video I going to guess that was a false report. That cell had several media chasers all over it, the base was a mile high and visibilities were good. I bet once a damage survey is done it will count as one just for the fact that is the only way we really get any here in NE-OK. I was four miles to the east of this thing and had a good view (as seen in video clip below) and the storm had a great core and a lot of mid level rotation on radar, I am wondering if that core in the video below was reported as a giant tornado!!!

posted by Charles at 6:38 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Looking towards April
Slight chances of storms through the end of March but not really expecting much as cap issues will be a big problem. Winds are screaming out of the south and in the past that was a good thing because it was a sign of moisture coming in but anymore it just means stuff burns. Kind of strange to be nearing the end of March without a single big storm event west of Missouri/Arkansas and even stranger to see Kansas has been almost shutout so far this year.

Common thinking and climatology would seem to say that April/May/June should be absolutly crazy over TX/OK/KS/NE but that same thinking would suggest it would be cool to be a stormchaser living in Oklahoma also, and it is as long as you don't mind driving to Amarillo or Dodge City.

Chance of storms overnight here, will just have to wait and see how that turns out.

posted by Charles at 7:22 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Monday, March 24, 2008
Storm Reports
Image below shows storm reports for Oklahoma over the last three years. So far this month we are sitting at 62 which is even below last year which was one of the slowest weather years around here that I can remember. We should pick up a few before April begins but will get no where near March of 2006.

posted by Charles at 1:08 PM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Thursday, March 20, 2008
464
US tornado count so far this year is at 464 which is about 300 more than the ten year average at this point.

Below is a graphic showing Oklahoma's tornado count so far this year and it looks like we are we below average and were even below the years of 05 and 06 as of now.

Taking a look at the upper air pattern through the first part of April it looks like mother nature might be taking a little break from the severe weather production for a while. Models do change when looking that far out but most of the time it is just with the smaller features and not the general overall pattern. So right now it looks pretty quite and will just have to wait and see what April holds. I would say I can't wait until May but the past few years May has been worse than March and April for severe storms in Oklahoma so I just hope April provides some action.

posted by Charles at 9:11 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Oklahoma beating Kansas!
By the end of the year I am sure Kansas will have three times as many tornado's reported but as of March 17th Oklahoma is ahead 2 to 1.
Tornado Report count by State:
  1. Missouri 68
  2. Mississippi 62
  3. Alabama 48
  4. Georgia 45
  5. Arkansas 36
  6. Kentucky 33
  7. Louisiana 25
  8. S.Carolina 17
  9. Texas 10
  10. Illinois 7
  11. Washington 6
  12. Wisconsin 5
  13. N Carolina 5
  14. Indiana 3
  15. California 2
  16. Oklahoma 2
  17. Kansas 1

posted by Charles at 1:55 PM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Tomorrow
Could be a chase day tomorrow but this is one of those setups that are difficult to decide about chasing until the last minute. My guess right now is that a bunch of stuff will be going out west come AM tomorrow and will screw up the chances for severe the rest of the day. Tulsa is probably going to end up with no severe and a bunch of heavy rainers. If this setup were in the eastern states tonights stuff would still probably fire but would end up just going nuts later in the day dropping tornado's one right after the other but we are talking about Oklahoma here. I figure I will probably end up just shooting a bunch of flooding crap and will hope we can pull a little lightning out of it.

posted by Charles at 8:51 PM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Oklahoma-Tornado Capital of the Universe??
I found this graphic below in a text book my son brought home from school the other day.

That statement "no other state gets more tornadoes" could not be further from the truth and actually several states get more tornado's every year than Oklahoma, California even beat Oklahoma in 2005 with 28. Whoever created the above graphic for the book did not have to fact check that statement because 98% of the general population would say that it is true, the other 2% would be stormchasers and other people involved in weather in some fashion. I think part of this misconception comes from the fact that Oklahoma media does such an incredible job when of covering the occasional tornado's that do touch down in Oklahoma. OKC media will have a minimum of 2 choppers and 20 chasers and usually end up getting incredible video that gets played a billion times on national tv. States like Wisconsin, South Dakota, Missouir, Illinois etc.. usually get more tornados but the coverage is not there. Just yesterday in an 8hr period Georgia and South Carolina recieved 31 tornado's, while in 2005 and 2006 Oklahoma only got 27 total for each year. Oklahoma's overall average is 53 for any given year and two states (MO-68,MS-62) have passed that number with 5 others getting close to it and Oklahoma is sitting at one right now.

