Jana Lesak and I left OUN around 11am heading for Enid. It seemed like a fairly easy target to pick. Although there was an area of higher instability in sw OK, the shear was not as nearly as nice as nc OK. An outflow boundary(ofb) from the previous nights MCS was cruising through nc OK from a nw/se line from Woodward, Kingfisher and se from there. Sfc winds behind the ofb were easterly leading to an area of very high 0-1km helicity. Our hope was that a storm would form in the higher instability area near the sfc low in nw OK, establish itself and move over the ofb and produce a tornado.

However, this was not the case. Some storms blew up on the ofb where the nose of higher moisture intersected the ofb. These storms moved over us while in Enid. It was apparent that these storms were not sfc based because they were moving ne at 30knts. The storm motion just didn't make sense because with easterly sfc winds, these storms should have a nice easterly component. We decided not to bite on these storms in hope of new development in the area of higher instability. Mark Orther had now joined us in Enid.

It was becoming apparent that the instability in nc OK was not going to get it done. We decided to drop south a bit to Kingfisher. Instability was higher and some nice towering Cu were going up near there. We met up with Jeff Synder, Gabe Garfield, Dan Dawson, Robin T., and Howard Bluestein. We watched some towers go up and try to establish themselves but, they pooped out rather quickly. We noticed that cell west of Chickasha really had a nice appearance on radar. Given the crappy situation we were in, we decided to target the Chickasha cell.

We proceeded south on US-81 towards El Reno. While still north of El Reno, another cell went up just to the sw of El Reno. When we arrived at I-40, we stopped to check this cell out. It looked very poor visually as well as no rotation of radar. We hung out for a few minutes and the cell developed some weak upper level rotation on radar. We were concerned about the cells (now clustered together) south of this cell moving ne and contaminating the inflow air of the El Reno cell. Just a few minutes later, the cluster of storms south of ours turned right, leaving our cell with some great inflow air to work with.

Soon after that, the El Reno storm went from no low level rotation to a rapidly rotating wall cloud and turning hard right to a ese motion. A RFD wrapped around the wall cloud and completely occluded it. It was an absolutely beautiful sight. It developed several funnels before one really got its act together and developed into the tornado. It quickly turned into a nice, small elephant truck with awesome back lighting, then transformed into a nice long roping out stage.



Here is a video grab during the tornadoes small, stovepipe-like stage.





While the first cyclonic tornado was roping out, a second tornado started forming just to the south of the first tornado. It was a slender little funnel not even half way to the ground. It was forming in the anticyclonic area of the cell on the south side of the RFD. It started with a dust whirl on the ground, then slowly pulling the dust up the tube towards of condensation part of the tornado. It was spectacular to watch this happen with the back lighting. This anticyclonic tornado was the one that hit the El Reno Airport. There were no injuries.



This was a very rewarding chase because we stuck with our gut not targeting several storms and picking out the right storm. It rewarded us with quite a gem!