As seen in the graphic below tornado's have been off the chart this year with 400+ and yesterdays totals have not even been added in yet, I would guess that this will level off during the next several months.

posted by Charles at 8:02 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Friday's Chase
Was planning on staying in Tulsa yesterday but decided to head west instead. Dewpoints were in the 30's and 40's but I could not ignore the amount of shear and so I headed towards Enid. Once I got to Enid I was going to stop but there was a small cell coming out of Woodward and it was moving to the right pretty good so I decided to keep going west. Once I got to Cleo Springs I could see this storm which had a very high base but it still looked pretty cool because all of the precipitation was coming down in curtains. Decided to follow this stuff back towards the east and got one of the best lightning shows I have seen in years out in Pawnee Co. I could not seem to get out of the precip to shoot anything and when I did get out of the precip I could not find anyplace good to shoot so I just enjoyed the show all the way back to Tulsa. Storms finally got there act together and went severe as they ran me over in Broken Arrow with 50+ winds and blinding rainfall and really got to cranking with a bow echo after they cleared the Tulsa area. Interesting to see that Oklahoma had the tornado threat yesterday but TX,LA,AR,MS ended up getting the tornado watch with a bunch of tornado warned storms. I might have to venture down to Texas on Monday but probably won't decided on that until Sunday night.


posted by Charles at 7:25 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday, March 14, 2008
Chase Today
Never went south yesterday and only ended up going to Muskogee, storms fired just west of Tulsa so I headed back and saw some pretty cool lightning but storms died pretty fast a s they entered Tulsa. Below are SPC graphics and so I think I will probably just hang in Tulsa today and wait for stuff to fire, by doing this it will fire elsewhere but does not look like a day worth sitting somewhere waiting for storms to go up. Only a 5% tornado threat which usually works in places like NW Kansas but is usually no good around here, will probably be just heavy rainers tonight but the lightning might be good.

posted by Charles at 8:06 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Chase Today and Maybe Tomorrow
Update:3:00pm
New target: Checotah,Okla 4PM

Update:12:46pm





I will probably be headed towards Ft Smith today to see if I can see some hailers today and looks like the same for tomorrow.

posted by Charles at 7:33 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Friday Afternoon
Looks like a good shot at storms east of here on Friday but if something can fire in eastern Oklahoma late during the day on Friday it will probably be severe. Right now it looks like a trip to Ft Smith or Fayetteville maybe be in order. Another shot at storms on Monday and the long range models are hinting at another big trough moving through towards the end of March.

posted by Charles at 6:57 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
March
The first week of March around here was very winter like around here with snow and cold temps and we actually had a temp of 18F on Sat AM. Looks like we going to go into a spring mode here in the next few days. Graphic below is from TFO and give a threat assessment for each day of the week for what type weather we will have. Last year this graphic was a little frustrating because it was always showing lightning and severe storms for our area but ended up getting almost none. Current graphic show we have five days with chances and as of now it looks like Thur night and Mon could be days we actually see something. I am starting to feel a little bit better about our storm chances this year because with three years in a row with very little in the way of severe weather I think eastern Oklahoma is due for some wind, hail and lightning. As far as tornado's go I figure that will still mean driving to Texas or Kansas or extreme western Oklahoma.

posted by Charles at 6:56 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Saturday, March 08, 2008
Video Clip
Below is a short clip from some of the snow I shot Thursday and Friday. None of this really amounted to much as far as accumulations but some of it looked pretty cool coming down. Looks like I will end up selling more snow video out of Oklahoma for March than storm video unless we have an amazing last three weeks in March.

posted by Charles at 8:53 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Friday, March 07, 2008
Even More Snow
Started snowing in Broken Arrow around 7pm and so I went out a shot some video. That makes snow video from 3am in FtSmith, 1pm in Pawnee and 9pm in BA! Slight chance of storms Mon-Wed!

posted by Charles at 9:24 PM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
More Snow
I thought I was done when I got back from Ft Smith this morning but then some echos showed up on radar to the NW and I took a chance and went to Pawnee. Saw more snow and heavier snow today then I did yesterday. They were big flakes and the wind was cranking out of the north reducing visibility along the Cimmaron Turnpike.

posted by Charles at 2:56 PM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Bring on Spring
Woke up at 3am in Sallisaw and saw it was snowing in Ft.Smith so I headed that way for AM video and then headed back to Tulsa. That should be the last of the winter weather around here for this year although we will drop below freezing a few more times up through April. First week of March was all snow video which is kind of strange but I will take it and March should provide some storms hopefully.

posted by Charles at 8:03 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Sallisaw
I arrived in Sallisaw about 12pm and it was already snowing and has been since but not really sticking right now. Snowfall forecast amounts keep getting smaller as this system seems to be dropping further south. Still hoping to get 4-6 inches here but it is starting to seem unlikely.

posted by Charles at 3:39 PM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Winter Storm
I will be heading to Sallisaw a little later today since it looks like Tulsa is going to miss out on this one. The expected amount have been dropping dramatically from what was fore casted yesterday but still expect 4+ inches down south.

posted by Charles at 6:57 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Winter Storm Watch
Norman went all out and went with a warning for this next system while Tulsa is holding back a little and just issued a watch. Tulsa kind of got burned on that last one with most areas in the warning not receiving any snowfall so I don't blame them.

posted by Charles at 2:10 PM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Jumbo Snow!
Models showing a big time snow event for us Thur/Fri. Sometimes these things happen and sometimes they don't which is why I am glad I am not a forecaster. With what the models are showing right now a Winter Storm Warning should be issued pretty soon and then it will be just waiting to see if it actually happens. On the last event we were not really forecasted to get much and then ended up getting dumped on so with this one we will probably be forecasted to get dumped on and then might not.

posted by Charles at 11:52 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
Snow
Was a little bit frustrated yesterday as it was looking like we were going to get shut out on both events of the last couple of days but then around 10pm it started to snow. Tulsa did not get any but a small band developed over Broken Arrow and to the south and dumped 4+ inches in just a few hours. Winter Storm Warning were issued about around 1am. Looking like it will be quite for a while and the models are looking really interesting for 11-12 timeframe.

posted by Charles at 10:18 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Monday, March 03, 2008
Snow for Today
Yesterday's event turned out as expected with storms totally crapping out before they made it to Tulsa, no storm reports east of I-35 but some token warnings were issued for our area. Oklahoma did recieve a tornado report yesterday so that can be added to the almost 400 tornado's recorded east of here this year. Looks like the east might tack on a bunch more today. The big snow is now looking like it will also dodge Tulsa, have not looked at anything weather wise after today.

posted by Charles at 8:47 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Mixed Bag
Interesting weather coming up for the next 48 hours as later on today we will have a chance a severe storms and then on Monday we have a winter storm watch. Not sure how interesting the severe part will be but the snow could be a big one. Models are showing as much as 12 inches of snow but as of now the most I have seen mentioned in official forecast is 4-8. The great thing about a March snow is you can get a ton but it will totally be gone in a few days. Streaming cams will be activated later today.

From the TFO:
KEPT FORECAST TRENDED TOWARD A MIX OF GFS AND EURO AT THIS TIME
AS WRF REMAINS OUTLIER IN DEEPENING SYSTEM FURTHER AND GENERATING
MUCH HEAVIER SNOW ACCUM...HISTORIC IN FACT. IN ANY CASE A SWATH OF
4-8 INCHES LOOKS PROBABLE WITH HEAVIEST AMOUNTS FOR NW ARKANSAS.

posted by Charles at 7:39 AM ____________________________________________________________________________________________
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